Graves are rarely six feet deep, and the rule began with plague
Six feet under is a phrase, not a standard. Graves are seldom dug that deep unless another coffin will go on top. The earliest known six-foot order came from London's Lord Mayor during the Great Plague of 1665, and even then most victims ended up in mass pits instead.
Modern rules vary. The United States has no national burial depth; California asks for only 19 inches of soil over a coffin, while many places require 30 to 36. In central Appalachia graves were once dug six feet down to keep burrowing animals away, a precaution that metal caskets and concrete vaults made redundant. British law generally wants three feet of soil above the coffin, or two where the ground allows. And contrary to popular belief, the World Health Organization says only bodies carrying an infectious disease strictly need burying.
The practice is ancient. Neanderthals are the first human species known to have buried their dead deliberately, in shallow graves with stone tools and animal bones at sites such as Shanidar in Iraq and Krapina in Croatia, although some scholars suspect purely practical motives. Some researchers date the earliest modern human burials to about 100,000 years ago, citing ochre-stained skeletons in Israel, one cradling a wild boar's jaw. In Kenya, a three-year-old child laid in a pit in a curled position around 78,000 years ago shows similar signs of care. Because grave goods imply concern beyond daily survival, burial may be among the oldest detectable traces of religion.
Customs diverge widely. Medieval Christians believed a botched funeral could endanger the soul, so bodies were shrouded, kept overnight before the high altar and buried with feet to the east, the direction from which Christ was expected to return. Across Western and Central Europe between the fifth and eighth centuries, reopening recent graves and handling their contents was surprisingly routine. Tibetan sky burial and Zoroastrian tradition, by contrast, avoid putting remains in the earth, which Zoroastrians consider sacred.
Alternatives are spreading. Cremation is the norm in India and required in Japan's big cities. Natural or green burial, popularised in Britain in the early 1990s by Ken West, a crematorium manager in Carlisle, uses wicker or biodegradable coffins and sometimes trees in place of headstones.
Source: Burial
