Continent by continent, we move from Lucy, the three-million-year-old australopithecine from Ethiopia, to Zhoukoudian and Java Man, just half her age. The Chinchorro mummies from northern Chile predate those of ancient Egypt by thousands of years, and embalming remained the fate of the chiefs of Fujiwara in Japan until the twelfth century AD. There are sites of royal sacrifice at the cemetery at Ur, and priestly sacrifice in the Aegean, while the bodies of children were among those found perfectly preserved in the mountain tops of the Andes, left out to propitiate the gods. There is evidence of Early Neolithic massacre at the mass grave of Talheim in Germany, and of violent deaths among the bog bodies of northern Europe. In this century, the skeletons found in the pit at Ekaterinburg attest to the tragic fate of the Romanovs at the hands of the Bolsheviks in 1918. Exploring fifty of the world's best documented sites of bodies and graves, we enter the past through fifty different doors, and find a mine of fascinating information.