Lore Lore 284: Grounded
Jul 14, 2025
A tour of burial customs from ancient cave interments to Egyptian mummification and Hindu cremation. Strange practices surface, from Tibetan sky burials and Toraja household corpses to Ghana’s fantasy coffins and Madagascar’s exhume-and-dance ritual. Tales of hearse hijinks and a preserved child lead into discussions of modern burial tech and how cultures try to control decay.
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Burial Rituals Began Much Earlier Than We Thought
- Intentional burial likely began far earlier than physical evidence shows, signaling deep antiquity of death rituals.
- 1933 Kofsa Cave finds of 120,000-year-old deliberate graves shift timelines for when humans began ritualized interment.
Practical Burial Turned Spiritual Theatre
- Practical reasons (sanitation, smell, disease) likely drove early burial practices before spiritual meaning was attached.
- Cultures then layered ritual and theater atop the practice, as with Egyptian mummification and Hindu cremation rites.
Tibetans Give Bodies To Vultures In Sky Burial
- Tibetan jator (sky burial) places prepared corpses on mountaintops to be consumed by vultures.
- Himalayan vultures can consume remains in under 40 minutes, and 80% of Tibetans still choose this method.