Isn't it fascinating that even our great GREAT ancestors in the stone age were burying their dead?

[Still-alive]

It might be easy to forget but even our ancient ancestors cared for one another. they had compassion too so much so that when they die they are mourned and places in burials with such love and care.

[Maybe_Maybe_not]

"It might be easy to forget but even our ancient ancestors cared for one another"

No it's not lol, I would actually need evidences showing that homo sapiens could have been unable to experience emotions, not the opposite.

[Still-alive]

Some people may attribute primitive to not compassionate as if empathy was primarily a modern homo sapien trait

[Maybe_Maybe_not]

Maybe because it is supposed to be flattering to set us apart from cavemen, as if we were more intrinsically special now than 30.000 years ago

We certainly have more rituals and use much more complex social rules than our ancestors but I can't think our emotional relation to the world has changed

[purplepoppy]

The stone age wasn't that long ago, it only ended around 2000BC that's about 135 generations ago. They weren't dumb cavemen, they built complex stone houses, could navigate vast distances and collaborate to move huge stones. You can't do stuff like that unless you've an emotional bond other people so it's not surprising they mourned with ritualistic burials

[menina]

It really is. I wonder where the idea of burying the dead came from.

[LuciusTheOdd]

Probably the fact that if you lived in one place and you didn’t, Bury Your Dead, you would catch a disease and die so the people who buried their dead were less likely to get diseases and die

[menina]

@LuciusTheOdd Well yes, that makes sense.

[Twalli]

A lot of it had to do with preventing predators from eating them.

[Still-alive]

ok yeah but i feel there was more to it than just that. there's evidence for it

[whosnumber_1]

That and after a few days they start to stink

[Twalli]

@whosnumber_1 Provided they aren't eaten as carrion. I was going on a hike last summer or the summer before that and in a clearing of the trail I saw a half-devoured deer carcass. The smell wasn't overpowering. Most things that could rot and spoil were devoured. That's typically what happens when dead things are left in the open.

[Xawyx-2]

Nothing weird, they had to hide them from wild animals.

[Still-alive]

But there was clear evidence of religious practice too.

[Xawyx-2]

Probably not at first, but those practices developed trough time.

[LiamJHayden]

Was it that or were they trying to avoid attracting predators?

[Still-alive]

All of the above. Its weird how you guys can’t see that lol