Short answers, pulled from the story.
Funeral rites pre-date modern Homo sapiens and date to at least 300,000 years ago. Neanderthal skeletons found with a characteristic layer of flower pollen at sites such as the Shanidar Cave in Iraq and Pontnewydd Cave in Wales have been interpreted as early evidence of deliberate burial, though the evidence is not unequivocal because burrowing rodents could have introduced the flowers.
Funeral customs tend to be characterized by five anchors: significant symbols, gathered community, ritual action, cultural heritage, and the transition of the dead body. Research documents funeral customs as a highly predictable and stable force in communities.
Buddhists in Tibet perform sky burials in which the body is exposed on a mountain top to be eaten by vultures, after being dissected with a blade by body breakers called rogyapas. Crying and wailing is discouraged, because Tibetan Buddhists believe a lighthearted atmosphere during the funeral helps the soul of the dead reach a better afterlife.
Antyesti, literally last rites or last sacrifice, refers to the rite-of-passage rituals of a Hindu funeral. A dead adult Hindu is cremated while a dead child is typically buried, and the rite returns the body to five elements: air, water, fire, earth, and space, with the immortal soul released at the ritual.
The jazz funeral originated in New Orleans, Louisiana, alongside the emergence of jazz music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This traditionally African-American ceremony features a parading funeral procession with a brass band that plays somber hymns before shifting to upbeat jazz after the body is buried.
In most East Asian, South Asian, and many Southeast Asian cultures, white symbolizes death, and white or off-white robes are traditionally worn by relatives of the deceased. In Chinese culture red is strictly forbidden as a symbol of happiness, though white with some red can be acceptable when the deceased reached an advanced age such as 85.
The Cremation Act 1902 followed a case involving William Price, a Welsh Neo-Druidic priest whose first child died in 1884 and whom he chose to cremate. After his arrest, Price successfully argued in court that the law did not state cremation was legal but also did not state it was illegal, setting a precedent that, with the Cremation Society of Great Britain, led to the Act.