>I wonder: Who fashioned the steel box? Who had tools to do it with? Who
>designed it? Who passed along the technology? Who prepared the body? Was it
>merely dumped, or did some family members actually join around it in, ahem,
>something called a ritual? Did the chamber where they joined have stained
>glass windows? Isn't that something called "art"? No, Glenn, it was
>probably there by accident.
So, are you saying that out on the hot Texas prairie back in the 1800's,
the poor cowboys dropped in pits without benefit of wooden boxes, art or
family members were not given a human burial? Shame on you Jim. Some of
their graves were merely piles of stone over the body
Are you saying that there is no evidence of humanity among the primitives
who stuff Auntie Em into a niche in a rock?
Carlton Coon writes:
"Returning to the disposal of the body, hunters regard this as a means
of isolating the dead person's spirit, but it may be isolated for either of two
reason, to get rid of it entirely or to limit its activities so that it may be
used. The concept stated above greately widens the range of disposal
techniques. The easiest way is simply to abandon the body at the place of
death, and to avoid returning to that spot until the disturbance is over,
ususally after several years, when the dead person's spirit has had time to go
away. The Mbuti Pygmies used to abandon it before they were taught by the
Negro villagers to bury their dead. The Veddas of Ceylon, who lived in rock
shelters during the rainy season, did the same. They had so many shelters
available that they could afford to leave some of them unoccupied until the
remains had disappeared. In tropical rain forests insects and animals make
short work of bodies, and if they are buried or covered with earth, the
lateritic soil is so acid that bones may disintigrate in less than a year. In
1965, I excavated a cave in a diamond-mining concession in Sierra Leone and
found no bones at all, although the soil was full of stone implements and
chips. A schoolteacher stationed there told me that she had once buried a dead
dog to get its skeleton for use in her zoology class, and when she dug it up a
year later even the bones had rotted away.
"In other climates people who camp in the same places at least once a
year could hardly follow this practice, nor could those who live in permanent
or semipermanent villages. Where there are plenty of caves and rock crannies,
or hollow trees, these apertures are natural depositories, and frquently used.
Where firewood is abundant, cremation is a quick and dramatic solution,
particularly if the ground is frozen in winter and burial at that time is out
of the question. Another easy method is to secure the body high up in a tree.
"But however hunting and gathering peoples dispose of bodies they
usually do so individually in separate places, for graveyards are an artifact
of sedentary life. The Maidu of California had special burning grounds, and
the Nootka deposited some of their dead on mortuary islets, towing the bodies
out to them in unmanned canoes. The Eskimo of Nunivak Island buried their dead
in shallow graves, about a quarter of a mile away from their villages. In
these burial places skulls and long bones could be seen lying about where they
had been disinterred to make room for new bodies. These Eskimo have no fear of
corpses or old bones, once the proper rituals have been performed, and, in
fact, they formerly made use of parts of bodies as amulets to help them in
hunting."~Carleton S. Coon, The Hunting Peoples, (Boston: Little, Brown and
Co., 1971), p. 331-332
>
>I wonder, did one of them say a prayer? A prayer to whom? Where did these
>people go afterward? Did they sit around picking parasites of each other,
>or did some get into machines that had engines? Who made the engines? Were
>the engines made of stones?
In 10,000 years, will archaeologists believe that the people in 500 A.D.
didn't bury their dead because they didn't use coffins and prayers were not
preserved in the fossil record? Come on, Jim. Prayers of my
Great-grandmother are not to be found anywhere and there is absolutely no
evidence that Great granny engaged in any ritual at all. Nothing survives
of her life.
>
>Obviously, these people were just early hominids, right Glenn? They were
>probably "struggling" with issues of death as they "dropped" this body into
>the "pit."
Then I guess those people I saw this morning were merely early hominids.
Are atheists who do not say prayers at funerals qualify as human? My father
certainly didn't want any prayers said over him at his funeral. He wanted no
ritual But since he couldn't object at the time, we prayed anyway.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm