6
WHY IS RELIGION
ABOUT DEATH?
Dead people, like vegetables, can be pickled or
preserved. You can also abandon them to the beasts of the field, burn
them like rubbish or bury them like treasure. From embalming to
cremation, all sorts of techniques are used to do something with the
corpse. But the point is, something must be done. This is a constant and
has been so for a long time. Early modern humans from the Pale-
olithic era onward—our direct ancestors—buried their dead. Even
our Neanderthal cousins may have buried their dead. Early modern
humans buried or laid out the bodies with flowers, tools or other arti-
facts. Some archaeologists have pointed out that burying the dead
may have been a measure of protection against scavengers attracted
by decaying bodies. However, one must remember that early humans
were nomadic foragers, which would make it easy for them to avoid
such invasion. Be that as it may, the fact that early humans did deco-
rate corpses, lay out the bodies in particular postures or bury people
with flowers, aligned horns or tools would support the notion that
some ritualization of death is a very ancient human activity.^1
Ancient findings are often reported as evidence for the claim that
early modern humans or even Neanderthals "had religion." Whether
valid or not—I will return to that question in a later chapter—the
inference shows how confused our common ideas about religion can
be. We assume that burying the dead in a ritual way is evidence for
supernatural concepts—ancestors, spirits, gods—because we find a
connection between these two phenomena in most human societies.
But what is that connection?
All religions, or so it seems, have something to say about death.
People die but their shadows stay around. Or they die and wait for the
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