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Show i History of Cremation The custom of cremation is very ancient, and was almost universal among the Aryans of early India, the Greeks, Romans, Slavs, Kelts and Teutons, states a writer in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The graves of North Europe throughout the Bronze age contain only jars of ashes. Christianity, and a belief in the resurection of the body, gradually gradual-ly suppressed the custom of cremation; crema-tion; but, beginning in Italy in 1870, the custom revived, and has been legal there since 1877. The practice spread throughout Europe and very rapidly throughout the United States. Germany's first crematorium was erected in 1878, England's in 1885. The first municipally owned crematorium in England was built by the city of Hull in 1900. Crematoriums Crema-toriums in the United States date from 1876, when Dr. F. J. LeMoyne established one at Washington, Pa. |