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Study Notes Humans Around the Web Related Concepts
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<aside> 📌 MIGHTY AND DREADFUL
We still find life and death hard to define, but the distinction between them was apparent to people 30,000-40,000 years ago. A Neanderthal family is buried together at La Ferrasie, France: two adults of different sexes are curled into the fetal position characteristic of Neanderthal burials all over what is now Europe and the Near East. Nearby, three children of between three and five years old and a newborn baby lie with flint tools and fragments of animal bones. The remains of an undeveloped fetus, extracted from the womb, are interred with the same dignity as the other family members, albeit without the tools. Other Neanderthal burials have more valuable grave goods: a pair of ibex horns accompanies one youth in death, a sprinkling of ocher was strewn on another.
Ritual burial is evidence of two ideas: life and death. We still find it hard to define them and in particular cases - such as impenetrable comas and the misery of the moribund on life support - to say exactly where the difference between them lies.
These first celebrations of death hallowed life. They constitute the first evidence of a more than merely instinctive valuing of life: a conviction that life is worthy of reverence, which as remained the basis of all human moral action ever since.
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Death Is But a Dream: Finding Hope and Meaning at Life's End