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I 've always wondered how long does it take for a dead person to just be bones? I realize the correct answer is: it depends.
Anyone have any weird questions they have always wondered about? Share yours.
Answer is, it depends. Are we talking about someone who has been embalmed, placed in a coffin and buried, someone who died in the woods, someone who died crossing the desert, or what?
Days, weeks, months, years, centuries… like you said, it depends. Otzi the Iceman is about 5,000-ish years old and he’s not down to bones yet.
Certain types of critters (dermestid beetles, for example) can clean the body down to bones in a matter of days. In more typical conditions, a body left to nature will decompose to bones in a matter of weeks.
A typical corpse placed in a coffin will take a decade or two, maybe longer, depending on the embalming process used and the local conditions. Bodies buried in places like the Alaskan Tundra will last significantly longer due to the cold conditions slowing decomposition.
If someone dies in a peat bog or in a really dry desert, sometimes the body can be naturally mummified, and they’ll basically never get down to just bones, at least not for thousands and thousands of years.
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Happy reading…
I’ faith, if he be not rotten before he die–as we
have many pocky corpses now-a-days, that will scarce hold the laying in–he will last you some eight year or nine year: a tanner will last you nine year.
With the peat-bog mummies, the acid of the bog leaches away the bones fairly quickly, but it preserves the soft tissues for many centuries.