Defleshing The Cadaver Before Burial

Two mysteries of creation -- life and death

Their dead were buried, fearing their resurrection

The placement of heavy stone slabs upon their graves seen as impeding their dead from returning

Neanderthal corpses, tightly flexed, tied with thongs

Interring their dead, performing burial rituals

The defleshing of the body -- a symbolic act -- preventing it's spirit from haunting them

Removing flesh to silence the destructive will of nature

Removing flesh to see death making it's way into the carcass

Removing flesh...

Flesh, doomful like a rapid ghastly river

Cheek muscles from children were filleted out,

Tendons were sliced and skulls were cracked to remove brains

Flaying will silence the vile enemy in the form of the Neanderthal ghost

Allaying the dead spirits, who possess destructive powers to the continent

(For thousands of years or more, the shell will see it's ghostly owner nevermore)

(Series of rituals, praising the individual)

Buried together, entire kin groups remained united after death

Believed in an afterlife, a vision beyond death in their pre-abstract minds

Artifacts and fauna

Guaranteed health in the spirit world...

Defleshing The Cadaver Before Burial, to protect the living from the undead

Death itself, regarded as a kind of sleep

Corpses arranged in sleeplike positions

Death had become something more than a mere brutish fact of nature

Leave the rotten meat witnessing the rebirth of an epoch