Eat Them
LEO RAMIREZ/AFP/GettyImagesYanomami natives stand around a fire at Irotatheri community, in Amazonas state, southern Venezuela, in 2012.
The subject of cannibalism is a vexed one. Throughout history, whenever one group of people decided another simply had to go, they would often accuse the other of practicing cannibalism. The Spaniards, for example, accused the Aztecs of cannibalism, with the Aztecs firing back and calling the Spaniards cannibals.
In some cultures, however, cannibalism offered itself as a way to take care of the dearly departed.
Although up-to-the-minute research isn’t widely available, reports made within at least the last few decades suggest that the Yanomami people of the Amazon may still practice endocannibalism: ritualistically consuming a member of one’s own community after that member has died.
Once a member of the Yanomami has died, the tribe wraps the body in leaves and places it in the forest so that insects can consume the flesh over a period of one month or more. Afterward, they grind the deceased’s bones into ash and mix it into something akin to a banana soup, which the tribe then consumes.
This practice is reportedly meant to bring the tribe together and preserve the deceased’s memory. Similar motivations informed funerary endocannibalism in other tribes around the Amazon and the world, namely the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. However, current indications suggest that endocannibalism is no longer practiced among the Fore.
Stick Them Someplace Unusual
Capsula Mundi
Many across the world choose to conceal the bodies of the deceased, but among the rural Caviteño people of the Philippines, it has long been customary to bury the dead in trees.
The choice of tree is a deeply personal one — not just any old tree will do. The only way to ensure that relatives have the right tree is to let them choose it themselves before death. When the inevitable occurs, relatives move the deceased into a hollow in the trunk and cover the gap with a wooden-slat fence.
Lest you think practices like these confine themselves to remote corners of the world, an eco-friendly Italian project named Capsula Mundi made headlines just this summer with their biodegradable human burial pod, which can be placed in the ground and act as food for a tree that will be planted just above.
