THE CULT OF THE DEAD

The dead, were considered to be supernatural power Corpses were the object of practices which give evidence not of deference but also, in the broad sense of the word, of a cult.'The skeletons which have been found in artificially dug trenches or surrounded and covered by durable materials, like stones or bones fragments, were incontestably buried with funerary intention.

Many of them, moreover, were buried with funerary furnishings such as the jewels and ornaments which have been found on or around them. Doubtless these were objects which they had owned during their lifetimes. But even if they had not been presented with these ornaments on burial, at least the survivors had not, in spite of their considerable value, taken them away as they could have done. The fact that they belonged to the dead rendered them in some taboo. And then other objects found with the bodies could of have been placed there by the survivors, and constitute geniune funerary furnishings, destined for the use of the dead man in after life: utensils, works of art, food.

In many cases red ochre (clay colored with haematite or iron peroxide) was sprinkled over the corpse's grave and has left traces of its colour on the skeleton and surrounding objects. Because of its color certain primitive peoples of today, in particular the Austrialian aborigines, liken red ochre to blood (even we call it haematite) and for this reason consider it a symbol of life and strength. It is reasonable to suppose that the ochre spread over the tombs and bodies of Palaeolithic man was intended, like the deposits of food to strengthen the dead one during his journey to the after-world and his sojourn in his new abode. Among numerous examples of these various funeral practices we shall call attention only to those that are particularly character-istic, and establish at which periods such practices were in force.

The Magdalenian skeleton of Hoteaux in the Ain, covered with red ochre, was found in a small trench. Behind the head a large stone had been placed. Beside it were chipped flint instruments and a chieftain's staff in reindeer horn on which was engraved a stag. The skeleton of Sordes in the Landes had several slabs placed on its skull and had been covered with red ochre. Beside it was found about forty bears' and three lions' canine teeth, almost all carefuly pierced. Some twenty of them were carved with seals, fish and arrows. In view of their position they must have constitutited a necklace and a belt. The perforated shellfish which formed the adornment of 'the crushed man' of Laugerie-Basse belonged to two species which are native to the Mediterranean. Having come from such a distance they must have been especially valuable. Under the right hand of the skeleton of Solutre there were numerous flints chipped in the shape of laurel leaves and also a pierced scallop shell. Found with it were two crude statuettes of reindeer in stone.

The skeleton of Klause in Bavaria was enclosed between boulders fallen from the ceiling. They had been arranged to make a place or the body. It was completely surrounded by a mass of red powder. Above and benoath the head was a great heap of fragments of mammoths' tusks. For the Aurignacian period a number of consonant facts have been established in the caverns of Grimaldi, near Menton. In the grotto 'des Enfanis' the two negroid skeletons lie in a trench about thirty inches deep. The head of the old woman was found in a tightly closed chest formed by two lateral blocks of stone, covered over by a horizontal slab. The young man was wearing a sort of crown made of four rows of pierced nassas. The same shellfish provided the two bracelets on the old woman's left arm. This tomb contained red powder in the rubble, around the head and on parts of the young man's skeleton. The two children, to whom the cave owes its name, were wearing a kind of apron made of thousands of perforated nassas. In the same cave a female skeleton was covered over with animal bones, the jawbones of a wild boar and some chips of flint. Under its head there was a white stone bearing traces of red coloring. It was literally lying in a bed of trochus shells. Not being pierced, these shells could not have been for adornment, but had been put near the body for food. At La Barma Grande the three bodies stretched side by side were placed in an obviously man-made trench and had a bed of red earth. They wore adornments composed of shells, teeth, fish vertebrae and artificial pendants in bone and ivory. Particularly remarkable is the young man's necklace, which was held in its original position by a coating of clay and, in the symmetry and rhythm of its arrangement, bears witness to a sense of artistry. These skeletons were accompanied by very beautiful flint instruments, and the woman's head reposed on the femur of an ox.

The corpse of Paviland in Wales was powdered with iron oxide which stained the earth and burial objects, and in some places formed a coating on the bones. Although probably male, it has for this reason been christened 'The Red Lady'. Beside it was found the entire head of a mammoth complete with tusks. Near the thighs were found two handfuls of small shells drenched in red, and near the chest some fifty fragments of round ivory rings. At Predmosti in Moravia twenty human skeletons were gathered under a veritable lid of stones. A child's skeleton wore a necklace of fourteen pendants. Beside the skeleton of Brno there were more than six hundred fragments of fossilised shells, strung together to form conical tubes. Some were still inserted in each other and together they must have made a kind of breastplate for the body. Near it were also found large perforated stone disks, small disks decorated with incisions, three solid disks made of mammoth's or rhinoceros's ribs, some rhinoceros ribs, and finally an ivory statuette of a human being. The skeleton and some of the objects in the tomb were partially stained red.

The skeleton of La Chapelle-aux-Saints belongs to the Mousterian period. It lay in a trench a little less than five feet long, about three feet wide and a foot deep. The head lay against a corner of the trench, propped by stones and covered over with broad slabs of bone. At La Ferrassie the two children at least were laid in artificial trenches. The man's skeleton was covered by rubble and protected by chips of bone. The skeleton of Moustier had its skull placed on a sort of pillow formed by a heap of flint fragments carefully adapted to the shape of the head. The nose seems to have been especially protected by two chips of flint. The bodies of both La Chapelle-aux-Saints and Moustier were provided with funerary furnishings, instruments and joints of game. The use of red ochre has not been observed in the Mousterian period, but burial rites are as apparent then as in later Magdalenian times. What, then, was their intention? Since they were performed for people whose earthly life was finished they imply a belief that the dead continue after death to lead some kind of existence. This posthumous life appears to have been conceived as similar to life on earth, with the same needs and the same means of satisfying them. This explains the ornaments left with the dead, the implements, the food (quarters of venison and piles of shellfish) and the red ochre.

In thus providing for the posthumous needs of the dead, the survivors seem, however, to have acted less from disinterested affection than from self-interest. Their care seems to have been to encourage the deceased's favourable disposition towards themselves, to soften his possible hostility or to put him physically in a position where he could do no harm. Generally speaking, primitive people believe that death, like sickness, is the result of a magic operation. Deaths to which we assign natural causes are attributed by them to an evil spell, the author of which, whether unconscious or malevolent, they attempt to discover by various means. This being so, it can be understood that the dead were thought to harbour vengeance against their presumed murderers and, in consequence of the idea of collective responsibility, against all those who survived them. At the very least they would entertain sentiments of envy towards those who still enjoyed the earthly life of which they themselves had been deprived. It seems, then, that the basic attitude towards the dead was one of fear, and that burial rites were originally measures of protection against the deceased. This Palaeolithic trenches and tombs may have been intended less the shelter the dead than to imprison them. The statuette of Brno, was probably masculine and buried with a masculine corpse, could have played the role of a 'double', meant to keep the dead one in his tomb and prevent him from 'returning' to torment the living. This would account for the statuette's being made with neither leg nor right arm.

Particularly remarkable is the trussed-up position in which made of these bodies were found. A typical example from the Magdalenian period is the old man of Chancelade in the Dordogne, covered with red ochre, with arms and legs folded and the vertical column bent to such a degree that the skeleton only occupies a space little more than two feet long and sixteen inches wide. In the grotto 'des Enfants', which is Aurignacian, the negroid young man's legs were completely drawn up to his thighs. The old woman's thighs were raised as far as possible so that her knees reached the level of her shoulders. The legs were sharply folded under the thighs andthe feet nearly touched the pelvis. The forearms were bent upwards so that the left hand was just beneath the shoulder-blade. In the Mousterian period the woman of La Ferrassie had her legs doubled up; the bent right forearm rested along the thigh, the hand on a knee. This arm and the legs formed a letter 'N', the knee reaching a distance of only six inches from the shoulder. The legs of the skeleton of La Chapelle-aux-Saints were folded and raised so that the kneecaps were more or less on a level with the chest.

This contracted condition which has been observed in so many skeletons from the Mousterian until the Magdalenian period could of course, only have been imposed on the body by those who buried it. In addition, it means that the body must have been tied up at the moment of death: for rigor mortis would later have prevented its being forced into such a position. It seems, then, that among Palaeolithic as among other primitive peoples who share similar burial customs, the doubled-up posture of the body was only a result of the trussing-up and binding - this beirig the essential operation, intended to prevent the dead from coming back to torment the living. This also explains the diversity of positions in which Palaeolithic bodies are found: provided that they were securely bound and could not leave their graves, the actual position of the body was of secondary importance and could be left to individual initiative.

Although fear of the dead seems to have been the dominant sentiment it does not follow that in some cases at least there was not also a belief that the dead could be helpful and beneficent especially when funeral rites devised to assure their maximum well-being in the after-life had been performed. This seems to account for certain practices which differed from burial in the strict sense in that they tended not to set the dead apart from the living but on the contrary, to preserve their remains and keep them, as it were to hand. Such, notably, was the practice of stripping the flesh from the body before burial. This was done by various means, especially by natural putrefaction in a provisional grave. The object was to conserve the skeleton or its bones, which were sometimes worn by the survivors as amulets. The practice seems to have existed fromPalaeolithic times. A Lower Magdalenian example is found in the grotto of Le Placard in the Charente. An entire skull of a woman complete with lower jawbone, was placed on a rock andsurrounded by a hundred and seventy shells of different sorts, some pierced, some not. Skulls in the same cave, belonging to Lower Magdalenian and Upper Solutrean periods, show clear traces of deliberate flesh-stripping and have undoubtedly been cut and altered. In the Au-rignacian cave of Le Cavillon at Grimaldi three such bones were found: the broken radius of a child and two bones from a man's foot, coloured a vivid red. Scattered nearby was a set of pierced and unpierced shells. A tomb at Predmosti contained only a few bone-remains which had been scraped; the head was missing but must once have been there, for two teeth still remained. A Mous-terian skeleton, found in a trench at La Ferrassie, had its skull deprived of face and jawbone, placed nearly four feet away from the body. At Le Pech de I'Aze the skull of a five or six years old child was  surrounded by deliberately broken animal bones, by teeth and by a quantity of implements. Finally, we must take into account many finds of isolated human bones from all periods, generally skulls or jawbones.

Excerpted from "New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology",Introduction by Robert Graves, Translation by Richard Aldington and Delano Ames, Crescent Books, New York, 2001, p.11-15. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.