Dead Ancestors Research Articles

Rethinking Cultural and Spiritual Values in Biodiversity Conservation among the Konso People of South-Western Ethiopia

The concept of biodiversity has a strong link with nature and culture. This study aimed to investigate how the Konso people of southwestern Ethiopia use cultural and spiritual values to conserve biodiversity. The study took place between January to April 2019 and March to July of 2021. Data were gathered using: focus group discussions (9 FGDs), in-depth interviews (with 26 key informants) and observation. A thematic analysis method was employed for analyzing the data. According to the findings of the study, the people of Konso have traditions of using dinna (holy woodlands) as locations for cultural rituals to relate with nature. The dinna’s survival is dependent on the clan’s leader (poqqola) and the village’s chiefs (shorogotta). Cutting of dinna is strictly forbidden because it is believed to result in punishment by the karroytta (deity of dead ancestors). In the Konso culture, cutting the whole shelkata (Moringa stenopetala) tree at once is considered as taboo since it is believed that it brought famine to the society. The investigations also found out that modernization and religious organizations have deterred contemporary cultural and spiritual values of biodiversity conservation methods. As a result, collaboration among researchers and policymakers is a critical suggestion for sustaining and integrating traditional forest management techniques with modern forest conservation measures.

Cult of Dead Heroes: A Study on the Memorial Stones of Rajasthan

This study seeks to look at the origin and evolution of the practice of erecting memorial stones in the region of Rajasthan, India, during the early medieval period (600–1300 CE). It is observed that the idea of erecting such memorials, which is associated with the Rajputs particularly, became a widely accepted social practice among other sections of the society. This study attempts to analyse the content and subject matter of these stones and investigates why they were erected, for whom they were erected, who commissioned them, and how the family of the deceased viewed such memorials erected primarily to commemorate the dead. In fact, their erection was no less a grand affair; the people who commissioned the building of memorials paid homage and reverence to their dead ancestors and worshipped them according to their own socio-religious practices.

Serving red rice beer to the ancestors ca. 9000 years ago at Xiaohuangshan early Neolithic site in south China

Microfossil analyses of three early Neolithic pottery vessels from Xiaohuangshan, a middle Shangshan culture site in Zhejiang (ca. 9000–8500 cal. BP), revealed the earliest evidence of red rice beer brewing in China. This fermentation method involved the preparation of qu starter with Monascus mold, rice, and probably herbs; the brewing ingredients may have included mainly rice, together with Job’s tears, acorn, and lily bulb; and globular jars were used as fermenters. The dregs of the red beer may have been used for cooking with solid foods and served with them on plates at feasts. The globular jar analyzed was a part of the grave goods assemblage, suggesting that alcoholic beverages were sacrificial offerings to the dead ancestors. This mortuary practice, which involved rice-based fermented beverages, emerged in the early stage of rice cultivation under the wet-warm climatic conditions during the early Holocene, shedding new light on the driving forces of the origin and dispersal of rice domestication in China.

Ethnolinguistic Nominations of Mythological Figures (demonologems) in the Kalmyk Language

Demonology ideas that date from the oldest and most stable folklore and mythological traditions are emphasized in multiple ethnic cultures. An early form of religion directly coupled with mythology is represented by the black faith of the Mongolian and, more broadly, Central Asians, which evolved from many different beliefs bequeathed by ancestors (belief in the forces of space and nature, in the souls of dead ancestors, totemic ancestors, etc.). It made people perceive the world around as a set of elements dynamically influencing their lives where each element has its own origin, its own spirit somewhat independent, which they worship and appease by means of sacrifice, incantation and primordial magic. Mythologization as a certain tendency of consciousness was preserved throughout all historical stages shaping the ethnic Mongolian society, including the Kalmyks. The paper discusses the naming of mythological characters (demonologems or demonims), defines the groups of nominations for „lower mythology‟ characters with a surreal denotation that does not exist in real life. The study aims to feature the ethnolinguistic functioning of demonology glossary in the Kalmyk language and to identify its significance in modern linguistic consciousness. The glossary is basically denoted through ethnocultural stereotypical ideas about demonology born in the minds of native speakers. The most productive are the nominative groups of mythical creatures determined by their habitat, by deleterious effects that malevolent entities can have, etc. Evaluative nominations are based on demonologemes that have a negative connotation fixed in the language.

The results of the study conducted in 2022 at the necropolis medieval settlement Syganak

A mausoleum is a monument, a funeral building that included a chamber where the remains of the dead were placed. The Turkic peoples have built mausoleums over the graves of their dead ancestors for centuries. Mausoleums were considered the afterlife home of the dead. The erected structures make it possible to determine the social status of people buried in the mausoleum or to which class they belonged. After all, it is known that huge mausoleums were built for famous people, consisting of several rooms, with internal and external walls covered with decorative ceramics. The mausoleums had one or more burials. The graves studied and the materials found in them allow us to determine the status, outlook, way of life, traditions, religious beliefs and burial rites of the inhabitants. For this reason, in this article, we set the task of analyzing the studies conducted in 2022 at mausoleums No. 6 and No. 7 and introducing the data obtained during archaeological excavations into scientific circulation. Conducted scientific research within the framework of this topic made it possible to determine the features of mausoleums No. 6 and No. 7, construction technology and construction time. As a result of a comparative analysis with the mausoleums of this type from adjacent regions, the similarities and differences between the mausoleums of Syganak were determined. In addition, in the article we considered it appropriate to present the history of the emergence and development of mausoleums. In the article, when studying the little-studied history of the formation of mausoleums located in the middle reaches of the Syr Darya River, it is known that mausoleums arose on the basis of the ancient funeral tradition of nomadic peoples living in Central Asia.

Religious Beliefs in "Silambu"

Man is not only an animal that eats, dresses, and lives, but also an animal with religious knowledge. Only man, unlike animals, has discovered a superhuman power to protect himself from threatening evil and to obtain what he desires. How the ancient people came to think about religion is an unending debate among anthropologists and realists. He mentions that scholars like "Periluite" and others like "Thurkiyam" think that the fear that appeared in the people is the reason for the emergence of religion. The text says that there was a principle behind the fact that Veeduperu (Salvation), Meyporul (Reality), Illatthuravu (Give up material life), Vethanambikkai (Belief in Vedas), Nadukal Vanakkam (Salutation to Hero Stone), the number three, Veda and Velvi (Veda and Sacrifice), are considered to be religious as well as subjected to scrutiny and appropriate that being religious is wise. Therefore, Ilango has also indicated the state of meditation of the saints of Jainism. It can be seen in three places in Silapathikaram that the people of that time gave importance to the number three in their lives. Countless sounds are heard in the city of Madurai. Then it can be known that the Vedas have been used in a faith-based manner by the fact that they are recited and the sound is heard. During the Silapathikaram era, virtuous Brahmins lived all over Tamil Nadu. They recited the Vedas, made prayers, and performed their six types of activities, such as reciting, desiring, conducting prayers, and offering gifts. The Epic emphasises the excellence of the Vedas by praising the maadalan. "Gods are peerless warriors who do good." According to the Greek philosopher, Euchemerus, after the deaths of these heroes, the people began to worship them as gods. But he also accepts the worship of dead ancestors as the root cause of religion. Despite these differences of opinion, religion is a very deep subject that resonates with man's deep experiences. A place where the thoughts and dreams of billions of minds flash, explaining the religious beliefs of the Silapathikaram period.

This Way Back by Joanna Eleftheriou

Reviewed by: This Way Back by Joanna Eleftheriou Bryon Macwilliams (bio) Joanna Eleftheriou, This Way Back. In Place series. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2020. Pp. 270. Paper $23.99. At first blush Joanna Eleftheriou's collection of essays, This Way Back, seems an unlikely fit for a book series rooted "in place": much is written from a neither here nor there place. Then again, for Eleftheriou—the child of a Greek-Cypriot father and a Greek-American mother, raised in both the United States and Cyprus—liminal space is her place. "I was born with nostalgia in my blood," she writes (59), reminding readers that the word nostalgia comes from the Greek words nostos, homecoming, and algos, pain. Eleftheriou's nostalgia is a burden. After all, how much of a homecoming can there ever be when one has little sense of home? And how much pain must one carry beyond the wounds necessary for personal growth? The pain of duty to a father—his expectations, and his unfulfilled dreams. The pain of disapproval of a mother—and of mother and daughter's shared religion, Orthodox Christianity, with which the writer, a lesbian, is "incompatible" (11). The ache from "centuries-old collective memory" among Greek Cypriots and Greeks, generally—what Eleftheriou calls the "lament" of "our Greek nation's fall from its old glory" (107). Then there is the weight of obligation to dead ancestors—those who worked the land Eleftheriou inherited, and whose newly independent country was partitioned before she was born—and the longing for love that, for many years, Eleftheriou found merely in "the stars . . . the ocean, and words, my work" (139). Throughout the 17 essays in the book, Eleftheriou's first, it is clear that, for a long time, these and other forces conspired to tell the writer that her life—her self—could wait. [End Page 248] The book turns in large part on the family's decision, in the writer's early adolescence, to move from the borough of Queens, New York, to the father's village of Asgata near the Cypriot coastal city of Limassol. As a young adult Eleftheriou returned to the United States, where she is now an assistant professor of English at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. "It's taken decades to begin winding my Americanness back into my identity," she writes. "I had trouble making peace with the birthplace I'd left" (75). In one essay Eleftheriou—"desperate to make sense of a certain kind of beauty that I had just begun to see"—explores desire and permission through the life of the actor Melina Mercouri, for whom "pleasure was her life's guiding principle" (34). In another she wonders when duty to family ends, telling her father in an unsent letter: "I'm not sure I can find a man and marry quick enough to give you peace" (136). She watches from afar footage of Cyprus's first gay pride parade, concluding that "when teachers and priests and politicians said that the Greeks had suffered and deserved to have their human rights better protected" they meant "only certain Greeks—the Greeks who dated the opposite sex" (185). By the end of the book Eleftheriou hopes that telling her story can "offer liberation from this ghost that lives inside me: a sense of exile, a sense of not belonging, a sense of being trapped and unable to flee" (228). There is a sense, too, of Eleftheriou—a runner—trying literally to outrun her ghosts in the early mornings and moonlit evenings among the hills around Asgata. The publisher promotes the book as an essay collection that "reads like a memoir." But, while the essays tell different parts of the same stories, the book reads more like Eleftheriou's description, in a scholarly essay on nonfiction hybrids, of Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory (1983): The book is "divided into discreet parts" that revolve around ideas and "[only] loosely follow the chronology" of her life (Eleftheriou 2014, 42). Indeed, there isn't a clear sense of time in the book. The essays are arranged such that Eleftheriou's sexuality—"I am, indeed, the first gay Orthodox woman I know" (198...

Developing the Dead: Spirit Photography, Mormonism, and Noise

Developing the Dead: Spirit Photography, Mormonism, and Noise

Establishing Functions of Myth Through the Lenses of Euhemerism: Achebe’s Arrow of God in Focus

This article discusses the functions of myth in Achebe’s Arrow of Gods using Euhemerism as a reality measuring stick. The article considers the form and nature of myth through what it calls “definition of perspectives”. Using this definition of perspectives, the paper considers the myth-ritual perspective, the structural approach perspective and the functional approach perspectives in defining myth. Having established that Euhemerism is the believe that the gods are men deified for their good deeds , and that Africans believe they can speak and seek assistance from their dead ancestors , the article postulates four different functions the gods can perform. The paper argues that the gods are capable of protecting our forest and water bodies as well as be able to ensure peace and unity between and among people in a community. It further opines that not only do the gods have healing powers, and that the Priests serve as “medical doctors” in the African traditional communities, they equally ensure prosperity for the people who believe in them.

Ancient Beliefs and Traditional Singing of Ukrainians: Gender Differentiation

Gender differentiation in the Ukrainian song tradition is most consistently manifested in the ritual system, and partly – in the epic tradition and lyrical song tradition. The primary attention in the article is paid to the ritual sphere, first of all to the calendar cycle. The paper highlights in detail the traditional distribution of functions between men and women in pre-Christian rituals, during which, according to ancient ideas and beliefs, there was some contact between «that» (sacred) and «this» («profane») worlds.
 Males, or more precisely, boys who were members of the so-called «parubotchi gromady» (young men communities) took an active part in the rites only once a year – at the beginning of the calendar-time cycle that is, in winter (in ancient times this happened in the spring) during the rituals of the yards circumambulation. The main purpose of these actions was to wish good for each family from the dead ancestors for the coming year (verbal magic), and in return, the ancestors received gifts – sacrificial food from representatives of the living world to appease them for the next year.
 Women, as representatives of «this» world, maintained contact with otherworldly forces throughout the entire agrarian period from sowing to harvest, as well as in ceremonies associated with the birth of a child, a wedding, or escorting the deceased to the afterlife. In times of crisis in the development of nature and human life, they turned to their deceased ancestors for help. The magical instrument of this connection was the voice, which filled the ritual texts with specific ritual timbre-intonation.
 The gender distribution in other genres of Ukrainian traditional song is somewhat different. Thus, if in the epic songs the prerogative belongs to men, then the lyric song system is characterized by the joint and almost equal participation of men and women. However, it should be noted that the performers of social songs were predominantly men, and women sang family lyric songs. But the most common was a mixed lineup of singing groups. Even more this property is inherent in the late layer of lyrical song performance.
 The author also draws attention to the age aspect of the performance of ritual and non-ritual songs in the Ukrainian tradition

Scenes Of Tomb Owner’s Offerings to Ancestors in The New Kingdom Private ‎Theban Tombs

The New Kingdom private tombs in Thebes contain some scenes that represent the tomb owner presenting offerings to parents, brothers, grandparents, viziers, workers, and other relatives. This research studies the tomb owner offering scenes to his ancestors, as it is known that the tomb owner, as deceased on his tomb, is supposed to be the receiver of offerings from others and not the opposite. This study deals with six scenes in New Kingdom Theban private tombs. Most of these offering scenes were presented by the tomb owner to his grandparents. These scenes will be described and studied with the associated texts. Most of the scenes have been studied in the light of the piety of person towards his dead ancestors. The tomb owner represents himself in the world of the living offers to his relatives in the world of the dead. Thus, this offering was a part of mortuary cult of the dead. Inheritance is a reword for the performance of mortuary cult for the parents. These offerings were a way of communication between the living and the dead. In some cases, the tomb owner performed the so-called cult of Excellent or spirits of Re; persons who have supernatural existence and could affect the realm of the Dead.

The interdependence of ancestors and their descendants

ABSTRACT Ancestor worship, the communicated acceptance of the claim that dead ancestors influence and/or are influenced by their living descendants, has been documented in societies all over the world. Despite some researchers’ claims that ancestor worship was once universal, there have been relatively few attempts to explain how and why this behavior became so prominent in unrelated and geographically separated societies. A notable exception is the descendant-leaving strategy model that claims ancestor worship is a traditional strategy that had the effect of influencing the behavior of multiple generations of descendants of a common ancestor. This model describes the function of ancestor worship as promoting altruism and cooperation among descendants, even those who are only distantly related. Here we reframe the descendant-leaving strategy theory of ancestor worship in terms of fitness interdependence. In other words, ancestor worship is a descendant-leaving strategy that can explain interesting patterns of fitness interdependence, namely, ancestor-descendant and intergenerational cooperation, which led to the persistence of ancestor worship.

The Theory of the Major Theological Principles of Eight Anthologies

The creation of God is the belief that we will be safe by creating rituals and temples that are sacrificed by men who are afraid of the fury of nature. They also gave their hunting tools to the gods who created it and also established idolatry. Among the gods that were so, there is a dual ity of the small god. At first, the small deities were worshipped on the border of the village as a place where the dead ancestors lived as people. This is called the Guardian Goddess. The great deities are considered to be the deity of every deity shown in Thelly. The difference between the minor gods and the great gods does not appear to have been in the Sangam literature. However, it is a discretion to match the definition of today. In the society where the dead were usually the middle stones, the stones became worship. The study is the only small-sighted cult of the four temples that were built for the king, the deceased, the dead from the north, the life of the goddess, the king and the living.

Inscriptions on the Ancient Chinese Bronze Vessels “Bi Qi You” (Late Shang Period)

This is a commented translation into Russian of three inscriptions on the ancient Chinese bronze vessels from the late Shang-Yin period (end of the 2nd millennium BC). The inscriptions found on bronze vessels constitute a special kind of sources for the ancient history of China. These epigraphic documents provide important, otherwise unrecorded data on life in the archaic society. Contrary to the texts of classical works, the nature of the ancient Chinese bronze inscriptions is ritualistic. They were not intended to be “read” but served as a tool of sacred communication with the world of dead ancestors. In fact, their “readers” were otherworldly forces. The correct understanding of these bronze inscriptions requires a specialist commentary. The publisher includes the inscriptions on the late Shang-Yin ritual vessels into a wide historical and cultural context. It is hoped this context will facilitate the understanding of the inherent meaning of the inscriptions. The comments will outline the range of problems associated with the interpretation of this type of sources from the late Shang-Yin period.

KEY PERSONS OF HARVESTING RITUALITY OF UKRAINIANS (on the data of South- Western Historic-Ethnographic Macro-region of Ukraine)

The article is devoted to the analysis of the reaping rituality of Ukrainians to demonstrate its close relationship with Old Slavonic ones, and partly with Indo-European mental constants, which has a pre-Christian basis. Thus, memorial motifs (honouring of the dead ancestors for their assistance to living descendants of reach yield) extremely clearly occurs in the reaping rituality.

NONVERBAL CODES OF RITUAL DISCOURSE ON THE MATERIAL OF THE CALENDAR CYCLE OF CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS OF UKRAINIANS

Artificially created ideology and rites were imposed in Ukraineduring the Soviet Union's existence. The implementation of new rites is one of the main reasons for forgetting and losing of meaning of traditional calendar ceremonial holidays. In the conditions of modern economic, intellectual, scientific integration from each nation, special attention is required to its spiritual origins. The object of this article was the ceremonial discourse (calendar cycle), the subject of non-verbal codes of communication of ancient Ukrainians with the surrounding world, in particular, with supernatural forces, as well as with the spirits of ancestors during the Christmas holidays. Rites and rituals for an archaic man were a kind of form of communication with the outside world and with the afterlife; syncretic means of magical influence on the forces of nature, the dead ancestors, from which depended not only welfare, but also the survival of the clan. Non-verbal codes of the calendar rituals of the winter cycle are concrete actions of symbolic significance aimed at honoring the forces of nature and the spirits of the ancestors. The article describes the following symbolic rituals: making jewelry; bringing to the house Didukh; execution of magical protective actions, preparation of an obligatory dish – kutia, etc. Due to the fact that calendar rites and rituals have almost lost their significance, and first of all it concerns non-verbal codes, we consider the research of such codes as in calendar and family rites promising.

Partaking And Responsibility Of Zeliangrong Women In Gaan-Ngai Festival

Festivals are considered as safety valve. It removes the stress and strain of time and circumstances. In a year, the Zeliangrong people of Northeast India celebrate nine festivals based on agricultural operations of lunar calendar. The ways of life of the people are reflected in their various festivals and their social relevance is very great. They provide not only entertainment and social festivities to them, but also act as an integrating force for the community as a whole. Among the festivals, Gaan-ngai is the biggest festival of the Zeliangrongs and it lasts for five days. It is during the celebration that they perform rites and rituals, offer prayer to Tingkao Ragwang, the Supreme God for abundant harvest, well-being and general prosperity for the whole village community. They also bid ritual farewell to the dead ancestors. The cultural values, the aesthetic and creative senses, their love of beauty and color are expressed in the festival. Dances, folk songs, drum beating, shouting of hoi, traditional games and sports etc. are performed in the festival. Various items of delicious food and drink for the festival are prepared and consumed. The role of women is very great as they actively take part in the festival like their male counterparts. The girls of the dormitory perform the dances called Chapa Laam and the married women too perform dances on the fifth day. Food and drink of the festival are prepared by them only. Without women the celebration of Gaan-ngai festival is incomplete. Usually, the Gaan-ngai festival is celebrated in the month of December or January every year.

The Religion of the Ammonites: A Specimen of Levantine Religion from the Iron Age II (ca. 1000–500 BCE)

In the Iron Age II (ca. 1000–500 BCE), the region around Amman, Jordan, was home to a sociopolitical group known as the Ammonites (literally, “the sons of Ammon”). This paper investigates the religious traditions of the Ammonites through an analysis of the extant archaeological and textual sources. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the religious tradition of the Ammonites is a specimen of the broader religious tradition of the Iron Age II Levant. One distinguishing feature of Ammonite religion is the state god Milkom, whose name is probably an epithet for the god ʾEl, and who appears to be represented in a tradition of stone sculptures that have been found in the vicinity of Amman. The rest of the non-physical realm was understood to be inhabited by gods, goddesses, a variety of other non-human beings, and dead ancestors. Also visible in the extant evidence is a blending of local and foreign elements, especially those from Mesopotamia. Unique in this respect is the probable temple to the moon-god at Rujm al-Kursi, which most likely reflects a local tradition of lunar worship influenced by the iconography of the Mesopotamian moon-god Sîn.

Ambiguity and Ambivalence in Buddhist Treatment of the Dead

Every culture is concerned about what happens to people when they die. Even when the dominant religion/ideology provides an answer, an examination of what people actually say and do generally discloses various inconsistences, for example between what they claim to believe and what their actions (notably rituals) suggest that they believe or at least consider possible. In every traditional Buddhist society, adherents are supposed to believe in rebirth, a fate which only those who achieve enlightenment escape, and yet in both the Indian and the Chinese Buddhist traditions people worship and to some extent interact with their dead ancestors and in doing so preserve local pre-Buddhist beliefs and customs. In both traditions there are likewise inconsistencies between what people believe about themselves and what they believe about others, as well as beliefs about how to treat dead parents and how to treat dead strangers. Much in the observable mixture of beliefs and practices may be ascribed to the Buddha himself.

Transhumanizm – wizja nowego człowieka

This article discusses the subject of transhumanist philosophy. The author tries to show what vision of the world and man its creators propose. Transhumanism does not try to understand the nature of man; on the contrary, it wants to change it Transhumanists believe that we have the right to use science to interfere in the biological nature of man in order to become transhumans – beings who thanks to technological evolution, genetic engineering, cybernetics and biotechnology will have an infinitely long life, free from suffering and limitations. The precursor of this trend is Nikolai Fyodorov, who in the nineteenth century created the “philosophy of a common task”. He based it on a belief that death is immoral, it should not exist, and people should do everything they can to become immortal and resurrect all their dead ancestors, because it is their moral duty, for it is thanks to them that they live in the world; it is also in accordance with the will of God. Contemporary transhumanism derives also from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and his concept of “overman” and is divided into several trends: extropianism, singularitarianism, bioethic abolitionism, postgenderism, immoralism and anarcho-transhumanism. In connection with transhumanism, there are many ethical dilemmas, including the problem of individual freedom, human dignity, the right to interfere in nature, sexual ethics and issues related to the technological exclusion of the oppressed groups described in the article.