How We Got Rid Of The Bodies

• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Original Dirt Nap: Prehistoric Burials and Why We Bothered
• Chapter 2 Wrapping Things Up: The Ancient Egyptians and the Art of the Mummy
• Chapter 3 Pyres, Pots, and Parties: Cremation and Celebration in Ancient Greece and Rome
• Chapter 4 Up, Up, and Away: The Curious Case of Sky Burials
• Chapter 5 A Viking's Farewell: The Pros and Cons of a Funeral at Sea
• Chapter 6 God's Acre: How Christianity Shaped the Modern Cemetery
• Chapter 7 Holy Smoke (and Bones): The Business of Saints' Relics
• Chapter 8 Bring Out Your Dead!: Plague Pits, Mass Graves, and Crisis Management
• Chapter 9 The Golden Age of Grief: Mourning Sickness in the Victorian Era
• Chapter 10 Written in Stone: A History of Humorous, Hostile, and Heartfelt Epitaphs
• Chapter 11 The American Way of Death: How the Funeral Industry Was Born
• Chapter 12 An Urn-est Proposal: The Resurgence of Cremation in the Modern World
• Chapter 13 Don't Fear the Reaper, Fear the Bill: The Astonishing Economics of Dying
• Chapter 14 Going Out in Style: The Extravagant Funerals of the Rich and Famous
• Chapter 15 A Body of Work: The Surprising History of Donating Yourself to Science
• Chapter 16 Ashes to Diamonds, Dust to Coral Reefs: The New Life of Cremains
• Chapter 17 Going Green: How to Decompose with a Clear Conscience
• Chapter 18 The Big Chill: Cryonics and the Icy Hope of a Second Chance
• Chapter 19 To Infinity and Beyond: Shooting for the Stars with Space Burials
• Chapter 20 Six Feet Over: The Rise of Vertical Cemeteries
• Chapter 21 Dissolve, Don't Disturb: The Gentle Art of Alkaline Hydrolysis
• Chapter 22 The Digital Ghost in the Machine: Managing Your Online Afterlife
• Chapter 23 The Life of the Party: Funerals That Are Actually Fun
• Chapter 24 A Grave Situation: The Global Cemetery Real Estate Crisis
• Chapter 25 So You're Dead. What's Next?: A Final Look at the Future of Farewell

Let’s be honest, it’s the oldest problem in the book. Not love, not war, not even how to get that stubborn lid off the pickle jar. The oldest problem is a practical one, a logistical one, and, if we’re being perfectly frank, a slightly fragrant one. What, precisely, do we do with the bodies? From the moment the first of our ancestors looked down at a fellow hominid who had ceased to be, the question has hung in the air, sometimes more literally than others. It’s a universal dilemma that every single human society, from the most technologically advanced to the most isolated, has had to solve. This book is about how we’ve answered that question.

It's a story that begins, as so many do, with a bit of digging. Humans have been burying their dead for at least 100,000 years. But why? It seems like a lot of effort for something that, on the surface, provides little immediate benefit. You can’t eat it, you can’t wear it, and you certainly can’t ask it to help you hunt a mammoth. Yet, across millennia and continents, we have dug, built, burned, and even, on occasion, eaten our dead. The sheer variety of our solutions is a testament to human ingenuity, a peculiar brand of creativity sparked by the ultimate deadline.

This isn't just a grim catalogue of corpse disposal techniques, however. How we treat our dead says volumes about how we live. It’s a mirror reflecting our deepest beliefs about life, the afterlife, and our place in the universe. Our funerary practices are a complex tapestry woven from threads of sanitation, sentiment, spirituality, and social status. They are shaped by everything from the fear of vengeful spirits to the very practical concern that leaving dear old Uncle Thag to decompose in the corner of the cave is, to put it mildly, unpleasant for everyone else.

The history of dealing with the dead is, in many ways, the history of humanity itself. It’s a subject that touches on our fears, our hopes, our art, and our science. The first deliberate burials, found in places like Qafzeh in Israel, show evidence of ritual, with bodies carefully arranged with items like deer antlers, suggesting that even 115,000 years ago, death was more than just a biological event. It was an occasion that demanded a certain level of performance. These early efforts were perhaps the first stirrings of the elaborate ceremonies, solemn rituals, and sometimes outright bizarre traditions that have characterized our relationship with the deceased ever since.

Consider the options. The default, of course, is to do nothing. Just walk away and let nature take its course. Many animals do just that. But at some point in our evolutionary journey, that became unacceptable. Perhaps it was simple hygiene. A decaying body is a health hazard, and our ancestors, while not exactly versed in germ theory, would have understood the connection between rot and sickness. The World Health Organization today notes that while the risk of epidemics from dead bodies is often overstated, contamination of water sources is a real concern. So, getting the body out of sight, and out of the water supply, was a pretty good idea.

But it quickly became about so much more than sanitation. The act of disposal became a ritual, a ceremony freighted with meaning. It became a way for the living to process their grief, to support one another, and to make sense of the profound mystery of death. Funerals, in essence, are for the living. They provide a safe, structured space to express sorrow, share memories, and begin the long, slow process of converting a relationship of physical presence into one of memory. It’s a psychological pressure valve, a necessary step in healing and reaffirming social bonds.

This book will take you on a global tour of our most inventive, and sometimes startling, solutions to the body problem. We’ll start, as humanity did, with putting them in the ground. The simple act of burial has been our go-to method for eons, a practice that indicates a respect for the dead and a desire to keep the unpleasantness of decomposition hidden from view. From there, we will travel to ancient Egypt, where the elite went to extraordinary lengths not just to dispose of the body, but to preserve it for eternity, believing it was an essential vessel for the soul’s journey in the afterlife.

Then we'll feel the heat with the rise of cremation, a practice favored by ancient Greeks and Romans. For some, fire was seen as a purifying agent, a way to release the spirit from its fleshy prison. For others, like the Hindus on the banks of the Ganges, it was, and still is, a sacred rite intended to help the soul escape the cycle of reincarnation. We’ll look at why some cultures burned their dead with gusto while others found the practice abhorrent, a desecration of the sacred body.

But burying and burning are just the beginning. Have you ever considered leaving your dearly departed on a mountaintop as an offering to vultures? The Tibetan practice of sky burial does exactly that, viewing the body as an empty vessel and its consumption by birds as a final act of generosity. It's a method that is both deeply spiritual and startlingly practical, providing sustenance to other living creatures. The Zoroastrians had a similar idea, placing their dead on "Towers of Silence" for the same purpose, believing that burial or cremation would defile the sacred elements of earth and fire.

We will sail with the Vikings, who sometimes sent their chieftains off in flaming ships, a fiery and dramatic send-off fit for a warrior. We’ll explore the curious traditions of the Philippines, where the Tinguian people might dress a corpse in its finest clothes and sit it in a chair with a cigarette, or the Benguet people blindfold their dead and place them at the entrance to their homes. We’ll even delve into the "dancing with the dead" ceremony in Madagascar, where families periodically exhume their ancestors to re-wrap them in fresh shrouds and dance with them before returning them to the tomb.

Of course, the way we handle our dead is also profoundly shaped by religion. The rise of Christianity, with its emphasis on the resurrection of the body, led to the development of the modern cemetery. The word itself comes from a Greek term for a "sleeping chamber," a place where the faithful would rest until Judgment Day. This belief made cremation a taboo in much of the Christian world for centuries and cemented burial as the proper, respectful way to treat a believer's remains.

We’ll also examine how these practices reflect social structures. From the grand pyramids of the pharaohs to the massive burial mounds built for Anglo-Saxon kings, the scale and expense of a funeral have always been a reliable indicator of wealth and power. In ancient Rome, cremation became a status symbol, with the wealthy commissioning elaborate pyres and tombs. Conversely, in times of crisis, all ceremony goes out the window. We'll look at the stark reality of plague pits and mass graves, where the sheer volume of the dead overwhelmed all customs and the primary goal became simple, rapid disposal to protect the living.

The rituals surrounding death are not just about the body itself. They are also about the performance of grief. The Victorian era, for instance, saw mourning elevated to a high art form, with complex rules of etiquette, specific dress codes, and elaborate mementos made from the hair of the deceased. It was a time when the public display of sorrow was not only encouraged but expected, a stark contrast to modern Western sensibilities that often treat grief as a private, almost embarrassing, affair.

And what of the words we leave behind? From the simple "Rest in Peace" to humorous, angry, or deeply poignant epitaphs, tombstones are our final, permanent statements to the world. They are a miniature biography, a warning, a joke, or a declaration of love, etched in stone for posterity. We’ll explore how these final messages have evolved and what they tell us about the people who lie beneath them.

This journey is not confined to the distant past. The story of how we get rid of the bodies is constantly evolving. We'll investigate the birth of the modern funeral industry in America, a business that transformed the simple act of burial into a complex commercial enterprise. We’ll see how cremation, once a fringe practice in the West, has made a dramatic comeback, and we’ll examine the astonishing economics of dying, where a final farewell can cost as much as a new car.

In recent decades, our options have expanded in ways our ancestors could never have imagined. Worried about your carbon footprint? You might consider a "green burial," where your unembalmed body is placed in a biodegradable shroud or coffin and allowed to decompose naturally. For the technologically minded, there’s alkaline hydrolysis, a process that dissolves the body in a heated, alkaline solution, leaving behind only sterile liquid and bone fragments. It’s cremation by water instead of fire.

Feeling more adventurous? Your cremated remains can be incorporated into an artificial coral reef, helping to restore marine ecosystems. They can be compressed under immense pressure to create a memorial diamond. For those with celestial ambitions, a portion of your ashes can even be launched into space, achieving a form of immortality among the stars. And for those who refuse to accept that the end is the end, there is the chilly promise of cryonics, where the body is preserved at extremely low temperatures in the hope that future technology will be able to revive it.

We are also facing new challenges. In crowded cities around the world, cemetery space is running out, leading to the development of vertical cemeteries—high-rise buildings for the dead. The digital age has presented us with a new kind of afterlife: our online presence. What happens to your social media profiles, your emails, and your vast digital archive after you’re gone? It’s a new frontier in estate planning that we are only just beginning to navigate.

Ultimately, the question of what to do with the body is a question about what it means to be human. It’s about our ability to find meaning in the face of oblivion, to create order out of the chaos of loss, and to honor the connections that bind us together. It is a story of love, fear, faith, and practicality. It is a story that is at once deeply personal and universally shared. From the first shallow grave dug in the ancient earth to the latest rocket carrying human ashes into orbit, we have always found a way. This book is the story of how.

Before grand tombs, before elaborate rites, before even a firmly established concept of what "dead" truly meant, there was a very basic, very pungent problem: a body. For our earliest ancestors, the world was already a smorgasbord of existential threats, from sabre-toothed predators to a suspicious-looking mushroom. The sudden stillness of a fellow group member simply added a new, and deeply inconvenient, item to the list. What do you do with someone who has permanently clocked out? The easiest answer, of course, is to do nothing. Just move on and let the local hyenas handle the cleanup. And for a very long time, that was likely the standard operating procedure.

But at some point, that changed. A switch was flipped in the hominin brain, and the simple act of abandoning the dead became unacceptable. This decision to start deliberately disposing of bodies was less a single "eureka!" moment and more a slow, creeping realization that something had to be done. The reasons were likely as layered as the sediment in the caves where the evidence is found. The most obvious driver is basic sanitation. A decomposing body is a health hazard and an open invitation to every scavenger in a five-mile radius. Nobody wants to share their living space with that. It was the world’s first, and most important, piece of household cleaning.

Yet, it’s clear it wasn't just about tidiness. The effort involved in digging a hole with primitive tools suggests a deeper motivation. It speaks to the emergence of something we might recognize as sentiment. It’s an acknowledgment that the thing that was once a person still holds some significance. Protecting the body from being torn apart by scavengers wasn't just practical; it was a way of preserving the integrity of someone who mattered. It was the first inkling of respect for the dead, a nascent form of grief taking physical form.

Then there's the spookier possibility: fear. Without a scientific framework for death, our ancestors would have been left to their own imaginative devices. What if the spirit lingers? What if it’s angry? Putting a few feet of soil and a heavy rock on top of a corpse might have been seen as a sensible precaution to ensure that dear old Grug didn't come back to haunt the cave, complaining about how his favorite hand axe was being used. It’s the original ghost insurance policy.

The archaeological jury is still out on who gets the credit for the very first burial. A tantalizing, if contentious, clue comes from a deep cave shaft in Spain’s Atapuerca mountains, known as Sima de los Huesos, or the "Pit of Bones." Here, some 430,000 years ago, the remains of at least 28 individuals of the species Homo heidelbergensis, an ancestor of Neanderthals, ended up at the bottom of a 45-foot chute. Researchers have argued that since there's no evidence they lived in this part of the cave, and because the bodies are mostly teenagers and young adults, they may have been intentionally dropped into the pit. Was this a primitive funeral rite, a way of placing the dead in the underworld? Or was it simply the most convenient, prehistoric garbage chute? The debate rages on.

Things get a little clearer, and a lot more personal, with our famous cousins, the Neanderthals. For a long time, these hominins were painted as brutish, dim-witted cavemen, incapable of the kind of symbolic thought required for a funeral. That stereotype began to crumble with discoveries made in the mid-20th century. At sites across Europe and Asia, from France to Uzbekistan, archaeologists found Neanderthal remains that looked suspiciously like they had been deliberately buried. These weren’t just bones scattered by predators; they were often complete skeletons found in pits.

The most famous, and most fiercely debated, of these is the "flower burial" at Shanidar Cave in modern-day Iraqi Kurdistan. In the 1960s, archaeologist Ralph Solecki discovered the skeleton of a male Neanderthal, dubbed Shanidar 4, and found clumps of ancient pollen in the surrounding soil. His romantic interpretation was that this man had been laid to rest on a bed of wildflowers, a tender, symbolic act. This idea captivated the public imagination, suggesting a level of humanity and compassion previously denied to Neanderthals.

Of course, science loves to spoil a good story. Skeptics pointed out that the pollen could have been brought in by burrowing rodents or simply blown into the cave. The debate swung back and forth for decades. However, recent excavations at Shanidar have unearthed a new, articulated Neanderthal skeleton near the original flower burial, dating to around 70,000 years ago. The new evidence strongly suggests this individual was placed in an intentionally dug depression, renewing the case that Neanderthals did, in fact, practice burial. The cave, it seems, may have been a special place used for the repeated interment of the dead.

Shanidar Cave offers other powerful evidence for Neanderthal compassion. The remains of another individual, Shanidar 1, show he was an old man (by Neanderthal standards) who had survived a host of crippling injuries, including a crushed skull that likely left him partially blind and deaf, and a withered arm that had been amputated. For him to have lived so long with such disabilities, he must have been cared for by his group. This wasn't a society that simply left its weak to die; they supported them. This ethos of care for the living naturally extends to a certain level of care for the dead.

Another classic example is the "Old Man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints" found in France in 1908. This was the first relatively complete Neanderthal skeleton found and, unfortunately, became the basis for their brutish stereotype. The initial reconstruction depicted him as a hunched, stooped creature, but a re-examination in the 1950s revealed the "old man" was suffering from severe arthritis. He was also missing most of his teeth and would have needed his food processed for him. Like Shanidar 1, his survival points to a supportive social group. He was found in a rectangular pit, which many argue was a deliberately dug grave.

When our own species, Homo sapiens, enters the scene, the evidence for intentional burial becomes undeniable and increasingly elaborate. Some of the earliest examples, dating back as far as 120,000 years, come from the Skhul and Qafzeh caves in what is now Israel. Here, anatomically modern humans were buried with clear ritualistic elements. One famous burial from Qafzeh is that of a child whose hands were placed on the skull and antlers of a large red deer, an object that must have held powerful symbolic meaning.

These early Homo sapiens burials are often associated with a very particular accessory: red ochre. This iron oxide pigment, ground into a powder, was slathered on bodies and sprinkled in graves across the prehistoric world. We see it at Qafzeh in Israel and in numerous other sites, showing a tradition that crossed vast distances and thousands of years. But why this obsession with the color red? The most likely explanation is its powerful symbolic connection to blood, and therefore to life itself. Coating a body in red pigment may have been a way of magically restoring the life that had departed, or perhaps preparing the soul for a vibrant, ruddy afterlife.

As humans moved into the Upper Paleolithic period (roughly 40,000 to 10,000 years ago), burials became even more theatrical. This was the era when we see the first clear signs of social status being reflected in death. If you were a big shot in life, you were going to get a big send-off. Nowhere is this more apparent than at Sunghir, a site northeast of modern Moscow, dating to about 34,000 years ago. The burials here are nothing short of spectacular.

The main attraction at Sunghir is a double grave containing two children, a boy of about 12 and a girl of about 9, who were laid head-to-head. Their burial is one of the most lavish ever found from the Stone Age. Their clothing had been decorated with thousands of painstakingly carved and polished mammoth ivory beads. They were also adorned with belts of fox canine teeth, ivory pendants, and animal carvings. Most impressively, they were accompanied by massive, straightened mammoth tusk spears, objects that would have taken immense effort to create. An adult male found in a separate grave was similarly, though less opulently, decorated.

The sheer wealth of the Sunghir graves is staggering. It’s estimated that each of the thousands of ivory beads would have taken at least an hour to produce. The labor investment in these funerals was enormous, far more than the children could have earned through their own achievements in their short lives. This suggests they held an inherited status, a sign that Paleolithic hunter-gatherer societies were perhaps more socially stratified than previously thought. The fact that the children also showed signs of physical disabilities further suggests that their special treatment was due to their social position rather than their individual abilities.

Another dramatic scene from this period was unearthed at Dolní Věstonice in the Czech Republic, dating back around 27,000 years. Here, archaeologists discovered a triple burial containing three individuals. The central figure, originally thought to be female but now identified as male, displayed severe congenital disabilities. This individual was flanked by two other robust males. One was lying face down, while the other's hands were placed on the central figure's pelvic region, which had been dusted with red ochre.

The arrangement is so unusual that it has sparked endless speculation. Was it a ritual sacrifice? The result of a tragic love triangle? A shamanic figure buried with his acolytes? Whatever the story behind it, the careful and dramatic staging of the bodies shows a community that was using the funereal process to tell a story, to create a powerful and lasting tableau for reasons we can only guess at.

The items our ancestors chose to bury with their dead, known as grave goods, are a direct line into their belief systems. The inclusion of tools and weapons seems practical enough, providing the deceased with the necessary equipment for whatever comes next. It’s the prehistoric equivalent of packing a lunch for a long journey. Ornaments, like the beads at Sunghir or the seashells found at Skhul, suggest a concern for appearance and identity in the afterlife. These weren't just bodies; they were people, and they were meant to arrive in the next world with their status intact.

Even the way the body was positioned held meaning. A very common practice was to place the deceased in a flexed or fetal position. This could have been for a simple, practical reason: a curled-up body requires a smaller hole, and digging is hard work. But it’s hard to ignore the potent symbolism of the position. Placing a body as if it were a baby in the womb strongly suggests a belief in rebirth, a return to the earth from which all life comes, in order to be born again.

As the Paleolithic gave way to the Neolithic around 12,000 years ago, the advent of agriculture and permanent settlements brought new twists to our relationship with the dead. People were no longer constantly on the move, and this stability allowed for the creation of the first true cemeteries. But in some places, the dead weren't kept at a distance; they were brought right into the home.

At Çatalhöyük, one of the world's oldest cities in modern-day Turkey, people consistently buried their dead under the floors of their own houses. For over a thousand years, from about 7100 to 5950 BCE, it was customary to inter family members beneath the sleeping platforms and hearths where the living went about their daily lives. It’s a startlingly intimate practice, erasing the boundary between the living and the dead. The ancestors weren't just memories; they were quite literally the foundation of the home. Interestingly, DNA analysis has shown that the people buried under a single house were not always biologically related, suggesting that "family" was defined by close social bonds rather than genetics alone.

From a practical perspective, it seems wildly inconvenient. But from a social and spiritual one, it makes perfect sense. It kept the ancestors close, allowing them to remain part of the household, to offer guidance and protection from beneath the floorboards. It was the ultimate expression of continuity, a physical manifestation of the idea that the community included not just the living but the generations that had come before. It was a long way from simply leaving a body to the elements, a complex, deeply meaningful solution to that oldest of problems.