Human Burial Rites Span 100,000 years

Does it matter that the first evidence of a human burial rite is 100,000 years old? 

By way of comparison, the wheel is only a 5,500 year old invention.

This means that burying our dead in some type of ritualized manner became meaningful long before we needed wagons, carriages, or cars.

Death was seen as part of life. Inevitable as the day and night.

It’s right up there with controlled fire, which was invented 800,000 years ago.

We innovate as we identify our needs and we have needed burial rites for a long time. Of course, stone tools, having been used by humans for 2.5 million years, were needed way back!

We have a long history of honoring our dead; of making space for death and dying; of knowing it is the natural way.

I love learning so many different death rituals from many cultures and traditions. They all seem to honor the spirit leaving the body in some kind of ritual of transition. 

I believe we were a death embracing people before it was taken away and a taboo created around it. We are getting back the the natural way.