Tree Burial

Kambira Village, Tana Toraja

This unusual form of burial was traditionally used in Toraja for babies who had died before teething. A shallow recess was scraped into the living tree, and the baby would be buried there, in order to return his little body to nature, from which it had come. This is no longer done today. The old tree pictured here is host to several such burials; it is, itself, now barely alive.