Volume 25, Number 15 · October 12, 1978
Death and Its History
By Lawrence Stone
L'Homme devant la mort fall of 1979)
by Philippe Ariès
Editions du Seuil (Paris), 642 pp., 69F (knopf will publish an English translation by Helen Weaver in the
Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present
by Philippe Ariès, translated by Patricia M. Ranum
Johns Hopkins University Press, 111 pp., $2.45 (paper)
To judge by the archaeological evidence, it seems clear that, in one respect at least, Freud was wrong. The discontents of civilization seem to have been focused not on the suppression of the id but rather on apprehensions about the prospects and nature of life after death. Some of the most gigantic constructions, some of the most splendid and extravagant works of art, some of the most complex rituals have all been devoted to the interment, housing, and equipping of the dead, in preparation for the journey of the soul beyond the grave. By 500,000 BC, Peking man was already burying his dead with ceremonial ritual. By 50,000 BC, burial rituals were highly developed, and by 7,000 BC ancestor worship was flourishing at Ur.
Review, 6534 words
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