Members of the Igorot tribe of Mountain Province in northern Philippines have long practiced the tradition of burying their dead in hanging coffins, nailed to the sides of cliff faces high above the ground. Comfortably predating the arrival of the Spanish, the procedure can probably be traced back more than two millennia. To this day, […]
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A Cemetery Underwater: Neptune Memorial Reef
The fact that we are all going to die one day is not something that I like to think about at all. For me, it is such an unlikely thing, which I rarely consider my mortality, or even worse, that of my loved ones. In the rare occasion, I think about the remote possibility of […]
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A Host of Mummies, a Forest of Secrets
In the middle of a terrifying desert north of Tibet, Chinese archaeologists have excavated an extraordinary cemetery. Its inhabitants died almost 4,000 years ago, yet their bodies have been well preserved by the dry air. The cemetery lies in what is now China’s northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang, yet the people have European features, with […]
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Dargavs Village: City of the Dead
This ancient village and its adjoining cemetery have a beautiful history of death and remembrance.The village of Dargavs, or the City of the Dead, has an ancient cemetery where people that lived in the valley buried their loved ones along with their clothes and belongings. The valley stretches for 17 kilometers, and the cemetery contains […]
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Le Cimetière des Chiens — the Dog Cemetery in Asnières-sur-Seine
While the cemetery is commonly referred to as simply “Le Cimetière des Chiens,” you’ll see a few places where the longer name of “Le Cimetière des Chiens et Autres Animaux Domestiques” (the cemetery of dogs and other pets) is given, including an inscription in stone on a monument near the entrance. So the cemetery has […]
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Sucre’s General Cemetery
As you enter Sucre’s general cemetery, a bold sign above the imposing white entrance warns Hodie Mihi Cras Tibi: Today Me, Tomorrow You. Walking around the pristine gardens of the cemetery, the endless rows of stacked graves serves only to re-enforce this message. But with it comes a strange sense of peace. The palpable serenity […]
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Green Burials
Green burial, also called a natural burial, is an environmentally friendly burial that aims to have as little impact on the earth as possible. In order for a burial to be “green,” the body should have as little impact upon the earth as possible. The main areas of consideration in a green burial are: The […]
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Unfinished Business From the Vietnam War
SAN DIEGO — In a ceremony that was brief but redolent of the sacrifice and pain of war, one of the last bits of unfinished business from the Vietnam War was completed Monday at the Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery. The remains of Marine Pfc. Richard Rivenburgh were buried 37 years after his helicopter was shot […]
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Cremation
Cremation, the practice of reducing a corpse to its essential elements by burning. The practice of cremation on open fires was introduced to the Western world by the Greeks as early as 1000 bce. They seem to have adopted cremation from some northern people as an imperative of war, to ensure soldiers slain in alien […]
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Cemetery for the Homeless
For many people, homelessness in life also means indignity in death—an anonymous, budget burial. But things are changing in one major European city: CityLab’s Mimi Kirk writes that Copenhagen’s Assistens Cemetery in Denmark has set aside a section just for homeless people. More than 300,000 people are buried at Assistens, Denmark’s most famous graveyard. Previously, […]
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