In 2022, there were 577,160 deaths registered in England and Wales. Many were reported in local and sometimes national newspapers, and on social media. The ensuing funerals would have been a deeply personal experience for families and friends of the deceased. We all die and are mourned by those we leave behind. Mourning and remembering the dead is a very ancient part of the human condition, but it may not be confined to modern or even archaic humans.

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In November 2009, the National Geographic ran a photograph of a newly deceased female chimpanzee named Dorothy being wheeled past a wire fence, behind which stood sixteen of her former chimpanzee companions in two rows. The photograph was taken on 23 September 2008 at the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Centre, Cameroon, following Dorothy's death from congestive heart failure. She was in her late 40s. According to photographer Monica Szczupider, who took the picture, the centre's management decided to let the other members of Dorothy's community witness her burial so that they would realise that she was gone and would not be returning. The chimpanzees, for the most part, remained uncharacteristically silent throughout the proceedings.

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The picture went viral, and the scene was invariably described as a chimpanzee funeral. Given that our divergence from our closest living ape relatives is estimated to have occurred 6.6 million years ago, human funerary traditions could represent a pattern of behaviour with roots that lie millions of years in the past.

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Controversially, it has been suggested that ritual cannibalism may have been a frequent element of these early traditions.

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This 12,000-word eBook short read, the penultimate in the In search of series investigates the mortuary practices of humans and early hominins from the Pliocene to the Bronze Age.

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*** This and the other 11 short reads in the In Search of series are available in a single collection: Prehistoric Investigations 2: In search of ***

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In Search of Early Funerary Practices

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