Publisher's Synopsis
Do cannibals exist? Is there contemporary evidence for human sacrifice? What are vampires? This book charts the story of the human response to death from prehistory to the present day. At some moment in human history, our ancestors invented death. Retracing four million years, this book investigates the many ways that our descendents have come face to face and dealt with the idea of life. Many of these encounters have been passed down to us, accounts of sacrifices in early histories, rituals that have stood the test of time, bodies discovered in caves and bogs, and remains revealed by archeological digs. Through these insights into the past, Tim Taylor pieces together evidence of how our ancestors created their universe - both physical and mental - and, most importantly, the possibility of the afterlife.;This book also looks at the way that we respond to - and deny - death today. From cinema images to packaged food, the treatment of corpses and the growing science of ageing, "viseral insulation" is all-pervasive and, in Taylor's opinion, dangerous.;Combining history, archeology, philosophy, science and autobiography, this book is an exploration of the sepulchral world.
