The buried soul : how humans invented death

Do cannibals exist? Is there evidence for contemporary human sacrifice? What are vampires? The Buried Soul charts the story of the human response to death from prehistory to the present day. This book is a radical adventure into the sepulchral world.

The Buried Soul is a worldwide exploration of the rites and rituals of death. Timothy Taylor’s search spans all of human history and interweaves the author’s own experience of bewildering deaths. By combining cutting-edge science, personal insight, and scholarship, The Buried Soul offers a radical voyage into sepulchral worlds.

“The Buried Soul, by British archeologist Timothy Taylor, is an extraordinary immersion experience . . . I had always supposed that archeology was as dry as the dust and bones it traffics in, as pedestrian as the catalogs it compiles. On the contrary, when expounded by a masterly storyteller like Taylor, it resembles psychoanalysis at its best...I haven’t space to illustrate how ingeniously Taylor assembles his interpretations, patiently working out the barely intelligible motives and beliefs of the creatures who became us . . . Wherever else you travel, you should consider a trip into ‘deep time’ with The Buried Soul.” —George Scialabba, Boston Globe

“Taylor makes sense of the ghastly and the seemingly insensible—African muti killings, human sacrifice, vampires, and triple-killed bog bodies. Archaeology was never so entertaining, and entertainment never so edifying. Taylor rescues cannibalism from its P.C. detention hall. He hauls ghosts off the Halloween novelty racks and reflects on their ancient status as disembodied souls: dangerous, utterly terrifying entities that had to be trapped, served, tricked, placated. There is not a trite thought or lazy idea in this book. Taylor is blazingly smart and deeply human.” —Mary Roach, author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

“Learned and impassioned.” —Adam Kirsch, New York Sun

"Do cannibals exist? It there evidence for contemporary human sacrifice? What are vampires? The Buried Soul 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 humans, in facing death, first understood what it was to be alive. Their dramatic confrontation with mortality survives in early accounts of sacrifices, in blindfolded bodies preserved in peat bogs, and in the elaborate burials of disabled or deformed individuals among Neanderthals and the people of the Ice Age." "Timothy Taylor has spent his life sifting through the relics of encounters with death. In The Buried Soul he gathers evidence of how the ancients saw their universe and asks how we came to have not only a sense of the afterlife but also an image of the soul."--Rabat de la jacquette "Do cannibals exist? It there evidence for contemporary human sacrifice? What are vampires? The Buried Soul 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 humans, in facing death, first understood what it was to be alive. Their confrontation with mortality survives in early accounts of sacrifices, in blindfolded bodies preserved in peat bogs, and in the elaborate burials of disabled or deformed individuals among Neanderthals and the people of the Ice Age." "Timothy Taylor has spent his life sifting through the relics of encounters with death. In The Buried Soul he gathers evidence of how the ancients saw their universe and asks how we came to have not only a sense of the afterlife but also an image of the soul."--BOOK JACKET. A global exploration and interpretation of the human rites and rituals of death spans human history as it discusses such topics as ancient rituals with reverberations in the present, human sacrifice, monumental sarcophagi, cannibalism, near-death experiences, vampirism, and the human separation of the body and the spirit that animated it. It was a long shot, and the arrow found its mark just as the man was turning to flee into the mountains.