Scatter Brained

07 
Funeral Rites Around the World
IRAQ:
 Did cavemen invent the funeral? Th
  at was the ques-
tion posed in the 1950s, when the excavation of nine Nean-
derthals in northern Iraq’s Shanidar cave produced evidence 
that the 60,000-year-old stiff s had been left there together, 
perhaps as part of a concerted eff ort to mourn their passing. 
American anthropologist Ralph Solecki, who led the dig, cited 
a layer of many types of seeds and pollen found surrounding 
one grave as proof that prehistoric man invented not only the 

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