Which is an older ritual: Burial, or Cremation?

Question

How long have humans been burying their dead?

Answer 1

Burial, but as someone else said excarnation of a body was also common and the picked-clean remains might have been put into a river or pool or just left on a wooden platform for the elements to take care of.

  Cremation (in Britain at any rate) did appear in the neolithic, but burial in long barrows (often of bones that were already defleshed)was contemporary. In the early bronze age, inhumation in burial mounds was the norm,but slightly later cremation came into fashion again-now the remains were placed in huge urns in the mounds.

Answer 2

Humans have buried their dead since the beginning of the human race.  Neanderthals (cavemen) began the ritual of burying when they could no longer stand the stench of the decomposing body, they buried it to contain the smell.  Cremation began years later.

Answer 3

Burial. It takes a lot of wood to cremate a corpse.

"In a typical ceremony of one body, it takes 600 to 880 pounds of wood burning for 6 hours to complete a cremation. This not only uses a massive amount of wood, but it also emits carbon dioxide into the air."

http://www.aboutmyplanet.com/religion/cr...

This is seasoned wood. A cubic foot of oak will weigh 45pounds. At 880 pounds that's just under 20 cubic feet of wood.

Many societies (India and Rome) had problems when the local forests were exhausted and the cost to import wood soared.

Answer 4

Burial is the oldest method.  Ever since Cain killed Abel and buried him.

Genesis 4:8-10  Now Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass when they were in the field, that Cain rose against Abel his brother and killed him.  9  Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is Abel your brother?"  And he said, "I do not know, Am I my brother's keeper?"  10  And He said, "What have you done?  The voice of your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground."

Answer 5

Burial is only simpler when you have metal tools.  Ancient men were adept and building fires so it wouldn't take much to put their dead in one.  Some apparently buried their dead, but I think there would be more fossils if that were a common practice.

Answer 6

Burial; it is simpler.

Answer 7

Tomb burial, in the sense that they would, rather than dig holes in the ground find a cave or a similar hole on the side of a cliff or hill and block it off with stones to keep the carnivores away.

Answer 8

I'd say Burial , why ? Because man knew that human corps rotten & stinks , long before he inveted fire.

for how long? since Adam's son killd his brother ( Abel).

Cremation, was a way of saving area of fertile soil. or may be , the poor Indians could'nt afford a place for Burial.

Answer 9

Since the beginning of time. Both rituals are old, but burial is way older.

Answer 10

There are more ways than those two: burial, fire, preserve, left out for animals, and thrown in the water.  As you see there are problems with burial unless you have loose soil. Fire requires wood which has to be cut down. As people who dislike death on the whole, we really prefer preserve unless the person is unliked. Left out and thrown in water is easy. The Vikings sorta combined by sailing the person out into the sea. The Egyptians noticed that desert sand would preserve bodies and they opted for that.  I think that burial was used for special people, fire was for people who believed that the soul was released in the smoke. I know that Jewish people had crypts carved in stone cliffs where they stored the bodies until they were bones and then collected the bones in a small box. Jesus was put in one of these crypts only because he died late in the week. If he had died on Monday, he would have been buried because he was poor.  If it is hard to do it is for special people, easy for everyone else.

Answer 11

Burial.  Even Neanderthal man has been proven to have buried his dead.  

"Oldest Discovered Burial Site -

T he earliest discovered burial sites are those of Neanderthal man, though according to researcher George Constable, they "were not credited with deliberate meaningful burial of their dead until more than a half-century after their discovery." The well-known anthropologist and archaeologist Louis Leaky said of the discoveries that their grave sites were intentional and thus indicates the Neanderthals displayed a keen self-awareness and a concern for the human spirit.

"Many burial sites have been discovered in Europe and the Near East. The placement of the remains reveals ritualistic elements, as the cadavers were found in a sleeping or fetal position.  - See source 1

  

"The Neanderthals were known to bury their dead (whose bodies they covered in flowers),... - see source 2