Doodscultuur, vroege tribuutheffers, Algemeen

(1) Bruce G. Trigger, “Understanding early civilizations – A Comparative  Study”,  Cambridge University Press 2003; “People in all early civilizations believed that human beings have two broad types of souls – impersonal life-force that animated both and souls associated with intelligence and personality. These souls were assembled at or near birth and tended to separate at death but for both continued to exist. As did the god, they required sustenance form the human word to function properly both before and after death. Yet the fortunes of the dead varied form one early civilization to another. In Mesopotamia food offering merely sustained the intellect soul of the dead person, which was fathered to live n misery in the underworld, whereas elsewhere they empowered souls. In most early civilization, the dead served as intermediaries between their living descendants and the god, the souls of kings doing so on behalf of the entire society. Families feared that the souls of dead menders would punish them for misbehaviour or neglect. /

(2) Passim: It is tempting to interpret what happened to the souls of commoners after death, as understood and inferno early civilization, as a reflection of their social status during life. This would suggest that commoner in city-states; especially those that lacked hereditary nobility ought to have enjoyed a more favourable existence after death than awaited commoners in these states. Yet, among the Egyptians and Inca, the souls of communist were believed to fare better than the souls of commoners in city-states. As a result of status emulation, the beliefs of the upper classes appear to have risen rather than lowered commoners’ self-evaluation and expectations. In city-states, upper- and lower-class Yoruba, Mesopotamians, and Aztec expected less for themselves after death. The fates of dead Maya rulers, although seemingly dependent of nth results of their individual efforts to outwit the gods of the underworld, appear to have more resembled those of their counterparts in territorial states.”