• Question: Why do we have to be buried?

    Asked by emmagrace to Dalya, Derek, Sarah, Tim, Tom on 21 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Derek McKay-Bukowski

      Derek McKay-Bukowski answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Sarah has answered it.

      I think also that people do not wish to see their friends’ bodies decay away. Anything dead would look pretty grim (let alone the smell), and if it was someone you knew, it would be very distressing to see that person rot away.

      But we don’t HAVE to be buried. Some people (like me) would prefer to have their remains burned. Some cultures store their bodies above ground (this is called a mausoleum). Other cultures wrap their bodies in bandages… think of the Egyptian Pharaohs in the pyramids.

    • Photo: Tim Millar

      Tim Millar answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      We don’t have to be but it was a way of commemorating the dead and removing possible infections.

    • Photo: Tom Crick

      Tom Crick answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      We don’t — other religions have different methods of honouring their dead e.g. towers of silence used by Zoroastrians.

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