lpetrich
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Religion And Music… And Lions | διά πέντε / dia pente
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Music in Human Evolution - Melting Asphalt by Kevin Simler
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Joseph Jordania's book Why Do People Sing?: Music in Human Evolution
JJ proposes a curious hypothesis for what eventually got turned into burying our dead. In that hypothesis, our ancestors of a few million years ago had eaten their dead in order to deny their corpses to predators, so that predators don't experience that they are good to eat.
That's a rather odd hypothesis, but JJ and KS note a common pattern in societies of our species: protecting a dead body, then disposing of it in some way. There are a variety of ways that we like to use: burial, cremation, burial at sea, "sky burial", cannibalism, and weird ones like hanging coffins and tree burial. All of these are ways of protecting a dead body from land predators. Even "sky burial" is like that: it's putting a body on a platform for scavenger birds like vultures, with land predators kept away.
In the first half of the 20th cy., Bertrand Russell wrote in "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish":
BR also noted the objection to cremation that it would be difficult to resurrect a burned body at the end of the world. But as he noted, a body that got turned into worms would be just as difficult to resurrect.
It's the psychological impact that counts, it seems.
I'll close with this curiosity from Herodotus's History:
The Internet Classics Archive | The History of Herodotus by Herodotus
reporting on
Music in Human Evolution - Melting Asphalt by Kevin Simler
reporting on
Joseph Jordania's book Why Do People Sing?: Music in Human Evolution
JJ proposes a curious hypothesis for what eventually got turned into burying our dead. In that hypothesis, our ancestors of a few million years ago had eaten their dead in order to deny their corpses to predators, so that predators don't experience that they are good to eat.
That's a rather odd hypothesis, but JJ and KS note a common pattern in societies of our species: protecting a dead body, then disposing of it in some way. There are a variety of ways that we like to use: burial, cremation, burial at sea, "sky burial", cannibalism, and weird ones like hanging coffins and tree burial. All of these are ways of protecting a dead body from land predators. Even "sky burial" is like that: it's putting a body on a platform for scavenger birds like vultures, with land predators kept away.
In the first half of the 20th cy., Bertrand Russell wrote in "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish":
Something of that notion still exists there, despite the Communists attacking various traditions. It's widely rumored that the Chinese authorities harvest internal organs from executed people because hardly anybody there wants to donate organs ( Organ transplantation in China).The sacredness of corpses is a widespread belief. It was carried furthest by the Egyptians, among whom it led to the practice of mummification. It still exists in full force in China. A French surgeon, who was employed by the Chinese to teach Western medicine, relates that his demand for corpses to dissect was received with horror, but he was assured that he could have instead an unlimited supply of live criminals. His objection to this alternative was totally unintelligible to his Chinese employers.
BR also noted the objection to cremation that it would be difficult to resurrect a burned body at the end of the world. But as he noted, a body that got turned into worms would be just as difficult to resurrect.
It's the psychological impact that counts, it seems.
I'll close with this curiosity from Herodotus's History:
Book 3, tr. George RawlinsonDarius, after he had got the kingdom, called into his presence certain Greeks who were at hand, and asked- "What he should pay them to eat the bodies of their fathers when they died?" To which they answered, that there was no sum that would tempt them to do such a thing. He then sent for certain Indians, of the race called Callatians, men who eat their fathers, and asked them, while the Greeks stood by, and knew by the help of an interpreter all that was said - "What he should give them to burn the bodies of their fathers at their decease?" The Indians exclaimed aloud, and bade him forbear such language.
The Internet Classics Archive | The History of Herodotus by Herodotus