B.C.E.

70,000

Burial sites of Paleolithic people from this time period have been excavated by archaeologists.

7000

In Jericho dead people were buried under the floor without their skulls, which were restored as part of a burial ritual.

6000

People lived in settlements and cities, including Catal Huyulk in Anatolia in Turkey and Khirokitia in Cyprus, where cemeteries have been excavated.

In Egypt dead bodies were buried in the sand of the desert, where they would be preserved for thousands of years.

about 2600

Earliest known attempts to artificially create mummies in Egypt.

about 1000

Adena and Hopewell people began building burial mounds in what is now the Ohio Valley.

1000

Greeks began cremating their dead.

about 600

Romans adopted cremation. (Later, Romans in the Republic were buried, but the Emperor Augustus changed the system back to cremation because he feared the effects on health from the overcrowded common burial pits.)

352

An elaborate tomb was built for King Mausolus at Halicamassus in Caria. Called one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the word mausoleum is derived from his tomb.

332-30

Mummification became universal in Egypt.

mid~200s

Sarcophagi, or stone tombs, were first constructed.

early 200s

Coffins were first used in Sumer and Egypt.

44

To determine the cause of Julius Caesar's death, the Roman physician Antistius performed one of the earliest recorded forensic examinations. He concluded that only one of the twenty-three stab wounds on Caesar's body was fatal-the one to his chest.

C.E.

200

Early Christians began using catacombs on the outskirts of Rome.

400

Catacombs all but forgotten.

1247 , :

Hsi YUan Ch'i Lu (The Washing Away of Unjust Wrongs), a Chinese

handbook on autopsies, was published.

1318

Ossuary at Kutna Hora in the Czech Republic was built.

1578

Catacombs rediscovered in Rome.

1630

Empress Mumtaz Mahal died after requesting that her husband not remarry and that he build her the most magnificent tomb the world had seen. Some twenty years later the Taj Mahal was completed.

1631

Ancient Funerall Monuments published by John Weever, first work in English on epitaphs.

1698

The term undertaker was now in use.

1768

The earliest record of an undertaker in the Thirteen Colonies: Blanch White, who set up a New York City business that combined upholstering and undertaking. Her advertisement: “All kinds of Field  Equipage, Drums, Etc. Funerals furnishe'd with all things necessary and proper Attendance as in England."

1804

Pere Lachaise, the first "garden" or "rural" cemetery, opened in Paris.

1831

Mount Auburn Cemetery opened in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the "garden' or "rural" cemetery movement began in the United States.

1863

First large military cemetery was established in the United States.

1869

First serious experiments in modern cremation technique were carried out in Italy.

1878

The Undertaker, the first textbook devoted to embalming in the United States, was published.

1885

The term funeral director coined in the United States.

1917

In California, Hubert Eaton began to create Forest Lawn as a memorial park.

1968

The 22nd World Medical Assembly published standards for diagnosing death by brain criteria. .

1981

In the United States guidelines for determining death were proposed in the Uniform Determination of Death Act, which has become law in many states.

1993

Many graves in a cemetery in Hardin, Missouri, were washed away when the Missouri River flooded in the summer. It cost $500,000 to retrieve and identify corpses. However, 127 corpses were never recovered, and 470 remain unidentified.

1996

The mummified body of a five- thousand-year-old Inca girl was discovered entombed in the ice on Mount Ampato, near Arequipa, Peru.

1997

A rocket with the cremated remains of twenty-four people was launched into outer space.