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This article has two related aims: first to bring to attention an important, but neglected, element of Mongolian and Buryat social relations, those arising around birth and birthplaces. The ritual burial of the placenta creates a birth site attributed with vital force, and this is held to ‘revivify’ throughout their lives not only the child born but also the biological descendants of that child. It is argued that a theoretical perspective focussed on the conceptualisation of ‘being born’ can elucidate aspects of ongoing relatedness through women that jar with patriarchal norms and are often kept secret. The second aim of the article is to attempt to explain why rituals of veneration of ancestral placenta burial sites have not only become increasingly important in personal lives in the contemporary period but also generate new social groupings. Two ethnographic cases from Buryatia are used to show how seeking this place-centred injection of vitality is related to the tragic disruption and dislocation of Buryat society during the 20th century. The placenta burial site (even that of an ancestor) imagined as distant place-of-origin, and paradisical childhood has become a source of strength and emotional release for people trying to address heart-breaking pasts and face forwards to the future.