No. Typically you only rent a plot in a graveyard for 10-30 years, and unless you or your heir(s) extend the lease, the graves will be dug up and used again. By that time most of the old casket and body have disintegrated to a pile of crumbling bones. Those will either be taken out and fully incinerated, or if the decay is progressed to a point where not much is left to begin with, a thin layer of soil covers the remnants and the new casket will simply be put on top.
It’s also getting more and more “fashionable” to get incinerated right away, so that’s really a non-issue.
Does this apply to military cemeteries as well?
No idea, tbh. I know next to nothing about military stuff.
Im going to lean to no. The world is incredibly empty, and we are squishy and biodegradable.
Graveyards (well, cemeteries) aren’t permanent - permanent compared to human lifetime, but not permanent.
We’re going to the way of Toraja people, do some voodoo magic to make the corpse walk to their grave and then after they decompose just store the skull in a cave nearby.
I highly recommend checking out the catacombs in Paris. It gives you a very clear understanding about what humans do to graveyards when they want the space. There are literally millions of skeletons just thrown down there. Some are stacked in interesting ways, like walls of femurs and piles of skulls. But the vast, vast majority are just heaped into big ass piles of random bones.
Personally, visiting them sold me on the idea of cremation. Otherwise, it’s only a matter of time before your graveyard is getting dug up and they’re throwing your remains in a pile with some randos.
Yeah fuck randos. They smell.
Being part of a big pile of bones that can freak out tourists is actually convincing me that being buried is better than being cremated.
Yes, one day the whole world is going to be a big graveyard.
I’ve got a bunch of bones out in the yard right now
I’m doing my part!
Kinda already is a big graveyard
There was a panic here in Vancouver (known for it’s out of control real estate market) this year and burial plots were going for like $90,000 IIRC.
Don’t be too poor to die.
Well now I’m gonna die with $89,000 just to see what’d happen
You’re just gonna have to rent.
No, because most people are cremated these days, and over time bones deteriorate. Plus, we can always make new graveyards.
But the big thing is that old graveyards are often “relocated” — the marked graves are dug up and the contents stacked/put closer together with any gravestones or markers stuck closer together above ground.
most people are cremated these days
Only in very few countries.
Eventually even bones decay, unless fossilized, and fossilized bones are just, well, fancy rocks. So it’s not like human remains stick around forever.
It’s not even THAT long. 30-100 years, depending on the environment
We’ll just go 12 feet under
As many other have stated, grave spaces are often rented or leased. Then the remains are buried in an ossuary or given back to the family.
Quite a few western graveyards are semi-permanant. Only being dug up and moved if the space is to be reused for something else.
My city, for example, moved its early graveyard as the town expanded and now the area is a parking lot.
There is a cool fact as well with churches and graveyards that haven’t moved. Generally the church building itself loses height because of the the bodies buried raises the ground levels by a few feet. This has been observed in the UK and America.
