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Photo by Lisa F. Young Dreamstime.com
Local legend has it that the Walmart located on Valley View Drive in Roanoke, Virginia, was built on top of a slave graveyard. Some cashiers relate that late one night in the sewing section a mysterious disturbance occurred. While the cashiers looked on, skeins of yarn in the blue bins along the back wall apparently flung themselves across the room for several minutes. On seeing the alarming sight the cashiers ran to find the manager. A subsequent search of the area by manager and cashiers revealed nothing that could have caused the flying yarn.
A good yarn, yes? Makes one think of the practicality of burial. As people all over the world live longer, good "plantable" land will become more scarce. Commercial opportunities may permanently obscure or destroy graveyards--even those that are apparently well maintained. Expensive caskets and lifelong maintenance of well tended plots seem to be futile expenses.
The best alternative is cremation and and/or preservation of DNA in repositories. The essence of all biochemical life, DNA, can be preserved for extremely long periods in a simple four inch vial of blood. According to cbsnews.com cremation is about half as expensive compared to burial since no land purchase is involved. The number of cremations worldwide has increased greatly in the last ten years, and newscientist.com estimates 1.8 million worldwide cremations each year.
With increased longevity, graveyards will be a thing of the past.
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