Sky burial is a funeral practice in which a human corpse
is placed on a mountaintop to decompose while exposed to
the elements or to be eaten by scavenging animals, esp.
carrion birds. It's a specific type of the general practice
of excarnation. It's practiced in the Chinese provinces &
autonomous regions of Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan & Inner
Mongolia, as well as in Mongolia, Bhutan & parts of India
such as Sikkim & Zanskar. The locations of preparation & sky
burial are understood in the Vajrayana Buddhist traditions
as charnel grounds. Comparable practices are part of
Zoroastrian burial practices where deceased are exposed to
the elements & birds of prey on stone structures called
Dakhma. Few such places remain operational today due to
religious marginalisation, urbanisation & the decimation
of vulture populations.

The majority of Tibetan people & many Mongols adhere to
Vajrayana Buddhism, which teaches the transmigration of
spirits. There's no need to preserve the body, as it is now
an empty vessel. Birds may eat it or nature may cause it
to decompose. The function of the sky burial is simply to
dispose of the remains in as generous a way as possible.
In much of Tibet & Qinghai, the ground is too hard & rocky
to dig a grave, & due to the scarcity of fuel & timber, sky
burials were typically more practical than the traditional
Buddhist practice of cremation. In the past, cremation was
limited to high lamas & some other dignitaries, but modern
technology & difficulties with sky burial have led to an
increased use of cremation by commoners.

Other nations which performed air burial were the Caucasus
nations of Georgians, Abkhazians & Adyghe people, in which
they put the corpse in a hollow tree trunk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial

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