7 Bizarrely Interesting Cultural Practices Still Carried Out Today

Published May 14, 2014
Updated March 30, 2018

Bizarre Cultural Practices: Living With The Dead

Bizarre Cultural Practices Living With Dead

Image Source: Above Top Secret

The Toraja people of Indonesia practice a truly singular ritual of exhuming the corpses of their fellow villagers. But it doesn’t end there: The corpse is draped in special garments and paraded around the village. Even the bodies of children and bodies that are decades old are exhumed.

The ritual is mainly carried out in order to clean the corpses, their garments, and coffins, and to ceremonially return the corpses to their home village. That is, if someone died outside the village, the corpse will be taken to the spot of death, then walked back to the village, as an act of returning home.

Bizarre Cultural Practices Corpses

Image Source: New York Daily News

Dead In Clothes

Image Source: New York Daily News

 

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author
All That's Interesting
author
A New York-based publisher established in 2010, All That's Interesting brings together subject-level experts in history, true crime, and science to share stories that illuminate our world.
editor
John Kuroski
editor
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.