Funeral

A funeral is a ceremony marking a person's death. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from the funeral itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honor. These customs vary widely between cultures, and between religious affiliations within cultures. In some cultures the dead are worshipped; this is commonly called ancestor worship. The word comes from the Latin funus, which had a variety of meanings, including the corpse and the funerary rites themselves.

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Funeral rites are as old as the human race itself. In the Shanidar cave in Iraq, Neanderthal skeletons have been discovered with a characteristic layer of pollen, which suggests that Neanderthals buried the dead with gifts of flowers. This has been interpreted as suggesting that Neanderthals believed in an afterlife, and in any case were aware of their own mortality and were capable of mourning.

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Death: Death is the cessation of physical life in a living organism or the state of the organism after that event. In almost all societies, death has one or several symbols associated with it. Common symbols of death in Western cultures include the grim reaper and the color black; conversely, in certain Ea...

Ancestor worship: Ancestor worship (拜祖), also ancestor veneration (敬祖), is a religious practice based on the belief that one's ancestors possess supernatural powers. All cultures attach ritual significance to the passing of loved ones, but this is not equivalent to ancestor worship. Rath...

Latin: Latin is an Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained great importance as the formal language of the Roman Empire. All Romance languages are descended from Latin, and many words based on Latin are found in other modern languages such as English. The ...

Funeral related Images and Photos (experimental)

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The Funeral of Jean Paul Marat	The Funeral of Victor Hugo (1802-85) 1885	Native Funeral Service Near Luanda Congo	Peasant Funeral in Connemara