8 Bizarre Funeral Rituals From Around the World

Death beads

• Turn the dead’s ashes into colorful beads
• Where: South Korea

Colorful beads may be a fashion item in some countries, but in South Korea, these beads are made from the remains of the dead. To be more specific, they turn the ashes of their relatives into blue-green, pink or black beads. Of course, your relatives can’t be worn as a bracelet, but they are kept in decorative glass containers.

 

Endocannibalism

• Eating the dead
• Where: the Melanesians of Papua New Guinea and the Wari people of Brazil

For the Melanesians of Papua New Guinea and the Wari people of Brazil, endocannibalism was an act of compassion, veneration, and mourning for the dead and their families, so they practiced this method by eating the roasted remains of the dead.

According to experts, endocannibalism was practiced as a sign of veneration of the dead and people thought that they would extract the deceased’s wisdom by doing so. In this sense, the Fore peoples of Papua New Guinea were allowed to eat certain body parts of the deceased.

The Wari people of Brazil practiced endocannibalism because they believed that in this way they can transform the corpses of their relatives into spirits.