Death is inevitable. What humans have done about it, however, has changed dramatically over the centuries. In this episode of X-UMED, Sam takes Lisa through the strange, fascinating, and sometimes downright disturbing history of death and the people who made a profession out of dealing with it. We dig into the days when families kept their dead in the parlor, the origins of wakes and funeral traditions, ancient Egyptian mummification, Greek professional mourners, Viking burials, overcrowded medieval graveyards, the rise of gravediggers and undertakers, Victorian mourning customs, postmortem photography, and how the Civil War helped transform embalming into a modern profession. Then things get even stranger as we look at funeral and burial traditions from around the world—from sky burials and hanging coffins to turning the bones, green burials, water cremation, human composting, and other ways humans have answered one universal question: What do we do with the body when someone dies? It’s dark history, death rituals, questionable funeral practices, and—as usual—a lot more laughing than the subject probably calls for. Question everything. Remember the forgotten. And welcome to X-UMED. SOURCES SOURCES & FURTHER READING • Smithsonian Institution — Funeral and mourning traditions, American history, and material culture • Library of Congress — Civil War death, mourning, embalming, and the funeral journey of Abraham Lincoln • National Museum of Civil War Medicine — Embalming and the treatment and transportation of the dead during the American Civil War • National Park Service — Civil War burial practices, battlefield deaths, cemeteries, and Abraham Lincoln history • The Metropolitan Museum of Art — Ancient Egyptian mummification, funerary practices, and beliefs surrounding the afterlife • British Museum — Ancient Egyptian death and burial practices, mummification, and funerary objects • World History Encyclopedia — Ancient Greek and Roman funeral and burial customs • Ibn Fadlan, Risala — Tenth-century eyewitness account describing the funeral practices of the Rus encountered along the Volga • Encyclopaedia Britannica — The Black Death, medieval European history, burial customs, and historical funeral practices • Wellcome Collection — History of medicine, death, mourning, anatomy, and Victorian-era practices • Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Collection — Nineteenth-century photography and historical mourning imagery • Smithsonian Magazine — Victorian mourning customs, postmortem photography, cemeteries, and the changing American funeral industry • National Funeral Directors Association — History and development of funeral service and modern disposition practices • Green Burial Council — Natural and green burial practices • Cremation Association of North America — Cremation and alkaline hydrolysis • National Conference of State Legislatures — State laws concerning human composting and alternative forms of disposition
