Reference no: EM13452722

The best evidence of the first deliberate human burial dates back almost 100,000 years, and the idea of ancestor veneration has persisted for millennia. The way that a living community responds to death reveals much about their sense of identity and particularly the group's religious and spiritual traditions. Choose a culture/region from the list below and include in your paper responses to both of the following questions: 

• Mesopotamians keeping ancestral skulls on display in the home
• Indians burning the funeral pyre on the River Ganges
• Asians modifying the bones of the dead during "secondary burials"
• Romans arranging the deceased in visible underground catacombs
• Medieval Eastern Europeans preventing vampires or other revenants 

1. How do burial rituals build identity and strengthen the sense of community for the living?
2. What factors have shaped these customs and values-religious, political, geographical, etc.?