The best evidence of the first deliberate human burial dates back almost 100,000 years, and the idea of ancestor veneration has persisted for millennia. The way that a living community responds to death reveals much about their sense of identity and particularly the group's religious and spiritual traditions. Choose a culture/region from the list below and include in your paper responses to both of the following questions:
- Mesopotamians keeping ancestral skulls on display in the home
- Indians burning the funeral pyre on the River Ganges
- Asians modifying the bones of the dead during "secondary burials"
- Romans arranging the deceased in visible underground catacombs
- Medieval Eastern Europeans preventing vampires or other revenants
- How do burial rituals build identity and strengthen the sense of community for the living?
- What factors have shaped these customs and values-religious, political, geographical, etc.?