In China, they are very careful about burial traditions and, in general, everything related to the dead.
Most of the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire still, according to an old tradition, bury their dead on the slopes of the hills facing human habitation. This is believed to bring good luck to descendants.
CEMETERY IN AIR
The ethnic minority of China, the Bo people, since ancient times buried their dead high in the mountains, among the rocks. These burials are not easy to notice, but if you look closely, you can see coffins hanging on wooden wedges-props - another reminder of a mysterious and disappearing people who lived in the southwestern part of modern China.
The Bo people were able to create a vibrant, distinctive culture that would have developed further, if not for the bloody wars with the Ming dynasty. Four hundred years ago the Bo people were practically wiped off the face of the earth. There are no cultural monuments left, except for the strange aerial cemeteries, the nature of which scientists still argue about.
Until now, the port has no answer to the question of how people raised a coffin weighing at least 100 kilograms on rocks 100-200 meters high? It was on this basis that legends arose that the people could fly.
In reality, you can immediately notice that most burials are found in gorges where mountain rivers run. Based on this, the scientists put forward a hypothesis: the people were waiting for the spring floods, knowing that the rising water would help to work at the required height.
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According to another hypothesis, the bo had excellent climbers, who hammered wooden wedges into the rock and climbed them like a ladder. The likelihood of this assumption is confirmed by holes found in the bases of some rocks. In addition, there is another way to climb to a height - with the help of ropes.
SAFE POST
Until now, the question has hung in the air, why did the people bury their compatriots in such an exotic way? According to some experts, Bo, who believed that the soul of the deceased went to heaven, erected the coffins as high as possible in order to facilitate the soul's way up. Others presented a version that the coffins hang so high that they would not be plundered by enemies. Considering that many of the coffins remained untouched by the human hand, then this version is the most plausible.
The coffins are not distinguished by any special delights, they are made simply and even roughly - they were hewn out of hard wood. There is another mystery of the bo coffins - how wonderfully preserved they are. In those days, it was not yet known about the compounds that protect the tree from destruction.
The age of the hanging coffins ranges from 400 to 2.5 thousand years. Today, bo rock coffins are one of the attractions of the banks of the Yangtze River. In China, they closely monitor that the coffins are safe and sound. The restoration work has already been carried out three times - in 1974, 1985 and 2002. During one of the restorations, it turned out that over the past ten years, 20 coffins have fallen into the water. There were other finds - in the thickets of trees growing on one of the rocks, restorers discovered 16 previously unknown burials. Now there are only 290 “exhibits” in the rock cemeteries of Bo.
Crypt UNDER HEAVEN
Hanging cemeteries are also found in some other Asian countries, for example, in Indonesia and in the Philippines - in the province of Sagada. The Filipinos, before putting the deceased in the coffin, fumigated his body with special mixtures so that it was less subject to decomposition. The result was something like mummies. They were placed in coffins, which were hollow tree trunks inside, and placed in narrow caves or suspended from rocks.
It is interesting that the richer and more respected the deceased was, the more spacious “apartments” he was intended to have. The most eminent were buried in a separate spacious cave; poor people found their peace in cramped caves filled to the brim with coffins.
According to experts, the age of the oldest Sagadan burial is about two thousand years, and the youngest is 15! The custom of hanging coffins on the rocks existed here until the 90s of the XX century. Only recently have Filipinos begun to bury their dead in the ground. The locals yearn for the old days, when the souls of the dead were closer to heaven, and the ashes were reliably protected from the floods so frequent in Sagada.
It may seem strange, but the inhabitants of the island of Tana Taraja in Indonesia still bury their dead in weight. If a resident of this land is destined to die in another country, relatives try to do everything to transport the body back home. But if earlier each village had its own steep mountain for burials, now, due to the lack of free rocks and cliffs, local residents use common cemeteries.
What is Tana Taraja? Region on Sulawesi - the third largest island in Indonesia. It is famous for its unique funeral rites. Many centuries ago, local residents, sending their dead on their last journey, erected for them carved coffins-sarcophagi in the form of boats and animals, put there the things that the deceased used during his lifetime, and left the coffins at the foot of the rocks.
But over time, descendants indifferent to the past and traditions began to plunder the graves, and the ceremony became more complicated. The bodies of the deceased were placed high in the mountains - in caves or in specially hollowed out niches. In the end, they began to hang them on the rocks, much like the Chinese did.