I just went into my game to find about 40 of my villagers at the ancient ruins, each one with a skeleton & saying "burying the dead".There were a few more villagers in random spots saying the same thing. The weird thing is, is that I still have 112 villagers!
Has this every happened to anyone else?

during your absence from the game, i guess 40 of them died while building the ruins, making room for 40 couples to have 40 children who grew up.

during your absence they can die, get pregnant, be born, build things, do research, plant and harvest crops, become elders, and more. but for some reason, when we are not there to watch, they won't bury their dead.

the only thing i can think of is that they must have a weird fetish and like it when we watch them bury the dead. creepy *shiver*

Im sorry, I neglected to say above that I was only away for a few momnts to check on another tribe. No more than 5 minutes passed.
And like I said, I still had 112 villagers.

even if you only have ONE villager die, sometimes the whole village (the adults anyway) are trying to bury that one skeleton.

Can you help? I finally got my 5th elder...but no totem! How come? She worked hard for it, 69 and farming(!) and I was so looking forward to seeing what this totem would look like. Any way to bring the totem to the screen?

Sometimes the totems appear in spots that make them hard to see, like near the briar patch. I have even had one that was in the ocean. so look closely and you might find it.