The transition of a person from life to death at all times represented an area inaccessible to human understanding. “Where does the soul go? What awaits her in the next world? - these questions have interested people for millennia. As a rule, it was believed that deceased people move into a special world of spirits, and acquire extraordinary properties that allow them to interfere in the lives of people.
It is no secret that in most cases the dead were feared, since in the new status of spirits they could either harm the living (if they were not given enough respect during burial), or, on the contrary, help them in every possible way in their success. The exceptions were the corpses of enemies - they were treated extremely disrespectfully in order to express their highest contempt for them, and to prevent the soul from going into the afterlife.
For example, archaeologists have repeatedly come across burials where the dead were laid face down. So witches and nuns who violated the charter were buried. People buried face down are also found in Sweden, and these finds date back to the early period of the spread of Christianity (XI century). It is likely that the Vikings, whose religion was paganism, buried Christians in this way in order to express their dislike of them. Sometimes during excavations, skeletons are found, with limbs tied with ropes. This suggests that the deceased was either a criminal or a prisoner of war.
Burial rites among different peoples, both in antiquity and now, are directly related to their religion, and therefore the ritual customs of the inhabitants of one country seem absolutely wild and absurd for the inhabitants of another.
For example, the oldest custom of self-immolation of a widow on her husband's funeral pyre called "sati" still takes place in India, although it is prohibited by the authorities. About 2000 such self-immolations take place there every year.
Previously, sati was a ritual of "privileged" persons, and it was performed by the wives of rulers and chiefs. The size of the victims of this rite claimed the lives of thousands of widows. For example, after the death of one of the padishahs, about 3000 women ascended to his funeral pyre, making up his harem. After burning, the charred bones taken from the funeral pyre were mixed with rice and eaten by the priests when they performed ritual rituals.
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In Russia in 1723, during the reign of Peter I, a loud scandal erupted in Kitai-Gorod after the tsar forbade the widow of an Indian merchant to perform sati, thereby inflicting a “great offense” on the comrades of the deceased.
In India, burning the dead at a stake is one of the most common methods of burial. However, for some of the Hindus, it is categorically unacceptable, since for the followers of Zoroastrianism, fire is a sacred element that should not be defiled. Therefore, the dead are placed on the platforms of high stone towers, called the "tower of silence." The corpses placed in this way were pecked by birds of prey, and the remaining bones were collected and buried in a sand pit. A similar custom was used by the inhabitants of Tibet, only there the dead were not brought to the tower, but simply left in a desert area.
The custom of burning the dead was also widespread in pre-Christian Russia. Then the deceased were buried on a sleigh, regardless of the season. The sleigh with the deceased was carried in their arms to the top of a rather high hill, they left him his favorite things during his lifetime and sprinkled the blood of a rooster. Then the sleigh was covered with brushwood and set on fire. This custom is associated with the worship of the Slavic tribes of the Sun, and they believed that through the fire it would be easier for the deceased to return to their God.
People who have lived in mountainous areas for generations have developed a certain attitude towards mountains. It was believed that the mountains are a connecting link between heaven and earth, and therefore, to facilitate the transition of the soul of the deceased to heaven, the departed were placed as close to them as possible. That is, they simply hung the coffin at a fair height. Such a rite is practiced in Sagada, a mountainous province of the Philippines. Here, during his lifetime, each inhabitant acquires a coffin, where after death his embalmed body is placed. Then the “last refuge” is taken to the mountains and hung there. The number of such air graves is in the hundreds, and some of them have been hanging for several centuries, and similar "hanging cemeteries" in China are more than 3000 years old.
The Indonesian Toraya people consider a fun and rich funeral to be a successful guarantee of the soul's transition to heavenly lands, therefore, after death, a person was considered simply asleep until everything was ready for the burial ceremony, although up to that moment it sometimes took several years. In the meantime, the deceased was in a special ritual room, waiting in the wings. When everything was ready for burial, a buffalo sacrifice was performed, although human sacrifice was practiced not so long ago. The ceremony took several days, during which there were rituals and chants. The rite of "bypassing" the possessions of the deceased was also performed, while the coffin was carried in one's arms and from time to time thrown up to facilitate the soul's exit from the body. At the end of the ceremony, the coffin was taken to the burial caves high in the mountains.
Some peoples placed their dead in special boats so that they could safely sail through the waters of the afterlife. Such a burial ritual was used by the Varangians, ancient Rusichs and Egyptians.
Some of the funeral rites of some peoples will seem offensive to others. So, the ancient Greeks threw the bodies of killed enemies to be devoured by the dogs, and it was believed that their souls would not find refuge. However, among the Mongols, everything just happened the other way around, and they have a very unusual ritual that is still practiced in some places. In Mongolia, dead people were given to be eaten by dogs - the corpses were simply thrown into ravines or brought to the famous Black Valley, where hungry dogs tore the bodies apart. It was believed that the sooner this happens, the sooner the soul will move to the other world.
Today, various methods of burial are used, rooted in the depths of centuries, but, nevertheless, various innovations of our time are being introduced into this tradition. So, the American company Masten Space Systems has developed a special technology and a suborbital rocket in order to send the ashes of the deceased into the depths of space, which, having been there for a few minutes, will return back to Earth. The cheapest option for a space capsule with ashes is estimated at about $ 100.