Burial Methods
In many cultures, human corpses were usually buried in soil. The roots of burial as a practice reach back into the Middle Palaeolithic and coincides with the appearance of Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis and Homo Sapiens, in Europe and Africa respectively. As a result, burial grounds are found throughout the world. Through time, Mounds of earth, temples, and underground caverns were used to store the dead bodies of ancestors. In modern times, the custom of burying dead people below ground with a stone marker to indicated the burial place is used in most modern cultures, although other means such as cremation are becoming more popular in the West (cremation is the norm in India and mandatory in Japan).
Some burial practices are heavily ritualized; others are simply practical.
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Famous quotes containing the words burial and/or methods:
“On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.
Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“In inner-party politics, these methods lead, as we shall yet see, to this: the party organization substitutes itself for the party, the central committee substitutes itself for the organization, and, finally, a “dictator” substitutes himself for the central committee.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)