In a temperate climate, it usually requires three weeks to several years for a body to completely decompose into a skeleton, depending on factors such as temperature, humidity, presence of insects, and submergence in a substrate such as water.
Generally speaking, a body takes 10 or 15 years to decompose to a skeleton. Some of the old Victorian graves hold families of up to eight people. As those coffins decompose, the remains will gradually sink to the bottom of the grave and merge.
Although an exposed human body in optimum conditions can be reduced to bone in 10 days, a body that is buried 1.2 m under the ground retains most of its tissue for a year.
24-72 hours after death — the internal organs decompose. 3-5 days after death — the body starts to bloat and blood-containing foam leaks from the mouth and nose. 8-10 days after death — the body turns from green to red as the blood decomposes and the organs in the abdomen accumulate gas.
However, on average, a body buried within a typical coffin usually starts to break down within a year, but takes up to a decade to fully decompose, leaving only the skeleton, Daniel Wescott, director of the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University, told Live Science.
So what happens to the body in casket after 2 months? After bloating, it enters the 3rd phase, or 'Active Decay,' where organs liquefy. The body will lose mass, slowly revealing the skeleton. If you open the casket of a non-embalmed body, it will be more decomposed than an embalmed body in a few months or years.
By 50 years in, your tissues will have liquefied and disappeared, leaving behind mummified skin and tendons. Eventually these too will disintegrate, and after 80 years in that coffin, your bones will crack as the soft collagen inside them deteriorates, leaving nothing but the brittle mineral frame behind.
A smaller, skinnier person will decompose much quicker than a larger, heavier one. If the body had endured extreme trauma before death, it could also decompose much quicker. While it's helpful to understand the process of decomposition, it's also important to seek help if a dead body is left in a space too long.
And if the body is floating in water less than 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius) for about three weeks, the tissues turn into a soapy fatty acid known as "grave wax" that halts bacterial growth. The skin, however, will still blister and turn greenish black.
Ebn e Arabi says: coccyx is that stable part of human body which remains with human self forever.
As the blood pools, patches appear on the skin within 30 minutes of death. About two to four hours postmortem, these patches join up, creating large dark purplish areas towards the bottom of the body and lightening the skin elsewhere. This may be less apparent on darker skin. This process is called livor mortis.
Caskets made from either metal or wood will take an average of 50 or more years to decompose underground. The casket's duration depends on the type of wood used to build it and the composition of chemicals found on the grave.
For the most part, however, if a non-embalmed body was viewed one year after burial, it would already be significantly decomposed, the soft tissues gone, and only the bones and some other body parts remaining.
After 1 month, the liquefaction process commences. During this stage the body loses the most mass. The muscles, organs and skin are liquefied, with the cadaver's bones, cartilage and hair remaining at the end of this process.
Not all cultures hold funerary memorials forty days after death. Some pagan traditions believe that the soul of a recently deceased person continues to wander the earth for forty days; other religious traditions believe the soul will rest in the Lord's hands after death.
Once the soft tissues have fully decomposed, all that remains is the skeleton. The skeleton and teeth are much more robust. Although they undergo a number of subtle changes after death, they can remain intact for many years.
They concluded that obese bodies lose body mass more rapidly due to liquefaction of body fats, than compared to skinny individuals [10]. They also found that bodies weighing more than 110 kg decompose much more rapidly than bodies weighing approximately 65 kg.
Advanced Decay
From around 25 to 50 days after death, the maggots and other insects complete the breaking down of soft tissues, skin and hair, as well as muscles and connective tissue inside the body. Body cohesion breaks down, exposing bones to the environment and possibly allowing them to roll away and scatter.
The Lady of Dai, also known as Xin Zhui, died almost 2,000 years. But her tomb was unearthed, pathologists were taken back by the fact her internal organs were still intact. Her tomb, containing her well-preserved remains and 1,400 artifacts, was discovered in 1968 at Mawangdui, Changsha, Hunan, China.
It is a common practice to cover the legs as there is swelling in the feet and shoes don't fit. As part of funeral care, the body is dressed and preserved, with the prime focus on the face. Post embalming, bodies are often placed without shoes; hence covering the legs is the way to offer a dignified funeral.
On the edge of Wilmslow in Cheshire, England, one man in the 1980s kept on finding pieces of bodies that looked fresh but were actually well over a thousand years old. Andy Mould was working on an operation that collected peat from the bog of Lindow Moss.
A body may be different in death to life because:
a mortician or funeral director has changed a body's appearance through clothing, or hair arrangement, or cosmetics. Such “dressing” of the body may be very different to how the person in life would have done it. the body smells different.
Coffins get tapered to conform to the shape of a human form. A coffin also has a removable lid while caskets have lids with hinges. Coffins are usually made out of wood and lined with cloth interiors. Unlike caskets, they do not have rails that make transportation easier.
A dream of a dead body in a coffin might show moving on from a relationship that was very important and dear to you. Maybe your close friend or spouse has died recently, and you're having a difficult time getting through it. This dream informs you that all is not lost, and you can still move on.