Re: THEOLOGY: Extropianism & Theology

Harvey Newstrom (newstrom@newstaffinc.com)
Mon, 1 Mar 1999 14:20:17 -0500

Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se> wrote:
> Doesn't exactly explain the situation during the stone age. Why bury
> flowers with the dead? Did somebody sell them?

Actually, the answer might be as simple as putting good smelling flowers to cover the bad smelling dead body.

Buring the tools with the dead also might have a simple explanation. The default mode was to keep a person's possessions with the person. It would be natural to keep their tools with the dead body. It would take a higher level of reasoning to decide that they didn't need the tools anymore. We shouldn't question why tools were buried with the dead, as if this were an exceptional thing to do. I think this would have been the normal procedure, and the custom of not burying the tools with the dead became the new exception later on.

-- 
Harvey Newstrom <http://newstaffinc.com>
Author, Consultant, Engineer, Hacker, Researcher, Scientist.