Dearly beloved readers, we are gathered here today to discuss a serious subject: death. From the revelry of Irish wakes to the crocodile tears of ancient Egyptian paid mourners, our ancestors have exhibited many and varied ideas about how to behave at funerals.
Here are some excellent examples from our ancestors of how not to behave at funerals.
Mummify yourself
In old-timey Japan, some sects of Buddhism got weird. A few monks decided that while this “compassion” stuff was all very well, the best way to reach nirvana was to make yourself into a mummy.
To do this, you eat nothing but nuts and seeds for a thousand days, while exercising heavily to eliminate all fat from your body. When that’s done, you then go for another thousand days eating bark and pine root, to get rid of moisture. After all that is done, you drink some poisonous tea to make your body too toxic for maggots to eat. Finally, you get the other monks to seal you in a stone room with nothing but a bell, which you ring every day. When the other monks stopped hearing it ring, they’d unseal your body and check to see if the mummification had been a success. It usually wouldn’t be.
If, however, you managed to become a nice-looking mummy, the monks would put your body on display. They might even use it as the core for a nice statue of Buddha, while the Buddha himself presumably looked on and facepalmed.
Invite the dead person to a party
If you are an old-timey Australian Gadjalibi Aborigine, you want to make sure that the person is completely dead. To double-check, you throw a large party. Of course, your buddy won’t want to miss out on a party, so you dress him up all nice and fancy, put his makeup on, and tie him to a pole. Then you sing and dance, make fun of him, and invite him to dance with you. If he doesn’t, that means he is actually dead.
You then have several burial options, depending on which tribe you are from, and how important the deceased was. If he was super important, and you want to be really respectful, you put the body up on a platform and let it decompose up in the air where everyone can see (and smell) it.
When that’s done, you have some more options. You take the bones down, and maybe paint them red. You then figure out a place to put them: a cave is nice, or inside a hollow log. Or just carry them around with you. Everywhere. For a year.
Invite the dead person to a lot of parties
If you found that dead party guest a real hoot, why not go to Madagascar? There, the Merina people traditionally dig up their buried relatives every seven years, and throw a huge party. Everyone pulls out the corpse of their favourite grandparent, and dances with them for hours, tossing them around and cracking jokes. Is there a band? Of course there is a band.
When you are done, you wrap the bodies in new scarves and rebury them. If you are having trouble getting pregnant, now is the time to get a piece of old shroud and put it under the mattress where you sleep.
This sensible tradition is still alive and well, by the way.
Self-Mutilation
In old Hawaii, the dead were often burned, and the bones hidden, buried or preserved in a sort of mausoleum. Some people would also be buried at sea. That’s all very reasonable and not particularly strange. However, the funeral rites themselves would be hardcore.
When an important person died, the mourners would cry and sing sad songs. They might also cut off their hair, knock out their front teeth, burn their skin, or, if they were very upset indeed, cut off one of their ears. When Queen Kamamalu’s husband died, she got a commemorative tattoo… on her tongue.
However, the Hawaiians had nothing on the Dani of Papua New Guinea. When someone died, their female relatives would tie strings round their fingers. Not to remember them, but to cut off the circulation. When the finger went numb, a guy with a sharp stone knife would bang the elbow hard to make the whole arm numb (primitive painkillers are the best), and cut part of the finger off.
Then they would dry the finger, burn it, and store the ashes, because of course they did.
Let your dead family member go rotten, make your other relatives eat him
Let’s say you are an old-school Wari’ from the Amazon jungle, and your sister or other close relative dies. Of course, you are sad, and you cry a lot. That’s normal.
You then wait around for a couple days, and let the body go rotten. It’s going to get eaten, but you don’t want anyone to actually enjoy it! That would be highly improper. During this time, your relatives start to show up for the funeral. The close relatives are off the hook, but you pick out your in-laws and your asshole third cousin, and put them on barbecue duty.
When the body is cooked, you and the rest of the close family shred it and serve it up. However, you don’t have to eat it: again, that falls to the in-laws and Asshole Cousin Bob. They also can’t eat the meat with their hands; we don’t want to be unsanitary, after all.
When they are done eating the rotten meat, you have a choice. Either you can burn the bones along with the leftovers and the barbecue grill (come on, are you actually thinking of reusing it?), or you can grind them up, mix them with honey, and eat them. The grandkids might like these in particular; they have to eat the brains, and maybe you’ll need to bribe them with sweets.
Then you burn everything the dead person owned, including their house and their favourite walking paths in the forest. After a long mourning period, the whole family gets back together again, and this time has a proper, non-cannibalistic barbecue that everyone enjoys.
Some killjoys in the government made all this illegal for some reason.
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