©2001 Jon Youngblood

Unity Through Understanding

A Guidebook for the Recently Alive

Part One: Faith

Chapter One: Elementary My Dear

1.3 Early Burials

The act of burial is perhaps the oldest expression of man's changing awareness of himself as a spiritual being. The idea of survival after death is universal to religion. In fact, the idea that death was the total and final cessation of life was not even fully considered as a possibility until the 6th century BC in India by the Buddhists. 

The ancient Egyptians were well known for their elaborate burials. The image of the mummy wrapped in layers of cloth are an icon of ancient Egyptian culture.  The pyramids, presumably intended to shelter these highly preserved dead were, by their very design, somehow intended to assist the spirit onwards towards a heavenly existence.  Pyramids are being reveled by archeologists to be equally cross-cultural in an age where communication between the continents was not supposed to be happening according to earlier archeological theories.  Cocaine (derived from the coca plant and strictly indigenous to South America) detected in the remains of ancient Egyptian mummies - as well as the similarity in pyramid building - suggest that some form of interaction on a global scale was actually taking place.  

It has recently come to light that the Egyptians were not the first to invent the process of mummification.  Predating them by about two centuries, the South American tribe known as the Chinchoros were preparing the bodies of their dead for an afterlife.  By the great care that was taken to preserve the body, it would appear to suggest that these ancient cultures believed that the physical body itself would be needed at some future time when the deceased would live again.  This is very different from belief in an eternal and non-corporeal spirit that defines our religious views today.  So that even though earlier cultures could conceive of spirit, free and unfettered of the flesh in the form of deity and the various underlings of deity, man himself was still viewed as being in some way dependant on the flesh that once sustained his existence.  In this way Man was maintained as an inferior spirit still inextricably linked to this world.

Even before the Egyptian and South American embalmers, Paleolithic man was revealing his belief in survival of one's spirit beyond death by not only burying their dead, but also providing them with survival items, such as clothing, food, or tools, to assist them in their "life after".

It is suggested that the first human race to engage in burial were a now extinct line of humanoids, the Neanderthals.

Neanderthals were an early kind of human who lived in Europe and possibly west Asia from 120,000 years ago until 35,000 years ago. Neanderthals are often known by their burly stature and heavy brows. Unfortunately, they are also often portrayed as stupid or beastly versions of ourselves. In fact, the average size of the Neanderthal brain was equal to, or larger than, the average modern human brain.

Neanderthals made significant advances in stone tool technology, and they show some of the earliest signs of the emergence of human culture. Neanderthals were the first people to systematically bury their dead. Sometimes tools or animal remains that may have been intended for use in an afterlife were placed in the grave. There is even some evidence that Neanderthals were the first to place flowers at the site of a burial and to perform crude surgery that sustained the life of the severely injured.  This evidence suggests that Neanderthals engaged in complex ritual behavior and were capable of abstract thought, including recognition of the importance of the individual to society and of society to the individual.

Although no one knows exactly why Neanderthals died out, many anthropologists believe that they were driven to extinction by competition from modern humans who migrated into the region from Africa. This scenario is known as the Replacement Theory. In this hypothesis there was little or no exchange of genetic material between Neanderthals and modern humans (Homo sapiens). If this view is correct, then the first extinction caused by modern humans was that of our closest cousin.

Another theory is that Neanderthals were just another kind of early modern human, a regional subgroup that interbred with other regional subgroups, each with its own distinct physical and cultural traits. Thus, Neanderthals were not a separate species that died out, but a subpopulation that gradually evolved, together with other human subpopulations, into modern humans. This explanation is known as the Multi-Regional Theory. If this theory is correct, then the extinction of Neanderthals is really a "pseudoextinction."

Both theories derive from archaeological evidence which does not easily yield answers to difficult questions about the ancient past. In many cases this evidence consists of stone tools rather than bones. A particular style and grouping of stone tools, known as the Mousterian assemblage, is associated with Neanderthal bones. Thus, where Mousterian tools are found, Neanderthals are presumed to have lived. However, because Mousterian tools also have been found in association with modern Homo sapiens remains, they may not be a reliable indicator for the presence of Neanderthals. If more bones could be found and accurately dated, the mystery of Neanderthal interactions with modern humans might be solved.  Unfortunately, bones are very difficult to find and scientists are forced to make inferences from stone tools, until more bones are discovered.  

Whether the Neanderthals became extinct by evolving, or whether they died out without issue, their disappearance from Europe and west Asia was complete by about 35,000 years ago. Since that time, we have been the only humans on Earth.

http://www.republic.k12.mo.us/highschool/teachers/tstephen/ancient/ph-3.htm

What defines this radical change in human behavior - the advent of ritualized burials and its implication of spiritual conception - is not an emotional one (although heightened emotional states are commonly associated with a religious epiphany, or spiritual experience). It is not the acquisition of a new kind of emotional ability that irrevocably separated us from all other creatures. Animals grieve and appear to feel, and display, a sense of loss when a companion dies. Studies (and simple experience with household pets) show that many animals clearly display mourning behaviors when confronted with the loss of a companion. Wolves, for example, have been seen to, one by one, pace around, sniff and wail, as a means of "paying their respects" to a fallen comrade; even one of the lowest social order. But they do not bury them. The first human burials, showing concern and respect for an everlasting spirit, clearly marks a departure from the ways of animal behavior and the turning point in the spiritualization of man.

Neither was this change solely defined by intellect. Our use of tools showed that we had reached a turning point in our ability to conceptualize in new ways. Again, animals are now known to use tools for foraging, such as using a stick to pluck termites from their mounds. It was defined, however, by our use of non-tools. Completely non-functional creations such as clay figurines, which we will discuss shortly, did separate us from all other living beings. Amazingly, the idea of a spirit from an intelligent and reasoned position, with no substantiation or evidence of any kind, would seem more in the realm of emotional wishful thinking than a seasoned intellect.  It is the emergence of the abstract "creative" mind that seems more likely to be responsible for the creation of these ancient figurines than anything as logical and calculating as simple intelligence.

Concepts such as burials and abstract artifact production were, to a large degree, the result of the emerging role that language was playing in our lives. Animals, again, communicate very effectively with basic "here and now" information. But the Holistic effect of language (oh boy, our first example of holism), by combining sounds into words, which could be further combined with other words into phrases, allowed for a total number of expressible ideas that could be conveyed which was far greater than the few component sounds of which these phrases were composed!  More than any other aspect of our development, then, it is language that defines the changes taking place in the human Mind and outwardly made manifest in abstract behaviors such as burials, rituals, and religious ideology.

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