tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">Chap. V). In his important study of this remarkable people, Mr. Curtin says:[20] “The Buriats usually burn their dead; occasionally, however, there is what is called a ‘Russian burial’, that is, the body is placed in a coffin and the coffin is put in the ground. But generally if a man dies in the Autumn or the Winter his body is placed on a sled and drawn by the horse which he valued most to some secluded place in the forest. There a sort of house is built of fallen trees and boughs, the body is placed inside the house, and the building is then surrounded with two or three walls of logs so that no wolf or other animal can get into it.” The horse is afterwards slain. “If other persons die during the winter their bodies are carried to the same house. In this lonely silent place in the forest they rest through the days and nights until the first cuckoo calls, about the ninth of May. Then relatives and friends assemble, and without opening the house burn it to the ground. Persons who die afterwards and during the Summer months are carried to the forest, placed on a funeral pile, and burned immediately. The horse is killed just as in the first instance.”

When the dead are buried without being burned, the corpse is either carried on a wagon, or it is placed upright in front of a living man on horseback so as to ride to its last resting place. The saddle is broken up and laid at the bottom of the grave, while the body is turned to face the south-east. In this case they also sacrifice the horse which is believed to have “gone to his master, ready for use”.

Cremation spread throughout Europe, as we have said, in the Bronze Age. It was not practised by the early folk-waves of the Alpine race which, according to Mosso,[21] began to arrive after copper came into use. The two European Bronze Age burial customs, associated with urns of the “food vessel” and “drinking cup” types, have no connection with the practice of burning the dead. The Archæological Ages have not necessarily an ethnic significance. Ripley is of opinion, however, that the practice of cremation indicates a definite racial infusion, but unfortunately it has destroyed the very evidence, of which we are most in need, to solve the problem. It is impossible to say whether the cremated dead were “broad heads” or “long heads”.