OGT DAILY Day One Hundred and Twenty RITUAL III

I just can't get enough of this topic.  Ritual is everywhere.   As much as people like to say Mother's Day is a Hallmark invented holiday, it is a ritual I very much appreciate now that my children have grown and don't live under the same roof.  It gives them a good excuse to remember our connection and for me to remember my own to them.  

Ritual is a deeply embedded in our human and animal lives.   Last week the news reported the publishing of findings of a new species of homonim, or early human, Homo naledi in a cave south of Pretoria in South Africa.  Naledi means star in the local language because this early human, with a brain no bigger than an orange, was found in the Rising Star cave a site well known to spelunkers.
Cave explorers happened upon a crevice so narrow they had to send in only women researchers later on.  Within it were a vast collection of bones from some 2.8 million years ago.   From the numbers of bones and their pristine condition they have surmised that even our early near ape ancestors designated special grounds for burial ritual.  

But then I think of elephants and their devotion to their dead.  They are so socially oriented that when one of their kind dies the whole pack becomes upset and they engage in rituals like gently touching the bones, covering the body with leaves and staying with the body for weeks.   Who could kill such a creature?

Apparently chimpanzees mourn this way as well, which is not so hard to believe, but there is evidence that magpies, highly social birds, engage in burial rituals for their dead companions as well.

http://www.myguaranteedplan.ca/funeral-preplanning-news1