Saturday, September 25, 2010
It’s natural people expect their soul to ‘rest in peace’ at least in their death. But whether that truly happens or not is another question. If you happen to visit the Cliffs of Sagada in Phillipines you will be surprised to see to what extent people go to ensure that their souls rest in peace.
You will find hundreds of coffins hanging down the cliffs or jutting out of a rock and these have been around since 2,000 years when you scan the higher areas of the cliff. People carved their own coffins before death and the corpses were smoked to preserve it throughout the 5-day pre-burial feast.
Why did they do this? People probably believed that higher your body is laid the close they are to ‘heaven’ and mountains were held in high esteem those days. Another reason might be to protect the bodies that could have destroyed because of natural disasters like earthquakes and floods.
If you just have a look at the surrounding area, you will wonder how they managed to get bring the corpse through such an unpopulated area and manage to settle these coffins that high even when they grieved the loss of their loved one. They probably used ropes to lower the coffins down the cliff or used timber scaffolding to raise the coffin high up.
