Neanderthal Burial

At some point in our lives, we all come to realize that death is a part of life. Cultural diversity provides a wide variety of lifestyles and traditions for each of the unique groups of people in our world. Within these different cultures, the rituals associated with death and burial can also be uniquely diverse. Many consider ritualistic traditions that differ from their own to be somewhat strange and often perceive them as unnatural. A prime example would be the burial rituals of the Native American people.

Because of this, people received payment to bury the dead. The way they buried people was very simple, they threw them all into a pit, and then covered the pit with dirt. A dead man received no more recognition than a dead goat would today.

During the Republican period and Empire, Rome was a city that was constantly evolving and growing in size. As a result of the growing population came the problem of pollution. Pollution led the Roman Empire to establish rules and guidelines in handling the deceased in terms of the type of burial being used.1 This also led to changes in beliefs about the afterlife that could have been influenced by different cultural factors. Several scholars have argued that the Romans experienced a transition from cremation to inhumation, a change that has been linked to the rise of Christianity.2 However, I will argue that this transition was in fact due to philosophical-religious aspects dependent on social, political and economic factors. In this paper,

Neanderthals lived from 130,000-30,000 years ago and were part of the Archaic Homo sapiens; meaning the Homo neaderthalensis were an earlier member of the modern humans. The living range for the Neanderthals located from Europe to the Middle East. About 50,000 years ago modern humans started to migrate from Africa to Europe and the Middle East, thus causing Neanderthals and modern humans to interbreed. In the two articles “Researchers shed light on Neanderthals’ legacy in humans” and “Surprise! 20 Percent of Neanderthal Genome Lives On in Modern Humans, Scientists Find” they discuss how some genes and phenotypes found in Neanderthals were also expressed in non-African descent modern humans and reason behind it. The study between the Neanderthals

The archaeological record is consistent with Neanderthals withdrawing southward into warmer refuges and dwindling in numbers, before more or less disappearing altogether. Fully modern humans furnished with modern human behavior moved those parts of Europe that had already been essentially evacuated by Neanderthals, with stratigraphic gaps, often of a few millennia or more, at sites where the conversion is well proved. Indeed, Neanderthals lasted in southern Iberia until around 30,000 BP, long after fully modern humans had moved into northern Spain by around 40,000 BP (Gilligan, 2007).

Some surprising discoveries reveal aesthetics and abstract thought in Neanderthal cultures that predate the arrival of H. sapiens. These finds include the engraving and signs of feather use from Gorham's Cave. In fact, artifacts of this nature have been discovered at archaeological sites across Europe. At the Grotta di Fumane in Italy's Veneto region, archaeologists found evidence of feather use and the fossil of a snail shell which had been collected from at least 100 kilometers away that had been stained red, suspended on a string and worn as a pendant at least 47,600 years ago. The sites of Cueva de los Aviones and Cueva Antón in southeastern Spain have also yielded seashells bearing traces of pigment. Some seem to have served as cups for

Burials are one of the most used archaeological sites for scholars to gain insight and information on all civilizations, and in this case Greek civilizations. In his book Ethnic Identity, Stuart Hall makes a strong argument illustrating that “social structures may be articulated and projected through funerary ritual” and this may be undeniable (). Greek burial customs depict a parallel with society and their standards of living throughout time; focusing on the Bronze Age and into the Classical Period, the changing society of Ancient Greek shows the development of these burials.

When modern humans walked the earth 65,00 years ago, they were not the only ones who walked on two legs, had opposable thumbs and used tools. The Neanderthals, who we shared 99.5% the same DNA with also roamed the earth with modern humans, but mysteriously vanished between 45 to 28 million years ago. There are a lot of theories as to what could have caused the Neanderthal population to go extinct. But the most plausible reasons for Neanderthals extinction is due to being out competed by modern humans (Homo Sapiens), coupled with a rapidly changing environment.

This paper examines the impact of religious beliefs on Egyptian societies, mainly focusing on mummification. Ancient Egyptians believed that when someone died, their soul left their body. The soul would then return and be reunited with the body after it was buried. However, the soul needed to be able to find and recognize the body in order to live forever. The heart, rather than the brain, was regarded as the organ of reasoning.

Throughout the documentary “Decoding Neanderthals” there was a push of research to push the human view of Neanderthals. Over the year’s research showed that we coexisted with Neanderthals and out beat their species. Many believed that Neanderthals where like the stereotypical unintelligent and wild caveman. With new technology, enhanced research, and the exposing documentary “Decoding Neanderthals” pushed the boundaries of these past ideologies. Through this we have learned how intelligent, symbolic, and closely related this species is to homo-sapiens species. This research proved that the Neanderthal may have not became extent due to in ability to create weapons but, due to inter breading with humans

at the dawn of time, before the vessel being's created the sentient life for the planets, the Tarukfama was cast back into its vessel and the Barivan took it to it's resting place. Earth, a far off planet from the others it was buried beneath it's soil to slumber for all eternity. This planet made the perfect incubator for the Tarukfama allowing it to you use its power, at the Earth's core to create humanity and thriving life. In the beginning, it's power was sorely diminished and it was only able to create lesser beings. However, over time it was able to store more power it continued to attempt to create more intelligent lifeforms resulting in Neanderthals. Eventually, it was able to create humans that grow ever more intelligent and expand

Initially, when examining the article, The Evolution of Religion Studies, Theories, & Critiques by Tom Sjöblom the author attempts to identify what various actions taken by prehistoric humans mean. Sjöblom begins by explaining that humans are storytelling species and that this storytelling was extremely important to our cognitive evolution as well as the creation of symbolic and cultural behavior. This storytelling ability and cultural behavior he believes arises from, “a narrative mind which emerged with the appearance of early modern humans over 200,000 years ago and that some of the cognitive programs involved derive from even earlier periods” (Sjöblom, 2008, p.280). Meaning that socially we communicate through narratives, whether or

In fact, there was such a demand for tombs that there were times that tombs would be reused (Meskell, 2001). This is a contradiction to the idea that disturbing a burial site was taboo (Meskell, 2001). There is also a distinct difference in how the upper class were buried in comparison to how the lower class were buried.

The aim of this report is to critically analyze the excavation, human remains, skeletal analysis and evidence found at the burial site. This will include a reconstruction and interpretation of the burial, the information the skeletal analysis can provide, limitations of bone evidence, assessment of the excavation process and, to conclude, a final interpretation and discussion of potential hypothesis.

TheThe difficulty, however, about such an inquiry is that nearly all the available data are confined to those concrete survivals like graves, sacred places and their contents, sculptures, bas-reliefs, engravings and paintings that have escaped the ravages of time. Their interpretation must be to some extent conjectural, but much of the material has survived, little changed, in everyday occurrence among the peoples who live today under conditions very similar to those of early humans. If employed with proper caution such evidence can afford useful and illuminating clues to the purpose and meaning of prehistoric religion.