History of Cremation
Scholars today generally agree that cremation probably began in any real sense during the early Stone Age - around 3000 B.C. - and most likely in Europe and the Near East.
During the late Stone Age
cremation began to spread across Northern Europe as evidenced by finds of
decorative urns in Western Russia among the Slavic peoples. 
With the
advent of the Bronze Age, 2500 - 1500 BC, cremation moved into the British
Isles and into what is now Spain & Portugal. Cemeteries for cremation
developed in Hungary and northern Italy, spreading to Northern Europe and
Ireland.
In the Mycenaean Age - circa 1000
B.C. - cremation became an integral part of the elaborate Grecian burial
custom. In fact, it became the dominant mode of disposition by the time
of Homer in 800 B.C. and was actually encouraged for reasons of health and
expedient burial of slain warriors in this battle ravaged country.
Following this Grecian trend, the early Romans probably embraced cremation
some time around 600 B.C. and it apparently became so prevalent that an
official decree had to be issued in the mid 5th century against the cremation
of bodies within the city.
By the time of the Roman Empire - 27 B.C. to 395 A.D. - it was widely
practiced, and cremated remains were generally stored in elaborate urns, often
within columbarium-like buildings. Prevalent though the practice was among
Romans, cremation was rare with the early Christians who considered it pagan
and in the Jewish culture where traditional sepulcher entombment was
preferred.
By 400 A.D., as a result of
Constantine's Christianization of the Empire, earth burial had completely
replaced cremation except for rare instances of plague or war and for the next
1,500 years remained the accepted mode of disposition throughout Europe.
Modern cremation as we know it today, actually began only a little over a
century ago, after years of experimentation into the development of a
dependable chamber. When Professor Brunetti of Italy finally perfected
his model and displayed it at the 1873 Vienna Exposition , the cremation
movement started simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic. In the
British Isles, the movement was fostered by Queen Victoria's surgeon, Sir
Henry Thompson. Concerned with hazardous health conditions, Sir Henry
and his colleagues founded the Cremation Society of England in 1874. The
first crematories in Europe were built in 1878 in Woking, England and Gotha,
Germany.
Meanwhile in North America, Dr. Julius LeMoyne built the first crematory in Washington, Pennsylvania in 1876. In 1884 the second crematory opened in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and as was true of many of the early crematories, was owned and operated by a cremation society. Other forces behind early crematory openings were Protestant clergy who desired to reform burial practices and the medical profession concerned with health conditions around early cemeteries.
Crematories soon sprang up in Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Detroit and Los Angeles. By 1900, there was already 20 crematories in operation and by the time that Dr. Hugo Erichsen founded the Cremation Association of America in 1913, there were 52 crematories in North America and over 10,000 cremations took place in that year.
In 1975, the name was changed to the Cremation Association of North America to be more indicative of the membership composition of the United States and Canada. At that time there were over 425 crematories and nearly 150,000 cremations. In 1999 there were 1,468 crematories and 595,617 cremations, or over 25% of all deaths in the US that year.
Source: Cremation Association of North America
