Synonyms
Definition
Death – The action or fact of dying or being killed; the point at which the processes that maintain an organism alive no longer function. Dead – Deprived of life; opposed to alive and living; reduced to that state of a being in which the organs of motion and life have irrevocably ceased to perform their functions.
Introduction
Awareness of mortality is a human universal, evidenced by the pervasiveness of mortuary behavior and funerary rituals across human cultures, dating to Neanderthals over 40 ka. Humans exhibit diverse cultural variation in mortuary practices, in which treatment of dead bodies ranges from their consumption to the placement of them as far above or below ground as possible (Andrews et al. 2006). Moreover, compassionate behavior toward dying individuals is often regarded as a uniquely human trait, though recent reports of reactions to death and dying in nonhuman animals highlight the value of adopting a comparative...
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References
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Bonnin, N., Piel, A.K. (2016). Nonhuman Reactions to Death. In: Weekes-Shackelford, V., Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_559-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_559-1
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