4. City Of The Dead (North Ossetia)



Christian churches, agricultural prosperity and a magnificent ancient necropolis, known as the City of the Dead attract tourists from all over Russia. The village of Dargavs, or as the locals call it, the City of the Dead, has a cemetery with almost 100 ancient stone crypts where people that lived in the valley buried their loved ones along with clothes and belongings.
 
The first mention about the City of the Dead dates back to the beginning of the 14th Century. The ancestors of Ossetians settled down on the five mountain ridges, but the land was so expensive they were forced to choose the windiest and most unserviceable place for their cemetery. In the times of the plague many people, with no one left to bury them, would come to the crypt and wait for their death.

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6. Small River Cemetery No. 5 (Xinjiang, China)



In the middle of a terrifying desert north of Tibet, Chinese archaeologists have excavated an extraordinary cemetery. Its inhabitants died almost 4,000 years ago, yet their bodies have been well preserved by the dry air.
 
The cemetery lies in what is now China's northwest province of Xinjiang, yet the people have European features, with brown hair and long noses. Their remains, though lying in one of the world's largest deserts, are buried in upside-down boats. And where tombstones might stand, declaring pious hope for some god's mercy in the afterlife, their cemetery sports instead a vigorous forest of phallic symbols, signaling an intense interest in the pleasures or utility of procreation.

8. Hanging Coffins (Philippines)



About six hours by bus from the Luzon island town of Banaue, north of Manila, the people of Sagada have devised a unique burial ritual involving the placement of dead relatives into caves after carefully preparing a hollowed out log. These coffins are carved by the elderly before they die; if they are too ill or weak their son or other close relative will do it for them. This ritual involves pushing the bodies into the tight spaces of the coffins, and often bones are cracked and broken as the process is completed.
 
After the deceased are put inside these coffins they are then brought to caves high in the cliffs where they join the coffins of other ancestors. The Segada people prefer to be buried in the cliffs than to be buried in the ground and have been doing this for more than 2,000 years.