Because, after 100 years, the last of your bones will have collapsed into dust. In fact, only the teeth will be left, given that they are the most durable part of your body.
Most of your tissues will probably liquify. But thin skin, like on your eyelids, could dry out and mummify, while fatty areas of your body can turn into a soap-like substance called grave wax. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
But by 50 years, the tissues will have liquefied and disappeared, leaving behind mummified skin and tendons.
After a few weeks, nails and teeth will fall out. 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.
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.
If the coffin is sealed in a very wet, heavy clay ground, the body tends to last longer because the air is not getting to the deceased. If the ground is light, dry soil, decomposition is quicker. Generally speaking, a body takes 10 or 15 years to decompose to a skeleton.
Unless a casket is made of metal and sealed with a material that won't degrade, bugs will eventually get inside.
In a closed casket funeral, the casket remains closed during the viewing and the funeral service. Family members and guests are not able to see the body, and some prefer this option for a variety of reasons.
Over time, coffins underground will decompose and eventually collapse. Covering the face before closing the casket adds an extra layer of protection and dignity for the deceased's face and can act as a symbolic final goodbye.
What's really returned to you is the person's skeleton. Once you burn off all the water, soft tissue, organs, skin, hair, cremation container/casket, etc., what you're left with is bone. When complete, the bones are allowed to cool to a temperature that they can be handled and are placed into a processing machine.
The six feet under rule for burial may have come from a plague in London in 1665. The Lord Mayor of London ordered all the “graves shall be at least six-foot deep.” The order never said why six feet. Maybe deep enough to keep animals from digging up corpses.
By ten-years, given enough moisture, the wet, low-oxygen environment sets off a chemical reaction that will turn the fat in the thighs and bottom to a soap-like substance called grave wax. However, in drier conditions, the body could also be mummified – that's mummification without wrappings, or chemicals.
It's an understandable worry, but cemeteries in London can only reuse graves that are at least 75 years old. In the past, many graves were sold in perpetuity, but the Greater London Councils Act 1974 means this right can be reversed.
Muscle cells live on for several hours. Bone and skin cells can stay alive for several days. It takes around 12 hours for a human body to be cool to the touch and 24 hours to cool to the core. Rigor mortis commences after three hours and lasts until 36 hours after death.
Legally, graves cannot be sold for more than 100 years. However, as the remaining lease period reduces, owners have the opportunity to buy subsequent lease periods of 50 or 75 years as long as the total ownership at any time does not exceed 100 years.
While some people find comfort in seeing their loved ones as they remember them, it may also be uncomfortable to others. If they have an open casket viewing, make sure you follow proper funeral etiquette: DON'T touch the body under any circumstances. Sometimes the casket has a glass to prevent this from happening.
One of the most common questions people have about embalming is whether or not organs are removed. The answer is no; all of the organs remain in the body during the embalming process. Instead, the Embalmer makes small incisions in the abdomen and inserts tubes into the body cavity.
A closed casket provides more privacy. There may even be religious reasons for a closed casket service. A closed casket service may have been the preference of the deceased, so people would tend to remember them “as they were”. Afamily may just feel uneasy or uncomfortable having an open casket service.
Coffin flies have that name because they are particularly talented at getting into sealed places holding decaying matter, including coffins. Given the opportunity, they will indeed lay their eggs on corpses, thus providing food for their offspring as they develop into maggots and ultimately adult flies.
That seems to come down to what your casket is made of. Rats are prodigious chewers and will bite through anything they can. A wooden casket likely isn't going to keep rats out, at least not over the long term.
The first type of insect to arrive at a dead body is usually a blowfly (Calliphoridae), attracted by body fluids and gases. It lays its eggs within two days after death, so its stage of development - egg, larval stages, prepupal or pupal stage, adulthood - will suggest how long the corpse has been lying undetected.
As material in coffins, “lead helps keep out moisture and preserve the body for longer and prevent smells and toxins from a dead body escaping,” said Julie Anne Taddeo, a research professor of history at the University of Maryland.
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.
Cold water also encourages the formation of adipocere. This is a waxy, soapy substance formed from the fat in the body that partially protects the body against decomposition. Bodies have been retrieved almost completely intact from waters below 7°C after several weeks, and as recognisable skeletons after five years.