the burning of corpses in special furnaces, a type of funeral.
The practice of burning corpses began in the late Neolithic and early Bronze ages. The burning of corpses on bonfires was widespread among the Greeks, Romans, and some other ancient peoples; the ancient Slavs also practiced it. Cremation has also been practiced in Japan since ancient times, as it has in India and other countries of Southeast Asia, primarily where Buddhism and Hinduism are preached. With the spread of Christianity, especially in the European countries, where it became the dominant religion, cremation was forbidden, since Christianity considered it a heathen ritual that contradicted the Christian doctrine of a “life after death” and “the resurrection from the dead.” Only in the second half of the 19th century did the burning of corpses begin again in European countries. Special furnaces were designed for cremation, in which burning proceeded in a jet of extremely hot air (up to 1000°C), the first crematories were built (Milan in 1876, London in 1885, Stockholm in 1887), and requirements for cremation were developed.
The advantage of cremation over the other methods of disposing of corpses lies in the complete and rapid (1–1.5 hours) destruction of the corpse’s organic substances under rigorously hygienic conditions. In the USSR cremation was sanctioned by a decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR of Dec. 7, 1918. Beginning in the 1920’s and 1930’s cremation came into wide use in many countries. After cremation, the ashes are placed in an urn and are stored in columbaria or are buried in the ground.