Dead giveaway

• Autores: Max Green
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3073, 2016, págs. 36-39
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • No other animal buries its dead. It is a peculiarly human thing to do, and people have been doing it for a long time. Last year, it emerged that their ancestors may have laid their dead to rest as far back as three million years ago. This raises intriguing questions about the evolution of the human mind. To understand the idea of death, they need empathy and intuition. To feel their own mortality and to create rituals that recognize the mortality of others, they must be capable of symbolic thinking--which also underpins language, art and religion. What's more, burials reflect the cultural concerns and practices of the people who created them. Graves, therefore, hold clues about human curiosity, the dawning of spirituality, ancestor cults, global domination, trade, technological ingenuity and more. Here, Green digs out the 10 best gravesites to find out what they reveal about their evolution