Le Journal du CNRS explains, in French, terramation: laying a body on the ground among plant debris so it decomposes naturally. Entomologist Damien Charabidze's team tested it with sheep carcasses. After a year, those covered in wood chips had turned into odourless humus, while bare ones had lost only a quarter of their mass and turned into a waxy, soap-like substance that stops decay.

The same waxy change happens to human bodies in crowded French cemeteries, forcing gravediggers to rebury them. Terramation is allowed in about a dozen US states and one German state but is barely studied. For freethinkers it raises a practical question: how secular, ecological funeral choices can be built on evidence, not tradition.

Source: Maxime Lerolle, Le Journal du CNRS (French) (2026-10-29)

Summarised by the FTI newsdesk.