With every year that passes, there are more buried people in any given city. In fact, as the population grows, the amount of people needing a burial must rise by the same factor.
Complicating things even more is the fact that while population density increases, cemetary density doesn’t. Twenty families can live in the same high rise building, but there are no projects for coffins.
Graveyards are not infinitely extensible : they don’t make new land
We’ll assume, for the purposes of this thread, that once people are buried, they don’t rise up again. Not on their own, anyway.
So, how does this basic problem get solved ? I assume the recent popularity of cremation does lighten the load a bit, but AFAIK most people still prefer a cosy pine box. Do they dig up really old tombs that nobody visits anymore to make space for the new stiffs ? Do new graveyards open up every decade or so ?
It’s not an issue yet in most of the US, but in Europe, where there’s been more time for accumulation, it’s common both to bury folks on top of each other, and to occasionally dig up really old remains (old enough that there’s nobody left who cares) and dispose of them in a more compact manner.
In Europe, they do dig you up. Here in the US, we manage because we have a lot of land (although sometimes they do move cemeteries of sufficient age - I believe San Francisco moved all its cemeteries from the city limits). Cremation frees up some space, as do masoleums.
Some cemetaries in the U.S. have gotten into big trouble because of this issue. They “moved” graves to condense them so that they had more land for new burials. What got the ones I’ve heard about into trouble was that they tried to do this as cheaply as possible. Some less than reputable folks occasionally do things like move the gravestones but not the bodies, or dump all of the bodies haphazardly with little effort to make sure that the right one ends up in the right hole. Then, someone comes along and wants to move grampa to their new family cemetery so he can be with the rest of the family, and oops, grampa isn’t there.
Old bones are shoveled away. Cemeteries are moved, and unsponsored graves are quietly dispensed with. Look up Colma, the city just outside of San Francisco where old graves were moved to. Towns like Rome have cycled bones for millenia, first to catacombs, then ground to plant food.
One of the top tourist sights in Paris is the Catacombs . . . containing millions of bones from more central cemeteries that became too overcrowded (and smelly). It also provided a hiding place for the Resistance during WWII.
Other cities, like Vienna, simply dug up the graves and transplanted them into a new area, outside the central city.
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One of the top tourist sights in Paris is the Catacombs . . . containing millions of bones from more central cemeteries that became too overcrowded (and smelly). It also provided a hiding place for the Resistance during WWII.
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Yup, of course I knew about those, since I live in Paris. However, I figured they’re not, ah, filling those up anymore.
The main ossuary is definitely an amazing sight though - through much of the catacombs you can find small niches in the walls with full skeletons laid down (like in the third Indiana Jones), but in the most famous part of the tunnels, the monks tried something more efficient : sort by individual bone. So in one tunnel, there are piles and piles of tibias, in another hundred of skulls will watch you pass. It’s equal parts chilling and cool.
Gah. I should have checked that first, shouldn’t I ?
Very informative. As a side note, I always thought Gaiman had made up sky burials (there’s a Sandman tale featuring one).