As the economy rolls along like a marble on a pebble beach and the stock market continues its own bumpy road to recovery, apocalyptic thought is again on the rise. It is when times are bad that apocalyptic comes in most useful. Individuals who feel that this world has run out of possibilities generally look to a new future world where things will be radically different. That’s why people flock to movies like 2012 and dream of a new day, a new era.
That’s the way it has always been. Jews being tortured to death under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid tyrant, looked for that day when Michael would take on the “Prince of Persia” and the new world would gush in and overtake this one. Almost two centuries later the early Christian movement, suffering at the hands of Roman emperors such as Nero and Diocletian, reveled in the visions of Revelation — the new world coming. Rental property is free in the New Jerusalem! The earliest exemplars of apocalyptic thinking appear to go back to the ancient Zoroastrians. This early Iranian religion (which may have originated in Afghanistan) took comfort in a dualistic world where good and evil constantly struggled until a cosmic conflict would result in the ultimate destruction of evil. It helped to explain why things could be so bad for good people in the here-and-now.
2012, however, derives from concerns that the Mayan calendar seems to have run out of space at that time slot just over three years from now. Otherwise intelligent people panic; this is an apocalypse of the secular kind! Experts on the Maya (among which I am not) explain that the Mayans use(d) many calendars (there are still Mayans around). Their large-scale, 5000 year calendar may run out on December 21, 2012, but that doesn’t mean the end of the world. In fact, that calendar only began on August 11, 3114 BCE, about 4.5 billion years after the creation of the earth. It was not meant as a road-map to the cosmos. The real apocalypse is in the minds of those suffering from their own private ills in this world. Ever since Zarathustra spoke, people have had an alternative, better future to anticipate.
After writing a post on Natib Qadish, a modern revival of Canaanite religion in the United States, I received some comments from Lilinah of Qadash Kinahnu, another modern Canaanite religion revival. These movements are a fascinating development in an overly technological era — both movements have online resources that include serious scholarly treatment of ancient religions of the Levant. Both appear to be sincere attempts to get in touch with what modern religions seem to have lost. Both have heard the call of Balu.
In a society where universities seldom offer programs to study the Ancient Near East, people are starved to know about it. I realize that the field of study will never bring in the money that the sciences or finance do, but obviously there is something deeply satisfying about it. And students are hungry for it. Not only appreciated by those who start revivals of ancient religions, many of those who read more recent popular treatments are intrigued. Neil Gaiman’s American Gods was a New York Times bestseller. Although much belatedly, H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos has become a paradigm for many undergraduates I’ve met. I was reminded of this as I watched Stuart Gordon’s 2001 movie entitled Dagon. A relentlessly tense and macabre film, the Lovecraftian base assures a constant draw for those who hear the call of the ancient deities.
We love technology. I’m posting this entry on an internet where ideas are simply electrons forced into recognizable patterns. We can’t imagine what life was like before being able to communicate with people just about anywhere in the world instantaneously, and where we can live our entire lives without ever actually touching physical money. Over all the noise of technological progress, however, can be heard the distinct call of Balu — a call to a simpler era, pre-Christian, pre-Judaism, pre-Iron Age. It was an era when human destiny fell into the hands of ancient gods.
Podcast 17 addresses one of the prevailing orthodoxies of the ancient world: the relative lack of communication between regions. It is clear from evidence that continues to emerge that ancient cultures knew about and borrowed from each other. The most obvious of these exchanges across distinct cultures concerns Hellenistic and Semitic contact. The Greeks clearly borrowed from their Semitic neighbors, as Cyrus Gordon worked so hard to convey. Although still not universally acknowledged, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain that ancient societies were singular, isolated, and self-sufficient.
December’s edition of the Atlantic Monthly features a disturbing article by Hanna Rosin entitled “Did Christianity Cause the Crash?” What is disturbing about this article is not the insinuation that many conservative Christian groups have caused far more problems than they’ve solved (“guilty as charged”), but the utter duplicity of the movement. The deception begins with the claim of the Prosperity Gospel pundits that they are holding true to biblical principles. In reality they rewrite the Bible to make it fit their vision of personal gain at the expense of the weak and needy. You can hear the sounds of Amos and Micah being ground beneath their wingtip heels.
The Prosperity Gospel is a particularly virulent disease in the United States, a nation of incomprehensible contrasts. The clergy of the Prosperity Gospel (churches of this stripe are among the largest and fastest growing in America) demand tithes on the part of their sometimes poor but always hopeful congregants. Most of them are being set up for failure. But it will be failure with a smile. As I read Rosin’s article, I was saddened that a growing number of those buying into this “Gospel” are those among the exploited Hispanic community. The message they are being given is the worst kind of blasphemy. One such believer, according to Rosin, claimed “the rich are closer to God.” A message farther from the actual Gospels would be difficult to concoct.
Prosperity Gospelers, decidedly not mainstream Christianity in theological outlook, judge a book by its glitzy cover. Its leaders, often fabulously wealthy, hold out unrealistic hope to their gullible and disappointed followers. It is so easy when a congregant looses everything simply to blame it on a lack of faith. This bogus idea of material payoff for spiritual righteousness is not only dangerous, but it is redefining the religious scene in North America. The article follows the story of Fernando Garay, the leader of Casa del Padre, a Prosperity Gospel church. When asked by Rosin about buying a house (a sign of God’s blessing) he tellingly replied, “Ten Christians will say that God told them to buy a house. In nine of the cases, it will go bad. The 10th one is the real Christian.” Americans have a fondness for snake-oil and entrepreneurs. Now the hucksters are the ones claiming the right to define what Christianity really is. It is a religion that even Jesus would fail to recognize.
In the constant struggle of humankind against nature, we often find things out of place to our refined sensibilities. With the advent of autumn we frantically rake the fallen leaves into Brobdingnagian piles and anxiously await the colossal vacuum truck to come by and suck them all away. Leaf litter just doesn’t fit the suburban image. Or perhaps there is a dead tree that threatens to fall on our artificial habitat. We call the tree removal experts to have it taken out. All animals reshape their environment. We humans recreate it.
Long ago I argued that divinized trees in the ancient world do not necessarily represent Asherah. I stand by that assessment — asherahs were apparently constructed of wood, but it does not follow that all wooden cultic objects are asherahs — this does not meet the logical requirement of sufficient condition. Nevertheless, the book of Deuteronomy suggests that in times of necessity any tree might serve as an asherah (16.21), although this is soundly condemned. Perhaps the power of the tree represents the feminine vitality of the goddess. Like a tree, Asherah often outlives humans.
Photo credit to Christopher Chung
This picture appeared in today’s paper. A crew trying to remove an out-of-place tree near an expensive home had a little trouble as the tree pulled over the crane, and not vice-versa. Seeing the all too masculine crane truck dangling helplessly in the air while the tree holds its ground, I thought again of Asherah. I do sympathize the homeowners, but my sense of wonder is temporarily restored. Perhaps nature still has the means to prevent humans setting things in their own preferred order. Perhaps Asherah still lurks at the edge of the forest. Let’s hear it for the trees!
One of the questions frequently surrounding monotheism is that of angels. Surveys indicate that even non-religious North Americans, by far, believe in angels. So, where do they come from? In a monotheistic context where God is considered omnipotent what role could angels possibly fill?
Angels appear in ancient religions in medias res. Going back to the earliest attested religion, that of the Sumerians, we find winged divine assistants called apkallu. In a polytheistic world, gods could always use a little help. These divine beings, portrayed with wings, are sometimes called “angels” by modern commentators, and they do serve some of the basic functions of an angel, such as doing errands.
Other ancient polytheistic religions knew of differing classes of deities; not all gods were created equal! There were primordial deities, often old and retiring, and there were active ruling deities who received their authority from the primordials but who in fact ruled by might. Below the ruling gods were skilled-labor gods and messengers. It is from this class of messenger gods that angels eventually evolved. We don’t know that messenger deities were portrayed with wings, but in ancient times wings indicated speed — uninterrupted movement — so you could do worse than have wings if you were a messenger. The English word “angel” derives from the Greek term indicating a messenger. Indeed, by the time we reach the Hebrew Bible angels are often indistinguishable from humans.
The problem is that when monotheism developed during the Exilic Period, the Israelites had already become quite accustomed to having angels around. Before prophets showed up angels were often the means of learning the divine will. If there is only one god, what do you do with this tier of messenger deities? Demote them to angels! They are still supernatural, but not as powerful as God.
Probably under the influence of Greek Hermes, angels regained their wings to become the winged humans we know so well today. It is a mistake, however, to call all winged humans from the ancient world “angels.” Angels are the result of the religious evolution from polytheism to monotheism, and their ancient predecessors were truly gods.
This week’s Time magazine includes the periodic feature of the 50 best inventions of the year. Flipping through the pages looking at techno-gadgets that leave me vacantly spinning in my office chair, I was surprised to see that invention number 49 is the work of our hypothetical sky gods. The undulates asperatus cloud has been receiving high profile attention of late, and now it is seeded on Time’s greatest inventions list! When I last posted on undulates asperatus, it had been written up in Wired. Prior to that I had seen a feature on the cloud in the New Jersey Star-Ledger some months back. Having written a(n unpublished) book on weather terminology in the Bible, I have had my head in the clouds for several years now. To find the humble collections of condensed humidity making the news is a strange but welcome validation of my work.
Undulatus asperatus from Wikipedia, by Agathaman
Time resists bringing the divine into the description of the cloud, preferring the more neutral term “ominous” to describe undulates asperatus. After having spent several days under the blanket of a nor’easter here in New Jersey with its impenetrable gray clouds, I can appreciate how ominous thick clouds can be. The more I study ancient religions the more I am convinced that major gods primarily reflect the content of the sky. After all, gods were seldom seen in the fields and cities of antiquity, but the sky holds endless possibilities.
Perhaps some editor somewhere will stumble across my conviction that weather matters in the biblical world and will want to take a look at my book. If not, no worries. I’ll just be looking at the sky.
Yarihk once again makes the news as NASA announced yesterday that they have discovered a substantial amount of water on the moon. I’m still reeling as if I’d joined Yarikh at the Marzeah. Although the local paper only deemed it page 2-worthy, this is a paradigm-shifting discovery! The arid, airless, lifeless, dead rock daily racing around our world has suddenly blossomed with new potential. Water on the moon? It seems as unlikely as satisfactory jobs for all graduate students.
Students are generally surprised to learn that in the Ancient Near East the moon was often considered superior to the sun. Given our knowledge of astronomy and physics it is difficult to look behind the curtain to see that it is not self-evident that the moon reflects sunshine without the subsequent development of a scientific outlook. For ancients the moon provided the gentler light that illuminated night — when you really need some light anyway — and was responsible for generating dew, a necessary source of water in regions where summer rains are unheard of. The benevolent moon waxes and wanes, forming a perfect circle and, by degrees, the crescent shape of the horns of divinity, and finally disappearing completely to start the cycle all over.
At Ugarit Yarikh is a thirsty character in text 114. He marries a foxy Hurrian goddess in the myth of Nikkal, a princess much above his station, then he easily fades into the background from the dearth of textual sources. Some have suggested a lunar connection for El as well, the very head of the gods. If El was lunar, perhaps Yahweh also drove the moon. Whoever is in charge, however, thought to pack water for the journey and as we further explore our nearest astronomical companion we will discover that Yarikh is just as interesting as the denizens of Ugarit had suggested.
Ancient gods surround me these days. Surely part of it is due to having recently finished Neil Gaiman’s American Gods (I know I’m a few years late on this, but novel-reading time is at a premium even when teaching only part-time). Gaiman’s not the first to have taken on the theme of “what if ancient deities still survived?”. As a child I read Lester del Rey’s Day of the Giants with its science-fictionalized version of Ragnarok, and even earlier H. P. Lovecraft had resurrected Dagon and Cthulhu. Gaiman’s treatment, however, is contemporary and is a barometer of how the old gods are faring these days.
Dark and witty, Gaiman’s treatment is a fun-house ride through the fanciful concept that old-time gods and folk-heroes emigrated to American with their believers. The resulting adventure brings a multi-cultural mix of supernatural powers that end up mostly focusing on the Norse mythological cast. Same was true of del Rey — the Norse mythology reflects a stark world of raw power, betrayal, death and resurrection, that resonates with northern European experience. Anansi and Chernobog also take starring roles in American Gods, although the only ancient Near Eastern deities with any prominence in the story are the Egyptian Thoth and Anubis in supporting roles.
Casting an eye over the American landscape, this assessment is perhaps true to life. Ancient Near Eastern deities seem so distant and unfamiliar. Gods long dead. Despite recent movements to revive the worship of Mesopotamian or Canaanite deities, their powers seem to have dissipated at the middle of the first millennium B.C.E. as Yahweh gained a prominence he has never relinquished, and the Greeks and Romans paved over the graves of Ninhursag and Yarikh with European versions of the more prominent West Asian gods. Universities reflect this lack of knowledge with slowly dying departments of Ancient Near Eastern studies. Like Gaiman suggests, America seems to have gone after the more modern gods suited to our present-day lifestyle.
While driving through Utah some years back, I spotted a large rodent next to the road. Born with a need to announce automatically every land-animal I see while driving, I called out “there’s a marmot!” My wife, half-asleep, said “A Mormon? Where?” We were headed toward the Great Salt Lake with an ultimate destination of Dinosaur National Monument. Naturally we saw many more Mormons than marmots. The story of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has always fascinated me. The whole concept of the “Great Awakening” and “Burnt-over District” conjure images of apocalyptic vividness where nineteenth-century evangelists are shaking angry fists at the declining modern world around them and are warning of the imminent approach of an angry deity.
I naturally found it interesting when the paper declared yesterday that the Mormon Church has decided to back anti-homosexual discrimination legislation. This doesn’t mean the Latter-day Saints approve of the practice, just that they don’t want gays to be unfairly treated in the secular world. One of the implications of a changing world is that modern readers often lose sight of the fact that the world in which the Bible originated was a very different one than the one we inhabit. “Homosexuality” was not a lifestyle in biblical times, but that does not mean there were not men and women born gay. The real issue was the misplacement of “seed” that vital element that mysteriously led to new people. The only references to same-sex “love” in the Bible commend the depth of friendship. The only problem is where the seed ends up.
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is an etiology for the Dead Sea. The major crime of Sodom, as even Ezekiel directly says, was lack of hospitality, not homosexuality. The city that does not extend hospitality to the needy and the traveler is truly wicked. It is buried under fiery brimstone covered with stagnant water. I dipped my pinkie into the Dead Sea and touched my tongue when I was there (this might explain my current state of mind). The saline brew was gut-wrenchingly revolting. So as we parked beside the Great Salt Lake a couple decades later, I decided to repeat the experiment. I was disappointed; nevertheless, if salty lake basins are a sign of God’s wrath we really ought to wonder whether the salinity will lighten up just a bit more now that an act of human decency has occurred in Utah.
Enter Aardonyx celestae! A new dinosaur announced yesterday in South Africa is being hailed as a missing link in the sauropod chain of development, much to the chagrin of Creationists. I have to admit that I never outgrew my childhood fascination with dinosaurs, and when we purchased the life-like models for my daughter as she was growing up I secretly coveted them for myself. The rate of discovery among new genera of dinosaurs is between 10 and 20 per year, meaning that the maybe 20 different dinosaur types I knew as a kid has ballooned into well over 500 different species and 1,800 genera. Late at night I still hear the call of paleontology and I slip Jurassic Park into the DVD player and weep.
With each new dinosaur discovered Noah’s ark must evolve into a larger boat for some among the Creationist camp. After all Genesis says “two of every kind” lumbered aboard. The newbie this time is a proto-sauropod, a missing link between bi-pedal herbivores and their earth-shaking descendants who required four tree-like legs to support their immense weight. It seems that Noah must have been quite the engineer to handle all this displacement. And it is a good thing too — scientists predict that the new genera to be discovered represent only about 30 percent of the total, and the number will likely continue to climb for a century and a half yet.
Wikipedia proto-sauropods race for the top deck
So it seems that the God-of-the-gaps grows smaller while the ark grows larger. Of course, the dinosaurs might have evolved into all these different genera over time, but then, Creationists can’t allow for that, since it would admit room for evolution. And that seems about as likely as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints backing anti-discrimination laws against homosexuals!
Yesterday MSNBC reported that the Vatican has again called for a conference involving serious scientists to discuss the implications of astrobiology — life in space. Despite the mocking sneers of the media, growing numbers of serious thinkers are doing the calculations and scratching their heads. When I was a child, I was assured that earth-like planets elsewhere in the universe were virtually impossible, statically. Now we know of several rocky orbs circling distant suns. Our own sudden advances in technology have started some to think that if we raced from heavier-than-air flight to the moon in only 66 years, and from landline to audio implant in about a century, maybe other intelligent life could do the same? What would the implications be for the geocentric world of Genesis and the Gospels?
The Catholic Church and Science are hardly best buddies; frequently they are not even on speaking terms. No, the tide did not change to a warm embrace with the (centuries late) apology to Galileo or the sudden realization under John Paul II that evolution is “more than just a theory.” All one has to do is think of the issue of stem-cell research and the eagerly offered hand is suddenly withdrawn. But on the issue of aliens, perhaps the church can race ahead of the projected God-of-the-gaps, do an end-run, and be ready to embrace E.T. when he finally makes himself known.
Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful that the Vatican has embraced evolution and thumbed its Roman nose to the creationists. (They deserve even more than that!) I am glad they are considering the possibilities of extra-terrestrial life. There is, however, a nagging doubt in my mind that they may be coming to the conclusion that the late Larry Norman once did that “if there’s life on other planets, then I’m sure that he must know, and he’s been there once already and has died to save their souls.” What good is advancement in science if mythology refuses to budge? What would an extra-terrestrial priest look like? What if they don’t have blood to fill their chalices? Do they have trumpet-horns on their saucers to announce the second coming? Yes, let’s explore our universe, but let’s not forget to update our credibility meters as well.
Stretching back before the advent of writing, back before civilization itself began, people have shown reverence for their dead. Paleolithic era grave goods attest to care of the dead residing among the earliest strata of human behavior, and it is a behavior that continues to evolve to reflect the belief structures of the Zeitgeist. The idea of constructing cemeteries in a garden where family and friends might visit their departed is a relatively recent innovation. Increased population and concerns about epidemics led to the landscaped, garden-variety cemetery outside of populated areas in the 18th century. Before that graveyards could be located within the city itself, often near a church or sacred location.
While visiting Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, my niece asked me why people left pennies on gravestones (H. P. Lovecraft’s tombstone had one on it, and others around it). My thoughts went to Wulfila’s recent blog post on the Black Angel tomb in Iowa City and the pennies scattered there. I also recalled La Belle Cemetery in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin where a “haunted statue” was always richly endowed with pennies in her cupped hands. The specific form of penny offerings seems to go back to Benjamin Franklin’s burial, at least in America. A few years back while in Philadelphia, I saw for myself that people still leave pennies on Franklin’s grave in Christ Church Cemetery.
Franklin pennies (and a few nickles)
There is no universally accepted reason explaining why Benjamin Franklin should have been the first to have received such treatment — in fact, I would argue that it is much older than Dr. Ben.
Money to accompany the dead has a long history. Pennies on the eyes or under the tongue of the deceased originated in the need to placate the ferryman across the river of — what’s it called? — Oh, yes, the river of forgetfulness. The classical Greek form of this mythic character is Charon, the boatman who punted the dead across Styx. He required payment, and since coinage had been invented, it was a convenient way to pay. (Today the truly devoted might leave a credit card in the casket.) The ferryman must have his pay, as the movie Ghostship warns, but the idea is much older still. The earliest references to being poled across the river go back to ancient Sumer, the earliest known civilization. As soon as people became civilized they began to pay homage to the gloomy captain of souls.
While in Prague just after it opened to western visitors, my wife and I stopped by the famous Jewish cemetery where the tombstones are so tightly packed in that they are barely legible. My wife asked why so many of the tombstones had smaller stones on top, placed there as dedications. I recalled having seen stones on tombs outside Jerusalem some years back, and I even had a student bring me a stone from Israel to keep as long as I promised to put it on her grave after she died. This practice in its recent form is associated with Judaism, but again, it has ancient roots. The building of cairns, or piles of stones, is often associated with the Celts or the pre-Celtic inhabitants of the British Isles. On our many wandering through the highlands and islands we saw several Neolithic examples in Scotland, particularly in the Orkney Islands. The practice of putting stones atop the dead also goes back to ancient times. One plausible suggestion is that it was intended to keep the dead in their graves. A more prosaic conclusion is that digging deep holes takes more work than hauling over a pile of rocks.
No matter what the origin of the practice may be, one of the surest signs of civilization is care for the welfare of the dead. Today a penny is easily left, costs the bearer little, and creates a memorable image for all who follow.
It is a cold, windy New England day in November. You find yourself in Providence. How can you not visit the gravesite of H. P. Lovecraft? I have mentioned Lovecraft before, in my podcast on Dagon, but that brief citation does not give credit to a man whose life provides episodes that feel strangely familiar to me. Barely known as a writer in his own lifetime, Lovecraft had difficulty finding employment and had a fascination with ancient gods. Indeed, I discovered Lovecraft while researching Dagon for a serious presentation and soon students were telling me about the Cthulhu (I would not dare attempt to pronounce) Mythos and how I had only scratched the surface of his writing.
Lovecraft’s fascination with ancient gods brought new life to forgotten entities. Dagon, despite being a major deity of ancient Mesopotamia, would likely have been completely forgotten by all but professors of arcane mythology had not Lovecraft resurrected him, albeit in a fishy form. His fascination with the protagonists of ancient myths, nearly forgotten deities, clearly influenced Neil Gaiman in his American Gods, and has preserved for the modern reader some of the fascination with powerful, ancient forces that show the insignificance of humanity. I found reading American Gods while in Providence a very humbling experience. Lovecraft also gave the world Arkham, the asylum of Batman fame, as well as Miskatonic University.
Along with Melville and Poe, Lovecraft deserves a place of honor in the pantheon of American literary explorers. The assortment of gifts left for him at his tombstone, including a small cairn, pennies, a pen, and even a note reading “thank you for the ideas,” attests his local fame. The prominence of his books at neighborhood bookstores assured me that I was not the only traveler to breathe in the air that Lovecraft exhaled. My visit also brought to mind a story that a friend of mine started to write some years ago. It had something to do with ancient gods coming back to life, although my friend had never heard of Lovecraft or Gaiman. Lovecraft’s spirit, it seems, may still be alive and well in Rhode Island and in the minds of other residents of Arkham.
Rhode Island is often overlooked as the smallest state, a place seldom happened upon by accident, somewhere that one has to intend to go. Drawn by family, I made a trip to Rhode Island and serendipitously learned the lesson of Roger Williams. Roger Williams was the founder of Rhode Island, and, for those only familiar with the Southern Baptist movement, a rather unbelievably liberal Baptist. The founder of the first Baptist church in the nation, Williams was also the advocate of a form of religious freedom that is still railed against today by conservative Christian factions that wish to make America a “Christian nation.”
Roger Williams' first Baptist church (in the country)
We are accustomed to religious propagandists today telling us that the “founding fathers” were Christians just like they are (simply not true), and that America should remain a “Christian country.” Roger Williams, although not often spoken of in the same tier as George Washington or Benjamin Franklin, classifies as one of our founders and he was an outspoken advocate of conscience as the guiding force behind religion, not state or federally mandated compliance. Rhode Island was offered as a “shelter for persons distressed of conscience.” It was a state where a mind was free to follow its lead.
I confess to overlooking Rhode Island often. But as a refuge for “Papists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks,” it is the Dreamland of religious liberty. Progressive to the point of welcoming Jewish believers and Muslims, Williams went as far as to declare, “none [should be] compelled from their own particular Prayer or Worship, if they practice any.” Even the unbeliever was welcome. How far the “religious right” has fallen from this original ideal of a humble Baptist who envisioned a homeland where residents were free to believe as their conscience dictated!
The specific form of penny offerings seems to go back to Benjamin Franklin’s burial, at least in America. A few years back while in Philadelphia, I saw for myself that people still leave pennies on Franklin’s grave in Christ Church Cemetery. 
I recalled having seen stones on tombs outside Jerusalem some years back, and I even had a student bring me a stone from Israel to keep as long as I promised to put it on her grave after she died. This practice in its recent form is associated with Judaism, but again, it has ancient roots. The building of cairns, or piles of stones, is often associated with the Celts or the pre-Celtic inhabitants of the British Isles. On our many wandering through the highlands and islands we saw several Neolithic examples in Scotland, particularly in the Orkney Islands. The practice of putting stones atop the dead also goes back to ancient times. One plausible suggestion is that it was intended to keep the dead in their graves. A more prosaic conclusion is that digging deep holes takes more work than hauling over a pile of rocks.
