Cremation on a log pyre is never realistic in movies.
1. It actually takes enormous amounts of firewood.
2. The body is not actually reduced to a white powder by cremation. Indoor crematoria incorporate an industrial grinder for that purpose. The bones mostly just shrink, crack and warp a little.
@hypostase
This interesting Wikipedia article has a lot of info on this topic. It also has a title that makes me laugh, being an archaeologist.
There is no natural burial. *Everything* that people do to someone's body before and after death is cultural, a.k.a. unnatural.
@mrundkvist I’m never quite sure what to make of ”natural”, and as far as I can see, ever so many of our burial practices deliberately isolate us from nature. Otherwise you would have a harder time isolating historic human remains from animal remains.
But even within the cultural contexts there are choices about returning more or fewer nutrients to the cycle, and arguably the less comfortable the relationship one has with death, the less interested one is in contributing back to would could be a more ”natural” process.
@hypostase
I'd say that once you quit cremating, the main dividing line is between embalming fluid and no embalming fluid. It doesn't matter how deep you bury a body. It will return into the nutrient cycle eventually. But the embalming slows the process and pollutes the groundwater.
@mrundkvist Embalming fluid also tastes foul when you go to kiss your papa goodbye.
I wasn’t a fan before that, but that was the moment it felt personal, and clearly very polluting.
Of course, one of the arguments for cremation is space/land use, and it would be nice to see alternatives that help manage that, as well as return the nutrients efficiently.
Martin Rundkvist
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