A Possible Origin of Contracted Burials

Abstract

No explanation why the people of the palæolithic and many succeeding ages adopted the custom of always burying their dead in the contracted position has yet been universally accepted by archæologists. The reason given by some is that this is the sleeping posture; that the deceased had been thus trussed (by cords which have perished) to prevent his getting up inconveniently to haunt the upper world; or that it was to economise grave-yard ground—of which by the way there could have been then no scarcity, since there were no cemeteries. A larger body of opinion holds that this position was adopted because in being that of the infant during gestation, the dead was being symbolically returned to the womb of Mother-earth. The latter of these suggestions seems to me to credit prehistoric peoples with more knowledge than they were likely to possess; for how many even of our own uninstructed in gynæcology are aware of the embryonic position? Had palæolithic man—who inaugurated the custom—possessed that knowledge, ought he not to have buried his dead in the final posture of gestation—head downwards? Nor have we any authority for believing that the idea of the dead returning to the womb of earth ever at that early period entered his imagination. There occurs to me another possible origin for the custom.