Grave

Just meters from a busy train station in the heart of Paris, scientists have uncovered 50 graves in an ancient necropolis which offer a rare glimpse of life in the French capital's precursor Lutetia nearly 2000 years ago.

People have started selling cemetery plots on the black market for prices as high as 2 million Turkish Liras ($264,000), as finding graves in Istanbul, a metropolis where 70,000 people die every year on average, has become increasingly difficult.

Not-for-profit educational institution College Year in Athens and the International Center for Hellenic and Mediterranean Studies (DIKEMES) have invited University of Cincinnati researchers Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker, co-directors of excavations at the Palace of Nestor, to discuss the exciting discovery at Pylos in the southwestern Peloponnese of the so-called grave of the "Griffin Warrior"

Cemeteries in Greece are overcrowded and have nowhere to expand . For this reason bodies are often kept underground for three years before being exhumed so that bones can be stored at an ossuary.

Families have the option of leasing for another three years, but the costs are prohibitive. Most people choose to exhume the graves.

A horrific account of someone buried …alive or a viral Internet hoax from Honduras, of all places?
You decide.
Regardless, wouldn’t an autopsy by a couple of internationally known coroners flown to the central American country solve this question?

The BBC feature on Greece, titled “Graveyard Overcrowding Stokes Cremation Debate in Greece”, focuses on problems concerning burials at cemeteries in Athens and Thessaloniki that are overcrowded. The cost of a permanent grave plot is at 100,000 euros, meaning that cremation – legalized in 2006 – would be a more viable option.

Thousands of people gathered to mourn as the remains of 284 people recently found in Tomasica at the biggest mass grave discovered since the 1992-95 war were buried.