Strange Customs and Taboos

In 2001, bits of stone etched with intricate patterns were found in the Blombos Cave east of Cape Town on the southern African shores of the Indian Ocean. Scientists were surprised when the chunks of stone were dated at 77,000 years old, indicating that ancient humans were capable of complex behavior and abstract thought thousands of years earlier than previously expected. In Europe, thousands of sites have been excavated and artifacts unearthed that prove that what would be considered modern behavior existed there about 40,000 years ago. From everything that we understand about human evolution, certain forms of behavior were already being accepted as customs and certain actions judged as taboos even in those earliest of times.

Customs are those activities that have been approved by a social group and have been handed down from generation to generation until they have become habitual. However, many customs vary from culture to culture, and those who visit other countries may suddenly discover that the simplest of customary actions in their own society may be misinterpreted as improper in another. For example, whether they are being introduced to someone for the first time or greeting an old friend, men and women in western nations are accustomed to shake hands. While the clasping of hands is intended as a gesture of friendship by Westerners, the people of many Asian countries may be alarmed by the boldness of a stranger who extends a hand, for they prefer to bow as a sign of goodwill.

Some travelers to foreign countries have also discovered much to their dismay that even the most innocent of hand gestures in their home culture may be considered offensive in another. It must soon become apparent to any fairly objective observer that the traditional values and customs of one culture may be considered very strange by another.

When an action or activity violates behavior considered appropriate by a social group, it is labeled a "taboo," a word that we have borrowed from the Polynesian people of the South Pacific. An act that is taboo is forbidden, prohibited, and those who transgress may be ostracized by others or, in extreme instances, killed.

While the marriage of near-blood relations is prohibited in contemporary civilization, in earlier societies it was quite common. The ancient gods of Egypt, Isis and Osiris, brother and sister, provided an example for royal couples, as pharaohs commonly married their sisters. The Hebrew patriarch Abraham took as a wife his half-sister, and Abraham's nephew Lot committed incest with his own daughters.

Polygamy, the marriage of one man and several women or one woman and several men, is prohibited in modern civilization, but there are still religious groups in nearly every nation who justify plural marriages as being ordained by the deity they worship. The history of every modern culture is replete with accounts of kings, caliphs, emperors, and patriarchs who had numerous wives. The great Solomon, the prototype for the wise ruler and credited with writing some of the world's greatest love poetry, is said to have had 700 wives and 300 concubines.

Adultery, an act of infidelity on the part of a married individual, is one of the most universal of the taboos. The code of Moses condemned both parties involved in the act to be stoned to death. The Hindu religious doctrines order both man and woman, humiliated, mutilated or killed, depending upon their caste. In ancient Egypt, the male offender was castrated, and the woman's nose was cut off. In ancient Greece, the guilty pair might be killed by being dragged behind horses or starved. As the Greek civilization matured, adulterers were seldom killed, but they were deprived of all public privileges and sometimes covered from head to foot with wool to render their guilt easily visible by others. The laws in Old Scandinavia permitted the offended husband to castrate his wife's lover and to kill his spouse.

While adulterers may still be dealt with quite harshly in many societies around the world, in most Western nations the act of infidelity is regarded with great tolerance. Men and women who have been unfaithful to their spouses are seldom ostracized by the public at large, and adultery by one of the marriage partners is no longer considered necessary as grounds for divorce.

There are few universal taboos, for societies continue to evolve. Acts that were considered forbidden at one time have developed into an acceptable social activity. For example, seeing a couple kissing in public would seldom raise an eyebrow today, but in the Puritan New England of the 1690s, such a harmless act would have sent the man and woman to the stocks and public humiliation. On the other hand, kissing a woman in public might still get a man jailed or fined in many of the Islamic nations in the Mid-East.

As the world grows smaller because of modern transportation and its diverse inhabitants encounter people from different cultures more often than ever before in the history of the human species, it becomes increasingly difficult to condemn one person's custom as another's taboo. Within a nation, such as the United States, which has always endeavored to maintain a democratic, pluralistic society, an influx of immigrants from Asia and Africa, which began in the 1970s, has made the task of balancing cultural variety with traditional American mainstream values more and more difficult.

Barbara Crosette, writing in the March 8, 1999 issue of The New York Times, tells of a refugee from Afghanistan who was arrested in Maine when he was seen kissing his baby boy's genitals. The father was exhibiting a traditional expression of love that had long been practiced in his culture, but to his neighbors and the police, he was abusing his child. In another instance, Cambodian parents were accused of child abuse by teachers and social workers because of their traditional cures of placing hot objects on their children's foreheads during an illness.

In this section, the fascinating evolution of the customs and taboos surrounding courtship and marriage, hospitality and etiquette, and burials and funerals is explored. While some of the customs of the past may seem amusing or quaint, primitive or savage, certain elements of such barbaric acts as capturing one's bride have been preserved in many traditions is still practiced in the modern marriage ceremony.

Delving Deeper

Armand, Denis. Taboo: Sex & Morality Around the World. London: W. H. Allen, 1996.

Crossette, Barbara. "When One's Custom is Another's Taboo," The New York Times on the Web, March 6, 1999. [Online] http://www.nytimes.com.

Fielding, William J. Strange Customs of Courtship and Marriage. London: Souvenir Press, 1961.

Gelber, Carol. Love and Marriage Around the World. Brookfield, Conn.: Millbrook Press, 1998.

Hunt, Morton M. The Natural History of Love. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959.

Walker, Barbara G. The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983.

Courtship and Marriage

Many anthropologists and social historians have expressed their views that early humans practiced polygamy (one man with several women in the marriage union) or polyandry (several men with one woman). In either case, quite likely the women involved in the union probably had been captives before they were wives.

Although these marital circumstances may have existed for quite some time among early humans, there are a number of reasons why neither polygamy nor polyandry could have survived as universal or general practices. For one thing, some societies practiced infanticide, killing primarily female infants, and creating a scarcity of women. For another, among those tribes and nations who were constantly at war with each other, there would inevitably be a scarcity of men in proportion to the women. And even though the women of the conquered foe were usually considered among the spoils of war, more were killed in the bloody battles than were dragged off as unwilling mates of the victors. Regardless of the reasons for the disproportion between the sexes, they would lead to monogamy, the marriage of one man to one woman—marriage as it most commonly exists in modern civilized societies. In communities where men were scarce, a woman would try to hold the affections of one man to be assured of his protection and a constant supply of food. In those tribes or societies where women were in short supply, a man would want to be assured of at least one woman whom he would not have to share.

Some social historians argue that children presented the greatest incentive toward monogamy. Among many primitive tribal peoples even today, a marriage is not solemnized until the first child is born, and if no child is born the man is at liberty to leave the woman. Biologists have long noted that among the lower animals the natural instinct is to protect the young and supply food for their subsistence.

Before humankind began to gather in clans and tribes, what passed for courtship was likely a raid on a distant group of humans that resulted in the capture of a woman who was forced to participate against her will in an instant marriage. True courtship practices between the sexes did not exist to any great extent, and feelings of fondness or affection, if they entered into the equation at all, resulted from compatibility extended over a period of time. As the human species became more mannered and various religious rites began to be observed, young men and women sought to make themselves attractive to non-family members of the opposite sex who resided near them in the same village or series of villages. Rules of exogamy, which denied marriage between persons of the same bloodline, and the laws of endogamy, which prohibited marriage with any persons except those of the same bloodline, arose to define the pool of eligible mates from which young people could choose.

Anthropologists and various scientists of social behavior theorize that from the earliest tribal gatherings, young people have hoped to attract favorable attention to themselves as potential marriage partners by spending a great deal of time in ornamenting, mutilating, painting, and tattooing themselves, much as they do in contemporary times.

In the early developmental stages of courtship, those tribal cultures that permitted their young to have some role in the selection of their mates might dictate that if there were two or more suitors for the hand of a woman, the men would have to wrestle and fight for the opportunity to become the victorious husband. These struggles were seldom to the death, but were in keeping with the custom among various peoples of forcing young men to undergo tests of endurance before granting them permission to marry. The underlying principle was that no man should have a wife until he has proved that he is able to protect her.

Capturing a Bride. Courtship by capture contributed its share of customs to the rituals of modern marriage. The screams, tears, and struggles of the bride among various peoples are known to be merely a part of the marriage routine; yet they are considered absolutely essential to show her bashfulness and modesty. The conscious or unconscious simulation of capture as retained in later systems of marriage appears to be due to a much earlier concept of modesty and delicacy. Even after the establishment of Christianity had abolished marriage by capture throughout all of Europe, the Anglo-Saxons persisted in simulating the capture of the bride.

Among the Arabs of the Sinai peninsula, a girl acquires a permanent reputation of chastity and modesty in proportion to her tears and her struggles of resistance on her marriage day. In many Irish traditions, a marriage is considered scarcely legal unless the bride attempts to escape and the bridegroom overtakes and "captures" her. A custom in Wales requires the relatives of the bride to grab her as she reaches the church door and run off with her, forcing the bridegroom and his party to follow in pursuit. When the stolen bride is recaptured, she is at once handed over to the groom. A popular superstition arising from this tradition is that whoever of the groom's friends caught her will be married within the year.

Buying a Bride. Marriage through purchase was quite likely the next stage in the evolution of courtship. The transition from marriage by capture was much more peaceful a manner to gain a bride for a young man. In earlier times when a bride was stolen from a village by men from another tribe, members of the captured woman's clan would set out to avenge their loss. Perhaps after centuries of such violent reprisals, some unidentified wise man or woman suggested that instead of fighting and chancing people being killed, why not have the bridegroom offer compensation to the parents of the daughter that he had stolen from them? Perhaps after a few more centuries had passed, another wise man or woman suggested that the potential bridegroom simply buy the bride without going through all the effort of kidnapping her. In the traditions of a wide variety of peoples from the nomadic Jews and Arabs to the Native American tribes, a beautiful daughter became a valuable asset. In later years, a variation on marriage by purchase united the feudal kingdoms of Europe.

Perhaps even more common than buying a bride was the ancient custom of gaining a wife by working for her father for a certain period of time. Such an exchange of a prized daughter for an agreed-upon term of labor was practiced among many of the early societies and tribes of America, Africa, and Asia. Many are familiar with the Old Testament story of how Jacob worked 20 years for his uncle Laban to gain Leah, a bride whom he did not want, and Rachel, whom he loved (Genesis: 29, 30).

Among many early peoples, valuable presents were given to the parents by the bridegroom instead of a monetary payment. In Japan, it was the custom of a suitor to send certain previously stipulated gifts to the parents of the young woman whom he wished to marry. If the initial gifts were accepted, negotiations would begin to discuss the marriage agreement.

The prospective groom in many Native American tribes exchanged horses for his bride. The fathers in African tribes considered it proper to exchange cattle for their daughters.

The word "wedding" hearkens back to the time when men purchased their wives. The wed was the money, horses, or cattle that the groom gave as a pledge to acquire his bride from her father. From wed is derived the later idea of wedding or pledging the bride to the man who promises to provide her future security.

The spread of Christianity throughout Europe dealt a fatal blow to the custom of marriage by purchase and brought about a more wholesome attitude toward women, as well. But it required several generations before the civilized world was largely freed from the demeaning customs of wife purchase and woman barter, although it is known that in some more primitive regions of the world, such practices continue today.

Infant Betrothals. Among early tribal cultures, betrothals were commonly arranged by parents between their infant daughters and their future husbands, sometimes even before the girls were born. Infant males also had their brides selected for them by their families, most often with a girl from a family with whom an alliance would be profitable. Among those societies in which people arranged the marriages of their children in infancy, the betrothals were considered absolutely binding.

For most of the Polynesian people, the father had absolute power of life and death over his children, and he could promise his infant children in marriage to whomever he wished to suit his own ambitions. Many African tribes practiced infant betrothal.

The Fiji islanders arranged for their children to be married when they were three or four years old. A ceremony was performed for the children at that time that remained binding upon the bride and groom when they became mature. Such types of infant marriages were also common in India and among the tribes of New Guinea, New Zealand, and Tahiti.

In the old traditions of certain Eskimo tribes, as soon as a girl was born, a man who wanted her for a wife went to her father and made an offer of marriage. If the husband-to-be was a child, his father acted on his behalf and made the offer of marriage to the infant girl's father. If the offer was accepted, a betrothal promise was given that was considered as binding as the marriage ceremony, and the girl would be delivered to her husband when she had reached the proper age.

Mutual Love. Mutual love, wherein members of the opposite sex are able to determine their marriage partner based upon emotional feelings, could not develop until the time when humans began to establish themselves in tribes and clans and attained a certain amount of stability in their social environment. While the primary impetus of tribal humans was still survival, periods of leisure time developed by the process of banding together and developing divisions of labor. It was at that level of civilization that men seeking a mate began to abandon courtship by kidnapping or conquest. It was no longer necessary to steal a bride from another tribe and risk retaliation and death. Villages were growing larger, and there were eligible women available from clans with which political or religious alliances had been formed.

In those early days of building permanent social structures, men and women began to devise various ways of making themselves attractive to the opposite sex by ornamenting, mutilating, painting, and tattooing themselves. It is also likely this elementary level of romance consisted of two people sneaking away from their clans at night for some privacy; such forms primitive expressions of mutual attraction began to alter in dramatic ways the ancient customs of courtship.

Since primitive times, the underlying principle of courtship has been that no man may have a wife until he can prove that he is able to protect her. If two men were attracted to the same woman, the one who won her hand might first have to win a competition of physical prowess. In many societies, the potential groom was forced to undergo tests of endurance to prove his ability to guard his wife and their family from danger. Such customs survived in many cultures for centuries, and while few suitors today engage in feats of endurance to win their brides, it is not uncommon for contemporary women to select the stronger suitor, perhaps yielding on an unconscious level to the ancient instinct of self-preservation.

In the early days of transition from marriage by abduction to relationships developed by individuals with a mutual attraction for one another, most marriages were arranged and wives could be purchased. The evolution of romance would create great conflicts with these old traditions.

According to many social historians, the Greeks "invented" love in the Golden Age of Greece (about 480 to 399 b.c.e.). The Greeks gave love two names: eros (physical love) and agape (spiritual love). Yet for all its familiar aspects, love in classic Greece was still quite different from the concept of mutual attraction between man and woman that serves as the standard for marriage in the modern Western world. Marriages were still arranged by parents, and a solemn betrothal almost invariably preceded the actual marriage.

For centuries, marriages in Europe continued to be arranged for monetary, religious, and political advantages. Those couples who found themselves attracted to individuals other than the mate chosen by their parents were forced to take matters into their own hands and defy family, society, and sometimes their religious traditions.

Elopement. It was not until the ninth century that women in Europe began to gain the privilege of choosing or refusing their husbands according to their own judgment. Although it is known from biblical accounts, mythology, and legends that love between man and woman existed long before this period, there had been little chance of mutual love existing when marriage by capture and marriage by purchase were the prevailing methods of courtship. Once women began to accept the idea that they could have a say in the selection of a spouse whether or not her parents, clan, or church approved, the practice of a couple running off together (eloping) was born.

Quite likely, however, the tradition of a young woman eloping with the man of her choice began when marriage by purchase was still a grim reality. To avoid marrying a man who was able to pay the bride-price her parents demanded but who personally disgusted her, a young woman would run away from her parents and elope with the man she really loved.

Obviously elopement could never have thrived in primitive societies. Women were guarded too closely, and their parents arranged marriages to suit their own purposes, caring nothing about the wishes or happiness of the girl.

Hope Chest and Dowry. The "hope chest" that many modern young women still maintain is largely a social relic that hearkens back to the old custom of the dowry. The dowry derived from the even older custom of marriage by purchase and was a way of compensating the husband as the newlyweds began their life together.

In ancient Greece, once a betrothal had been announced, the dowry amount of the bride was settled, and her social position as a married woman depended largely upon the value of her dowry. On some occasions, the daughters of poor parents in Athens were granted dowries by the city-state or by wealthy private individuals.

Among many European cultures, it was tradition that a young woman should make every bit of household linen that went into her hope chest to ensure happiness for her marriage. In old Romania, it was once customary for girls as young as five to begin working on their bridal finery. As each article was completed, it was placed carefully away in the hope chest until the time when a proper suitor appeared.

In the Europe and Great Britain of only a few generations ago, wardrobes and closets in which to hang clothes were uncommon, so chests of various sizes were used to store away household linens and wearing apparel. In most homes there would be one chest set aside for the daughter, and into this chest she would place the handmade linens and other items she would use one day in "the home of her hopes."

The Lovers' Kiss. Some anthropologists theorize that the origin of the kiss of affection is to be found in a mother's caresses and gentle nibbles on her child's body. Out of these maternal caresses grew the kiss of feeling and reverence as known today. However, the act of kissing one's sweetheart on the mouth as a form of affection did not develop until comparatively late in the evolution of love.

Among Semitic people, a kiss on the cheek has been considered a traditional form of blessing or greeting for centuries. Some ancient Romans kissed a person's eyes or mouth as a form of greeting, but it was done in a cursory manner. Roman husbands kissed their wives on the mouth at the end of the day, but their motive was not at all romantic. They were checking their spouses' breath to see if they had been sitting around drinking wine all day.

Kissing the hand or the foot or even the ground on which some royal personage would walk was deemed a mark of respect and homage in ancient times, but scholars of social customs cannot trace the kiss on the lips as a form of affection between lovers ever occurring in antiquity.

One of the earliest definite instances of kissing as a form of love and affection appears to have developed in Tours, France, in the sixth century, when it became fashionable for a young man to give his betrothed a ring as a symbol that he was bound to her. In addition, he would gift her with a pair of shoes, to indicate his subjection to her, and a kiss on the lips as a seal of his affection.

In France, the kiss as a form of affection between sweethearts developed rapidly and soon found a permanent place in courtship and love. When social dancing become popular, almost every turn on the dance floor ended with a kiss. From France the kiss spread quickly all over Europe.

Until after World War II (c. 1945), kissing one's sweetheart on the lips was largely a Western habit, and most Asians were strangers to the practice. In the years before the lovers' kiss was demonstrated throughout the world by means of Western motion pictures and military personnel, a kiss in Samoa was a sniff in the air beside a sweetheart's cheek. Polynesians showed affection by rubbing noses together—as did the Laplanders and the Eskimo. Neither the Chinese nor the Japanese kissed on the lips. Until quite recently in the evolution of the customs and taboos of love and marriage, it was only in North America and Europe that the kiss was an important element in courtship.

Exchanging of Gifts. Throughout all of the history of courtship, it is likely that the presentation of gifts by the groom-to-be to the object of his affections or to her father is one of the surest methods of winning approval— and in earlier cultures the idea of a lavish betrothal gift meant a great deal more than it does today. In times past, the suitor felt that part of himself was being given to his beloved and her family.

In Japan, the sending of presents to the bride by the groom is one of the most essential aspects of the marriage ceremony. Once the gifts have been received by the bride and accepted, the marriage contract is considered complete and neither party can withdraw from the union.

Among many Native American tribes, the suitor was expected to bring gifts of horses, hides, or any item that might be esteemed to the woman's father as an indication of his prosperity and his ability to care for the man's daughter in a marital relationship.

A certain aura of romance has centered around flowers since early humans began to notice the beauty of nature and developed the aesthetic sense necessary to draw correlations between the appeal of a flower and the attractive qualities of one's beloved. It was a custom among the ancient Greeks for two lovers to wear flowers in full bloom to indicate a love newly awakened. Once the lovers had exchanged their engagement vows, they wore the same kind of flower in their hair as a public emblem of their betrothal.

In Indonesian Timor, a woman bestows the highest mark of attachment upon her lover when she gives him the flower garland from her hair. Among the Polynesians, men and women alike wear flowers behind their ears when they are in love. The flower, it seems, has been the quintessential gift between lovers in many cultures for many centuries, and it is the considerate suitor of today who remembers to call upon his sweetheart bearing a bouquet of flowers.

The Engagement Announcement. While it is still considered good relations for a young man to obtain the formal consent of his sweet-heart's parents before asking for her hand in marriage, for most modern couples in the United States, Great Britain, and Europe that particular old custom is seldom observed. Today, once a man and woman have decided to marry, there is usually the presentation of an engagement ring to the woman, and as a couple they simply make an announcement of their intentions to family and friends.

While it is not uncommon in contemporary society to celebrate an engagement with a dinner party, in many earlier societies the occasion of a betrothal required a feast of great festivity and celebration. Among certain peoples, the betrothal was not considered binding until a feast had been given and both families had eaten together.

Among many of the Afghan tribes, no man may even see or speak to his promised wife from the time of betrothal until marriage. In Greece, the rings for betrothal are exchanged in the priest's presence, and the engagement may then not be broken without the consent of the priest. Following the betrothal, the engaged couple may not see each other or talk to each other until the day of the wedding.

In old Russia, it was considered a great disgrace for a man to propose directly to his sweetheart. Until the two sets of parents had settled the amount of the dowry and selected the exact day of marriage, the prospective bridegroom was strictly forbidden to see his betrothed or even venture near her home. Some scholars have suggested that customs such as these forbidding the interaction of the intended marriage partners before the day of the wedding hearkens back to even earlier times when the bride's parents might have feared that they would be cheated of her bride-price if their daughter decided to elope with her betrothed before the wedding day.

While most modern couples continue to see one another until the day of the wedding, the old superstition persists that if the bride permits herself to be seen by the groom before the actual time of ceremony on the day of the wedding, the marriage will be blighted with bad luck.

The Bridal Shower. Many consider the custom of the bridal shower to be one of the more charming of the old traditions handed down to modern brides from centuries past. In contemporary times, the bridal shower is essentially a social occasion during which friends and relatives of the bride wish her well on her approaching marriage and present her with gifts.

The custom of the bridal shower grew out of earlier times when a poor woman's family might not have the money to provide an acceptable dowry for her, or, in some circumstances, when a stubborn father refused to give his daughter her dowry because he did not approve of the marriage. In such situations, friends of the woman would gather together and bring her gifts that would compensate for the dowry and allow her to marry the man of her choice.

The Bridal Dress. The bride in the Western world traditionally wears a gown of white, as an emblem of purity. In many Asian countries, however, the bride may wear a black bridal dress.

Even before it denoted purity, white represented the color of joy. The early Romans always wore white on occasions of rejoicing, such as birth and feast days. The white rose was an emblem of joy among the Greeks. The aboriginal inhabitants of Patagonia in southern Argentina painted their bodies white on every joyous occasion. The whole bodies of the bride and groom were covered with white paint on the eve of their wedding ceremony.

Some social historians believe that the tradition of the bridal veil originated in the covering of the bride in ancient times to show her submission. Others believe that the veil originated in sexual shyness in women and the attempt to hide from view. Among some early peoples, the bride was draped completely in a shroud that she wore during the marriage ceremony. Once the wedding ritual ceremony was completed, she was uncovered and the shroud was placed in a chest. It would be taken out again only when the woman was ready to be buried.

It is well known that among various ancient peoples it was customary to keep the bride hidden from her future husband until the day of the wedding. In Egypt, for instance, the groom was not permitted to see the face of his bride until the marriage ceremony when he engaged in the solemn ritual of uncovering her visage. The same sort of custom was observed among the Arabs, the Indians, and among other European and Asiatic peoples.

It has been a custom for brides to wear gloves since the time of ancient Egypt. In Egyptian hieroglyphics, the glove is the symbol of the hand. The word itself signifies to give, to honor.

The "something blue" that brides are told to wear during their wedding is a tradition borrowed from the ancient Israelites when young women were advised to place upon the borders of their fringed garments a ribbon of blue, the color of purity, love, and fidelity. According to the old bridal saying, the bride is to wear: "Something old and something new, Something borrowed and something blue."

The Wedding Procession. Most of the traditional wedding observances that are honored today in North America originated in Europe and the United Kingdom during the Middle Ages. Then as now, the ushers enter first, escorting guests and relatives to appropriate seating before the altar.

The bridesmaids enter after the guests and family members have been seated, walking down the aisle most often one at a time, though some traditions favor them approaching the altar two by two. The bridesmaids may wear colorful gowns, often similar in design to the bride's, but they may never wear white, a color reserved for that of the bride.

Flower girls may precede the bridesmaids, or they may walk just in front of the bride. In medieval times, it was customary to have two little girls, usually sisters, dressed exactly alike, carry garlands of wheat and walk in front of the bride. The bouquets of wheat symbolized the wish of family and friends that the union between bride and groom would prove fruitful. Later, flowers carried in small ornamental baskets replaced the garlands of wheat, and petals were often strewn from these baskets in the path of the bride.

The maid or matron of honor, who is unattended, comes next, followed by the bride. The bride is always the last to enter, and she walks down the aisle leaning on the arm of her father or whoever is to give her away at the altar. A page or pages, usually a young boy closely related to either bride or groom, may be added to the group to bear the train of the bride's gown. It has been suggested by some historians that the tradition of the bride carrying a bouquet of flowers began as a precaution against body odor. In the Middle Ages, according to these scholars, most people planned to be married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and were still smelling good. Brides carried a bouquet of flowers to guard against any offensive odors that might have developed since their annual bathing ritual.

The "best man" who attends the groom is quite likely a relic of marriage by capture. When a young man in those ancient times set out to capture a bride, he was usually accompanied by a strong-armed friend who helped defend the groom against the pursuing father and relatives of the stolen woman. In medieval times, the groomsmen were known as bride knights, whose duty it was to guard and protect the bride on her way to the church, accompany her down the aisle to the altar, and after the ceremony had been conducted, relinquish her to the groom.

The origin of the bridesmaids also hearkens back to marriage by capture. As that form of brutal courtship was fading into humankind's memories of ancient ways better forgotten, it remained the custom for the bride to pretend that she was being carried away against her will and wished to escape from the groom's clutches. During the transition time between courtship traditions, it was considered modest and maidenly for the bride to feign a struggle before being led down the aisle. To add to the fray, the bride's friends and family would rush the groom and his party in a mock attempt to rescue her. As the bride-groom's defending clansmen developed into the groomsmen, the bride's attacking family evolved into the bridesmaids, who remain at her side during the ceremony.

The question, "Who gives this woman to this man?" asked by the officiating clergyperson in contemporary wedding ceremonies is a relic of marriage by purchase. It is at this point in the ceremony that the father of the bride responds to the question by offering the arm of his daughter to the groom and telling the clergyperson, "I do." In recent years, some ceremonies include both the mother and father of the bride responding "we do," to the question of who gives the bride to the groom.

Custom also dictates that the bride always stands to the left of the groom during the ceremony. The position of the bride reflects a much earlier period when the groom needed to have his sword arm free in case he had to defend them against an attack by a jealous rival or a family member who violently objected to the union. The best man is positioned on the groom's right, immediately behind him, hearkening back to those same earlier times when he might have to help the groom fight off more than one assailant while the couple were attempting to declare their marriage vows.

The gift of a small item of personal jewelry that the groom presents to his groomsmen is a survival of primitive courtship when the prospective groom set out to capture a bride with the help of his friends. If they were successful in catching a suitable wife for the groom, he would reward them with gifts. During a later time period, when the bride knights kept watch over the bride, it was she who presented the gifts, rather than the groom.

The Wedding Ceremony. As the methods of courtship and the subsequent marriage rites evolved in various ways, it was inevitable that an element of religion should enter into the ceremonies. As humankind progressed from the primitive stalking of a bride, to the purchase of a wife, to mutual love between bride and groom, the linking together of two lives grew in importance to the community at large. Even in the early stages of civilization, the dissolution of a marriage, especially one that had produced children, was troublesome and upsetting to the entire tribe or village. In order to help avoid a couple separating after marriage, a religious element entered the process and a divinity or a deity was invoked to help strengthen the ties that bound bride and groom.

There are many different individual denominations under the general theological umbrella of Christian and under the two main divisions of Roman Catholic and Protestant. There may be many distinctive elements involved in what may be termed a Christian wedding, but most of the ceremonies are similar. In most circumstances, the wedding takes place within about three or four months of the couple's engagement announcement. Although Christian weddings need not take place in a church before an altar, most marriage ceremonies are performed in a church familiar to either or both the bride and groom.

On the day of the wedding, the groom arrives at the church in the company of his best man. The bride awaits them in the company of her attendants, her bridesmaids, and, on occasion, a matron of honor, perhaps an older sister or some other relative. When the ceremony begins, the groom, his best man, and his groomsmen enter at the front of the church and join the priest or pastor at the altar. Once they are in position, the organist, orchestra, or other musical accompaniment, begins to play a piece of music that signals the entrance of the bridesmaids, who one by one walk down the aisle to stand opposite the groom and groomsmen. When their processional is completed, the musicians play another selection that announces the arrival of the bride and her father.

After the bride and her father have walked down the aisle, the clergyperson asks who gives the woman to the man who awaits her at the altar. Traditionally, it has been the father who designates that he is the one who gives the bride to the groom, but in recent years, the mother may also stand with her husband and say that together they give the bride to the groom.

The bride approaches the altar and stands beside the groom. The clergyperson reads passages from the Bible that speak of the harmony of the marriage state and God's pleasure in the union of man and wife. The clergyperson may also deliver a brief sermon that encourages the couple to remain true to one another and adhere to Christian teachings. The couple may then offer pledges to one another that they have written themselves.

In most Christian ceremonies, the bride and groom place the wedding band on one another's left hand ring finger and repeat the vows of marriage as the clergyperson reads them aloud. The clergyperson asks God to bless them and help them remain with one another until death parts them, then pronounces them man and wife. In some denominations, after the newlyweds have stated their vows, they and the assembled guests will celebrate mass or holy communion together.

After the wedding ceremony, the newlyweds leave the church as the guests throw rice or pieces of confetti over them. There is a reception in the church basement or in a hall where dinner is served to the invited guests and gifts are presented to the newlyweds. Depending upon the beliefs of the individual denomination or congregation, a dance may follow the dinner and the gift-giving. After the party, the couple leaves their family and friends and departs on their honeymoon.

Jewish weddings are always events of great celebration and are usually performed on Sundays. On the Sabbath before the wedding, the groom must go to the synagogue and read from the Torah. As in other traditions, the bride is attired in a white gown, symbolizing purity and joy, and the groom stands beside her wearing a dark suit. The wedding couple is attended by their parents, and the group stands before the rabbi under a canopy known as a chuppah, which represents the future home of the bride and groom.

The rabbi hands the couple a glass of wine that has been blessed. After the bride and groom share the wine, the rabbi and the groom read the marriage contract. When the reading is completed, the groom places a plain gold ring on the first finger of his bride's left hand and announces to all assembled in the synagogue that she is his wife. After making such a declaration, he moves the wedding ring to the third finger.

A second glass of wine is offered to the couple. The rabbi says the Seven Blessings and praises God for marriages and asks for the newlyweds to be happy. After both drink from it, the glass is smashed under the heel of the groom. The breaking of the glass is a reminder of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. An old tradition adds that the glass is broken to symbolize that the bride and groom will be joined in happiness and love until the glass is made whole again, which is another way of saying forever.

Before a Buddhist wedding can occur, a Buddhist monk must check the horoscope of the prospective bride and groom to be certain that they are compatible. If the stars indicate that the couple will be able to adjust to one another's personalities throughout their lives together, the monk next determines the best day for the wedding ceremony to occur.

Buddhist weddings are not conducted in temples or in religious sites, but in hotels or public halls and are generally regarded as civil ceremonies. The bridal couple are clothed in robes and sit side by side on silk cushions beside another Buddhist couple, who serve as their sponsors. The monk performing the wedding ceremony wraps a silk scarf about the wrists of the bride and groom, and the two eat rice from a silver bowl to symbolize that they vow forever to share everything between them. They promise to love and respect one another, to be frugal with their incomes, and to welcome their friends and family to their home. There may be a brief reading from Buddhist scriptures and a period of meditation, followed by a few words from the officiating priest. After the ceremony is concluded, most Buddhist couples visit the nearest monastery to be blessed by the monks and to pay respect to Buddha.

Traditional Hindus continue the ancient practice of arranged marriage and infant betrothals. The primary concern of Hindu parents is that their child marry within his or her caste or social structure. For even less traditional Hindus, the kind of dating and courtship practices that exist among Americans and Europeans are discouraged. When families have agreed upon a future marriage between their children, there follows a long period of betrothal, during which gifts are exchanged during chaperoned meetings of the engaged couple. The date of a Hindu wedding is set by a priest who carefully examines the couple's horoscope for the most favorable day.

Before the marriage ceremony, the bride takes a ritual bath and her female friends in attendance paint distinctive patterns on her hands and feet with henna. Once the ornate designs decorate the bride, she is attired in a red sari that has been adorned with gold thread, a symbol of good fortune. Often the bride also wears gold bracelets and anklets. Just before the formal ceremony begins, representatives of the groom's family approach her and place a small dab on red paint on her forehead.

When the bride and groom arrive at the temple, hotel, or private home where the ceremony will take place by mutual agreement of their respective families, both of them have their faces hidden by veils. The ceremony begins with prayers to Lord Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, who is beseeched to bless the couple with success in all their future plans. The bride's family officially gives her to the groom, and the priest introduces them to assembled guests as man and wife. The couple then sits before a sacred fire, facing each other under a canopy. A cord is placed over their shoulders to signify that they are joined together forever.

At this point in the ceremony, the couple rises, holds hands, and walks around the sacred fire seven times, promising to honor and respect one another and vowing to respect the gods. Prayers for happiness and good fortune are said or chanted by the priest, and the assembled relatives of the couple and their guests join the newlyweds in a wedding dinner provided by the bride's family.

Most traditional Muslim weddings are arranged by the parents, who indicate to their children that they have been judged suitable to marry each other. Although (especially in contemporary times) the children have a right to decline their parents' choice of spouse, many Muslims still consider open courtship as undesirable and believe that the arranged marriage is much more morally acceptable. Most Muslim families prefer that their children marry within the faith of Islam, but in such countries as the United States, unions with non-Muslims have become more acceptable and common. The exchange of the dowry, the ancient custom of the bride-price, is observed in most Muslim families. Once the amount of the dowry, which the groom will pay to the bride's parents, is agreed upon, that sum becomes the property of the bride.

The nikah (marriage ceremony) is usually performed in private homes or in the prayer hall of the mosque. Brides often wear a traditional khameez (tunic) and shalwar (pants), decorated with a great deal of gold jewelry. The groom may also choose traditional clothing or a dark suit.

On the day selected for the wedding, the couple are kept apart, separated in different rooms, the bride with the female guests, the groom with the male guests, until the ceremony is over. Either the imam, the officiating priest of the mosque, or a Muslim judge, called a qadi, presides over the ceremony and generally offers a brief series of reflections upon the sacredness of the marriage contract. The bride says that she wishes to marry the groom, and he signs the contract. Two witnesses attest to the marriage agreement, and the union is documented in the records of the mosque and by whatever license is required by the civil authorities in the state or nation in which the marriage has been solemnized. After the ceremony, a reception honoring the couple is held, and the bride's family hosts a large wedding feast.

The Wedding Ring. The origin of the wedding ring may have begun in primitive humankind's belief in the magic of a circle. Social historians inform that early suitors wove a cord with their fingers and bound it around the waist of the woman they wanted. Such an action, both the man and the woman believed, allowed her spirit to enter his body and thus the two were bound together forever.

Other scholars have made the unpleasant suggestion that the earliest form of wedding rings were the fetters bound around a woman's wrists and ankles to indicate that she had been captured and become the property of a man in the tribe.

From what can be ascertained from historical records available, it would appear that the ancient Egyptians were the first to use the wedding ring in taking their marriage vows. In hieroglyphics a circle represents eternity, and the circular form became symbolic of a marriage that would be binding throughout all time.

The early Anglo-Saxon groom gave a pledge or wed to his intended at the betrothal ceremony. At this time he also placed a metal ring around her right hand, where it remained until the marriage ceremony, at which time it was transferred to her left hand.

The ring was used in Christian marriage ceremonies as early as 860. When a marriage settlement had been properly sealed, rings bearing the names of the bride and groom were handed around to the guests to be approved by them.

In the past, wedding rings have been made of every conceivable material. In addition to various metals, such as gold, silver, iron, steel, and brass, wedding rings have been made of leather and wood.

Old traditions state that the wedding ring is worn on the fourth finger of the left hand because a certain vein of blood, passing directly from this finger, flows directly to the heart. Probably the true reason for wearing the ring on this finger is that it is the least used of all the fingers, and therefore ornaments worn on it are not inconvenient.

The Wedding Dinner. The simplest and most universal of all marriage ceremonies is that of eating and drinking together. Eating together, among many early people, constituted marriage. There was little or no additional ceremony.

In the Fiji Islands the marriage ceremony was considered complete as soon as the bride and groom had eaten out of the same dish. In Madagascar as well, all that was necessary to become man and wife was to eat out of the same bowl. In ancient Rome, a marriage was dignified and solemnized once the bride and groom had eaten together. The Navajo marriage couple ate maize pudding together. To some extent, eating and drinking together still forms an essential part of the marriage ceremony in Japan, Russia, and Scandinavia. Until recent times, a Serbian woman ate only once in her life with a man, and that was on her marriage day, when she shared a meal with her husband.

The wedding cake is a direct descendant of a particular kind of cake used in Roman times among the highest members of the patrician families. During the wedding feast, the cake was broken over the bride's head as a symbol of abundance. All guests then partook of a portion of the cake to ensure plentifulness for themselves. This custom survives in the belief that single women who take home a piece of a wedding cake and place it under their pillows will dream of the man whom they will marry.

According to legend, the many-tiered wedding cake with which most people are familiar today originated in Old England when it was the custom to pass a basket of biscuits to the guests during the wedding feast. A Frenchman who was in attendance at such a feast got the idea to pile a number of biscuits into a mound and pour icing over the top.

According to some sources, the name "bridegroom" was given to the new husband because among various peoples it was customary for him to serve his bride a meal on his wedding day. "Groom" signified one who served in an inferior station, and the "bride-groom" was the one who served the bride.

Throwing Rice and Tossing the Bouquet. When wedding guests throw handfuls of rice after the bride and groom, they are enacting an ancient ritual that expressed wishes for the couple's fruitfulness and abundance. However, rice was not always the grain used to throw after departing newlyweds. Among some early peoples wheat symbolized productivity, so grains of wheat were used in the marriage rites to symbolize fruitfulness and plenty for the couple. The ancient Greeks poured flour and sweetmeats over the bride and groom to represent a wish for an abundance of all that is sweet and desirable. The Romans began the custom of throwing, rather than pouring, sweet meats at the fleeing couple.

Some authorities state that people began throwing rice after newlyweds for the purpose of giving food to the evil spirits that were always present at any festive gathering of humans. It was to appease these spirits and keep them from doing injury to the bridal pair that the custom of rice-throwing was originated.

Another old tradition states that unless somehow bribed, the soul of the bridegroom is likely to fly away at marriage and never return. To prevent this, rice is scattered over him to induce the soul to remain.

The throwing of the bridal bouquet originated with the old custom of scrambling for the bride's garter. In fourteenth-century France, it was considered good luck to win the bride's garter, and everyone rushed for it at the conclusion of the marriage ceremony.

In the fifteenth century, the garter gave way to the stocking, and brides began tossing their stockings to the wedding party. However, the removal of one's stockings in public sometimes proved to be awkward and embarrassing, so somewhere during the fifteenth century, a modest and wise bride conceived the idea of throwing her bridal bouquet. The custom has endured, along with the tradition that the fortunate maiden who catches the bouquet will be the next to marry.

Delving Deeper

armand, denis. taboo: sex & morality around the world. london: w. h. allen, 1996.

fielding, william j. strange customs of courtship and marriage. london: souvenir press, 1961.

frazer, sir james george. the golden bough. new york: collier/macmillan, 1950.

gelber, carol. love and marriage around the world. brookfield, conn.: millbrook press, 1998.

hunt, morton m. the natural history of love. new york: alfred a. knopf, 1959.

lewinsohn, richard. a history of sexual custom. new york: harper & brothers, 1958.

spencer, linda. knock on wood. new york: gramercy books, 1995.

taylor, g. rattray. sex in history. new york: van guard press, 1954.

turner, e. s. a history of courting. london: michael joseph, 1954.

walker, barbara g. the woman's encyclopedia of myths and secrets. san francisco: harper & row, 1983.

Hospitality and Etiquette

In primitive times, hospitality most often found expression in great feasts in honor of some momentous event or to pay homage to an important visitor. The Egyptians of 4,000 years ago feasted in great halls, offering food to their gods before they themselves touched a morsel. The Egyptians were fond of elaborate dinners as a form of entertainment, the serving of food continuing for several hours. Both men and women were invited, and dining couches and small tables were provided for the guests, who regaled themselves with dishes of fowl, game, fish, bread, and wine.

In Homer's Iliad, the Greeks are portrayed as hosts of magnificent banquets who celebrated with sumptuous feasts all important events in their lives, such as births, marriages, holidays, and victories in warfare.

During the days when the Roman Empire flourished, the feasts in Rome surpassed any others, because the wealthy had the food products that enabled them to dine in lavish style, and what delicacies they might have lacked, they sent for, sending their representatives throughout the known world to obtain choice fruits and viands. The Romans were noted for their hospitality. Nothing was too rich or too costly for the entertainment of their guests.

The ancient Israelites gave great feasts on special occasions, but their hospitality extended to strangers and to the poor as well as to important guests and to friends who would be likely to reciprocate. "When the Holy One loves a man," states the Zohar, Genesis 104a, "He sends him a present in the shape of a poor man, so that he might perform some good deed to him, through the merit of which he may draw to himself a cord of grace." In Deuteronomy 15:11, it is written that "You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy, and to the poor in the land."

Based on a cursory examination of hospitality from the historical perspective, it may appear that for centuries there were only two strata of society—the wealthy and the powerful who entertained lavishly and the laboring classes who could share their bread only when they had some to spare. The poorer people could celebrate their marriages and births as best they could within their own family structures, but they were too vitally concerned with the daily task of survival to develop the art of hospitality.

However, as the major world religions developed into powerful forces that shaped human society, hospitality and charity became virtues. In order to establish a more complete relationship with the Divine, according to the prophets and teachers of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, and other faiths, it is important to recognize all people as brothers and sisters and to minister to their needs when the opportunity to do so presents itself. The Forty Hadith of an-Nawawi 15 (Islam) admonishes those who believe in Allah and in the Last Day to be generous to their neighbors and to their guests. In the Apastamba Dharma Sutra 8.2 (Hinduism) it is written that the husband and wife of the house should never turn away those who come to their door asking for food. And Hebrews 13:2 (Christianity) offers the provocative suggestion that people should not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, "for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."

Table manners, even those considered the most basic rules of etiquette, were a long time in coming to human forebears. When a meal was simply an assortment of food set before hungry individuals, men and women ate to satisfy themselves as quickly as possible—and let the bones and bits of food fall where they may.

As food and the serving thereof became more elaborate and began to assume more of a social significance, the eating manners of the diners changed also. When forks and knives and other eating utensils first made their appearance on the dinner tables of the wealthy and the powerful, the process of eating a meal entered the early stages of becoming transformed into more of a ceremony. Soon, arbiters of fashion were instructing others how to use their eating utensils and informing those men and women who were becoming conscious of the social significance of dining that some eating practices were correct and others were incorrect.

Later, when the use of knives and forks became more general, the common people began to pattern their behavior at the dinner table after the wealthy and powerful who had grown accustomed to using the implements. Although it was much easier to eat with their hands and a knife in the primitive manner of their ancestors, the lower social classes have always wished to pattern themselves in as many ways as possible with the wealthier classes. The new ways of eating with knife and fork, dinner plates and cups, and a certain ceremony in the dining process slowly left the courts and the dining rooms of the wealthy and eventually established themselves in the humblest of homes.

Food Kinship. From the earliest times, eating and drinking together has provided an elementary form of hospitality. Anthropologists have recorded that even in the most primitive of tribal cultures, once people have broken bread with strangers or taken a drink with them, they considered one another on peaceful terms. Once that relationship has been established, the people are under an obligation to protect one another if they are in danger.

In many of the villages on the Philippine Islands, hospitality and friendship are expressed by eating together. On Sumatra, a large island in western Indonesia, a guest is presented with betel nut as a gesture of friendliness. On Java, the main island of Indonesia, hosts of higher social rank pay their inferiors a high compliment if they offer them their half-chewed betel nut.

Throughout Tahiti, the standard formula for hospitality is "Come and eat with us." Among the tribespeople in Kenya, visitors to villages are presented with a cup of water as a ceremonial mark of hospitality, and the welcoming salutation is, "Let us be friends."

Among all cultures, in ancient or modern times, it has never been good form to refuse the offer of food or drink. Around the world, to accept such an offer is considered an act of common politeness, whether one wants it or not. Among the nomadic Bedouins of the desert, it has always been considered a serious breach of etiquette to ride up to the front of a family's tent without stopping and eating their bread. According to the Bedouin code of manners, the man in the tent will consider himself insulted by such rudeness and will from that time on regard the other man as an enemy.

Courtesy Toward Guests. Historical records indicate that all important guests at the pharaoh's palace in Egypt had their names and symbols engraved on the "guest wall," just as modern guests inscribe their names in their hosts' guest book. Among the wealthy of Egypt, lunch was served at midday and dinner at night. When invited to dine in ancient Egypt, people brought along their servants, and it wasn't considered impolite for guests to bring with them whatever items of comfort that they might need during their stay.

The Egyptian hosts anointed their guests with oil upon their arrival. The host and hostess, together with their guests, dined while seated in long halls and were served by household slaves. The Egyptian hosts supplied one whole chair for each single guest, but a married couple had to share one between them. The highest in rank among the guests sat with the host at the head of the table. Everyone dipped bread into a common dish of oil and helped themselves to other food placed in the center of the table.

As soon as guests arrived in the home of an ancient Greek host, servants brought in vases of water so they might freshen themselves. After the guests had washed their hands and feet, they were given goblets of wine and stood around gossiping until summoned to dinner.

The Greeks ate three meals daily. Their tables were uncovered, and they ate while reclining on couches, using their fingers in primitive fashion. Water was provided several times during the course of the meal for washing the hands. The highest in rank had their hands washed first; the lowest, last.

Among the Romans there was usually a place of honor at the dining table. The highest in rank sat at the head, the next in rank at the upper end, and the third highest in social position sat at the lower end. All guests washed their hands at the table before eating, a ceremonial washing that began with the highest in rank and ended with the lowest.

Wealthy Romans rarely invited guests to their homes for the midday meal, but they frequently had visitors over in the evening for the most important meal of the day, consisting of from three to seven courses. The host and hostess gave each guest an exact list of the courses and all the individual dishes of the feast, and then they led their guests into the dining hall. As they were being seated, servants draped the members of the dinner party with a wreath of flowers and offered them a goblet of wine.

After a period of Roman history when chairs or stools were used around a table, the Romans adopted the dining couch. Generally, three couches were at a table, with one side left open to receive the service. Four people could dine comfortably from one couch. They were low, without backs, and covered with rich fabrics. The host and his wife sat at the head table with the guest of honor. The rest of the guests took places at the other tables according to rank.

In many of the old Arab nations, the host and hostess welcomed their guests by pouring melted butter on their heads. While the idea might seem repugnant to modern guests arriving at a home in a hot climate, the melted butter was deemed fashionable and refreshing in earlier times.

In Europe during the Middle Ages, favored guests always sat at the right of the host and were helped to the choicest cuts of meat, the rarest fruits, the costliest wines. The custom of "coupling" guests, that is, placing them at the table in pairs of men and women, was introduced about 1455 when it became fashionable to place a gentleman and a lady together to share a single cup and plate.

Whom to serve first may be a problem of some concern for the modern hostess, but among early people it was the custom for the host to take the first bite to prove that the food was safe or free from poison. Among the aboriginal people of New Guinea, it is a mark of courtesy and hospitality to offer water to a stranger, but before doing so, the hosts drink a little of the water themselves to prove it is not dangerous in any way. Similar customs are to be found in many tribes of Africa, where the wife of the host is assigned the position of always taking the first drink of any beverage to prove that it has no evil in it. In medieval Europe, it was also the courteous hostesses who had the obligation to serve themselves first to prove that the food and drink was safe.

The Dinner Table. Quite likely the first dinner table was a fairly flat slab of rock on which whatever game or fish had been caught was placed by a primitive hunter to be shared with his family. If such an early table did exist in a cave occupied by early humans, they probably sat on the floor or, at best, smaller rocks for chairs. The development of the dinner table and eating utensils grew along with the culinary arts when food was no longer eaten raw without preparation of any sort.

In ancient Rome, men and women reclined on couches while eating from beautifully decorated tables. Most of these dinner tables were square with four legs or oval with three connected legs, much like modern tables, except positioned lower for the convenience of diners who were reclining. The materials used for constructing such elaborate tables were at first wood, most commonly maple, and later bronze with inlaid ivory designs. Often the carpenter or metalworker fashioning the table shaped its legs to imitate those of various animals, complete with claws. Such a peculiarity remains popular today, for tables and other items of furniture are frequently made with clawed legs, often gripping a ball.

By around 400 c.e., it was an established custom among the people of the "civilized" European countries to eat from some kind of table. The dinner table existed in various forms, however, and often was simply a board running around the side of the house. The mantelpiece is said to have originated with this old dining board.

Even by the 1700s, the dinner table in many of the poorer homes consisted only of a long wide board that was folded down from the wall and used at meal time. Many homes owned only one decent chair, and the head of the household, the father, was the one who got to sit in it while the rest of the family ate while sitting on the floor. On special occasions when a male guest was invited to share the meal, the father would relinquish his chair to him.

Although the chair reached a high degree of development among most of the European nations, it failed to gain much of a foothold among various other peoples.

Eating Utensils. Humankind's first eating utensil was some form of the spoon or the ladle. Museums display spoons of wood, stone, and ivory that were found in ancient Egyptian tombs. Spoon-like implements belonging to the Paleolithic Age have been found in caves in France and other European countries, thereby indicating that early humans used such eating utensils as far back as 100,000 or more years.

The Greeks and Romans used spoons of bronze and silver, some exquisitely wrought by the hands of master craftspersons. During the Middle Ages in Europe, the wealthy ate with elaborate spoons of beaten silver, but the materials used for making spoons by the poorer classes were bone, wood, and tin. The Chinese, in addition to their chopsticks, ate with little painted porcelain spoons.

The use of the knife and fork did not become widespread until about 300 years ago. Even at the magnificent French court of Louis XIV (1638–1715), forks for eating purposes were unknown.

Although both knives and forks have been in existence since early times and were used as effective tools for many different purposes, it took centuries before anyone thought of using them at the dinner table. Some authorities suggest that the first "fork" early humans used was quite likely a long, two-pronged twig that was used to hold meat over the fire while it was cooking. Later, such prongs were made of iron or bone and were used for the same purpose.

The fork was not entirely unknown in medieval France, but it was used only on occasion for bringing large chunks of hot meat from the fire to the table. In England, the fork had been used through the Middle Ages as a utensil for eating fruits and preserves, but not at the table to eat one's dinner.

Based on the evidence of primitive cutting implements in archaeological digs dating back nearly a million years, even humankind's earliest ancestors used some kind of cutting implement. Perhaps those elementary tools were originally fragments of flint or other stone, but it seems clear that the knife, or some kind of cutting tool, was one of the first implements to be devised by early humans.

The knife took many forms and was made of many materials during the course of its development. The first knives were made of flint and bone and used for all cutting purposes. For centuries, whether the knife was made of flint, bronze, or steel, both men and women carried a knife in their belts or knapsacks. Whenever large portions of food were served, they sliced off a piece for themselves with their knives, and then returned the cutting implement to their belt or knapsack. But there was no such thing as a special knife to be used while eating dinner, whether seated at a table or on the floor.

As with the development of the dinner fork, the greatest advance in the history of the table knife took place after the seventeenth century. Silver knives for table use were introduced in England and became popular. Sheffield, England, became one of the greatest cutlery manufacturing centers in the world and has retained such a position with few challengers.

The earliest dinner plates were undoubtedly formed by nature, rather than humans. Perhaps primitive humans used a broad leaf, a halved gourd, or a sea shell in the same manner that one uses a cup or bowl. However, even in early prehistory, humans discovered the vast uses of clay and made for themselves jars, jugs, and drinking vessels.

Among the Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, and Egyptians, pottery developed into a fine art, and some of the examples still in existence today are in museums. The ancient people of Mexico and Peru, the Mayans and the Incans, also made beautiful pottery.

Although the human ancestors may have boasted many pots, jugs, plates, and even cups and saucers, the use of separate dishes for each person is comparatively recent. For many centuries, among rich and poor alike, food would be brought to the table on large platters and placed on the bare table. In wealthy homes, a steward or the host used a double-pronged fork and a large knife to carve the meat on the platter, and then, whether in a banquet hall or in a home, the assembled diners used their fingers to pick up the pieces they wished. Fruit and bread loaves were placed in baskets on the floor by the tables, and people helped themselves as they liked.

Eventually, those families with money in Europe and England bought dinner plates made of pewter. However, food with a high acid content caused some of the lead used in the process of creating pewter to be absorbed into the meal, causing lead poisoning and often death. The more observant began to notice that these terrible consequences after eating from pewter plates occurred most often with tomatoes, so for hundreds of years the tomato was considered poisonous.

The poorer families could not afford pewter plates, but they used trenchers, a piece of wood with the center scooped out, as bowls to hold their food. Unfortunately, in those days hygiene was virtually unknown, so the trenchers were seldom cleaned, and often worms and mold got into the wood and spread diseases called "trench mouth" to unsuspecting diners.

Hand Washing and Bathing. It is known that among the early Greeks it was considered ill-mannered to attempt to recline at the dinner table before visiting with the other guests and washing one's hands. Servants brought in vessels of water so that the custom of hand washing could be observed by all the guests, and not until they had done so were they permitted to dine.

The Romans washed their hands before and after dinner. Small basins were provided for guests for this purpose, and it was a common practice to drop a flower into the water to make it fragrant. This custom has survived today in many homes and restaurants in which a finger bowl with a flower petal in the water is brought to guests between courses of the meal or after they have finished eating.

Egyptians were welcomed to a dinner party by a special servant who anointed their head with oil and washed their hands. Sometimes the process was repeated during the course of the dinner; and before guests left the table, their hands were washed again.

The Hebrews made of a special ceremony of hand washing, and it was strictly observed that all people washed their hands before eating a meal, after returning from a funeral, and before making a burnt offering or a sacrifice at the temple.

A combination of superstition and misapplied religious fervor concerning nudity, modesty, and the frequency of bathing made medieval Europe a place where personal hygiene almost became a forgotten practice of the ancients. Even the more well-to-do families took "all-over" baths only twice a year, in May and October.

The biannual bath would take place in a large tub filled with hot water. The father, the head of the household, would be the first to bathe, enjoying clean, warm water. The sons would be next. After all of the men, including any visiting male relatives or guests, had their turn, the woman of the house, followed by any female children, would get to splash in water that had become quite cool and dirty. Babies of the household would be the very last to be dunked in the tub, and by then the water was so dark that mothers were warned not to throw their babies out with the bath water.

Women kept their hair covered at all times. Men shaved their heads and wore wigs, but only the wealthy could afford wigs of good quality. Rather than washing the wigs, it was fashionable to place the wig in a hollowed-out loaf of bread and bake it in the oven. The heat would make the wig puff up and become fluffy, which gave birth to the expression of "Big Wig" to describe a person of power or wealth.

Because they seldom washed their faces, many women and men had developed unsightly acne scars by the time they had reached adulthood. It became customary to spread bee's wax over the facial skin to smooth out rough complexions.

Asking the Blessing. The custom of saying a prayer before eating did not originate as an expression of thankfulness or gratitude to a deity. Early peoples offered a prayer that was a kind of exorcism before eating in order to distract any negative spirits that might have infested the food. Rather than thanking a deity for the blessing of giving them food to satisfy their hunger, the diners exhorted any negative entities to leave their food alone and to satisfy their hunger elsewhere.

Before a feast of celebration for a victory over their foes or the rewards of a successful hunt, primitive peoples often made sacrifices to their gods to be certain that the foods upon which they intended feasting would not poison them. From this custom of sacrifice and prayer before a feast, it seems likely that the practice of offering a prayer or asking a blessing before every meal became a custom that would eventually be practiced by the followers of all major world religions.

The Israelites appear to have been among the first to offer prayer before eating out of gratitude for having food to eat. "Surely it is of what belongs to God that you have eaten. So praise and bless Him by whose word the world was created," Father Abraham admonished (Talmud, Sota 10b).

Born into the Jewish tradition before his conversion to Christianity, Paul writes to the church in Ephesus that "God created foods to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth… nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for then it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer" (I Timothy 4:3–5).

In the Koran, the holy book of Islam, it is written, "Eat of the good things that We have provided for you, and be grateful to God" (Koran 2:172).

The Toast. Most authorities agree that the custom of drinking to the health of a person originated with the practice of the host or hostess drinking first to show that the drink was not harmful. As the tradition progressed, it came to indicate a gesture of friendship and good will to the guest.

The Roman and the Greek hosts drank to the health of their guests, and both customs were likely to have originated as a means of proving that the wine was not poisoned. Neither a Greek nor a Roman gentleman would pass a cup of wine to a friend without having first tasted of it to prove its safety. It was such a custom that developed through the ages into the tradition of men drinking together as a pledge to friendship, fraternity, and good cheer. It was also a custom among the young men of Rome to drink as many glasses of wine as there were letters in their sweethearts' names.

Controversy exists over how the gesture of taking the first drink to prove it was safe or to salute one's friendship to a guest became known as a "toast." Some believe that sometime during the reign of Charles II of England (1630–1685; reigned 1660–85), a piece of toasted bread was accidentally dropped in a large pitcher of wine while guests were being served at a royal banquet, and a witty courtier remarked that although he was unable to drink any more wine, he could at least have the toast.

Others believe that the word, in connection with drinking to one's health, originated in eighteenth-century England in the custom of gentlemen sitting around a fireside, drinking and toasting bread on the hearth. A sip of drink and a bite of warm toast combined to offer a gesture of good will, friendship, and good health to one's companions.

Drinking toasts from a lady's slipper dates back to the eighteenth century. In certain parts of Hungary it was the custom for a groom to drink a toast to his bride out of her slipper on the wedding night. The slipper was removed from the bride's foot in front of all the assembled guests, filled with wine, and given to the groom. He made a toast to his bride, drank the wine, and threw the slipper to the guests.

Delving Deeper

armand, denis. taboo: sex & morality around the world. london: w. h. allen, 1996.

baker, margaret. folklore and customs of rural eng land. devon, uk: david & charles, 1974.

caldwell, mark. a short history of rudeness, manners, morals and misbehavior. london: pan macmillan publishers, 2000.

elias, norbert. the history of manners. translated by edmund jephcott. new york: random house, 1982.

fielding, william j. strange customs of courtship and marriage. london: souvenir press, 1961.

frazer, sir james george. the golden bough. new york: collier/macmillan, 1950.

grant, michael. the world of rome. cleveland, ohio: world publishing, 1960.

grimal, nicolas. a history of ancient egypt. cambridge, mass.: blackwell, 1994.

hazlitt, w. c. dictionary of faiths and folklore. london: bracken books, 1995.

jones, prudence, and nigel pennick. a history of pagan europe. london and new york: routledge, 1995.

power, eileen. medieval people. garden city, n.y.: doubleday anchor books, 1955.

rees, nigel. best behavior. london: bloomsbury, 1992.

walker, barbara g. the woman's encyclopedia of myths and secrets. san francisco: harper & row, 1983.

Burials and Funerals

No one can possibly derive an exact date when early humans first began to bury their dead. Controversy continues on the question of whether or not certain skeletal remains found in the caves of Neanderthals indicate that some kind of burial ceremony was conducted for the dead around 200,000 years ago.

Neither can anyone pinpoint for certain when the concept of an afterlife first occurred to primitive humans. It might be conjectured that when early humans had realistic dreams of friends or relatives who were dead, they might have awakened convinced that the departed somehow still existed in some other world. Such an idea, whenever it first occurred, was undoubtedly taken as reassuring and comforting. The belief that there was something within them that survived physical death was an exciting promise that eventually spread to humans everywhere throughout the planet.

Anthropologists and other scientists of human evolution relate that the early humans' concept of the soul or the spirit was often that of either a miniature or a full-sized reproduction of the person who had died. The Huron, a Native American tribe, believed that the spirit had arms, legs, head, and torso just like the person from whom it had been released by death. The Nootka, a tribe that occupied Vancouver Island, British Columbia, conceived of the soul as a tiny person who lived within a person's head and who was set free when its host body succumbed to death.

Many native people in Peru, Brazil, and other South American countries think of the soul as a birdlike entity that can fly from the body at will and often does so during sleep. When the soul returns, the sleeper awakens. Should the soul neglect to return, the sleeper enters the long sleep of death.

As more members of the early human communities began to believe that the spirit was to continue in another life and might some day return to the body it had once occupied, it began to occur to many cultures that it was necessary to take every precaution to protect their dead from being desecrated either by humans or by animals. There have been many kinds of coffins, just as there have been many customs of burial. Clay, stone, wood, even iron coffins have been used to protect the body from predators and grave robbers.

One of the earliest types of coffin was a tree that had been cut down and hollowed out to accommodate the body. Depending upon the people and the environmental conditions under which they existed, tree coffins bearing the dead were sometimes set adrift in a river, sometimes left upon the ground, sometimes buried in the ground. For many ancient peoples, the custom of placing the dead in a tree trunk was symbolical of being returned to the Great Mother, the tree of life.

As the belief in a spirit and in an afterlife grew, people began to develop fixed concepts about where it was exactly that spirits went to dwell after their life on Earth was completed. In the ancient Greek afterlife beliefs, the dead were ferried over the river Styx by Charon, who charged a fee for his services. If the dead did not have the fee, they would be detained for a hundred years before being permitted to proceed. Therefore, when the Greeks buried their dead, they placed a small coin in their hands so they might be able to pay Charon. A similar idea of the dead needing some ready currency for their advent to the other world is found among the Chinese, who furnish the dead with paper money and passports.

The religious service associated with many modern funerals quite likely originated in the belief that death is but a journey to another world and that certain ceremonies may be performed by the living to expedite the spirit's travels and to lessen the dangers of the journey. Among the earliest type of structured burial observances are people dancing for purposes of stamping upon the ground to frighten away evil spirits and to keep them from harassing the soul of the dearly departed. Great feasts were given to please the spirit of the deceased, who watched over the lavish dinner given in his or her honor and who was able to absorb the energy of the food. Large fires were built around the place of feasting in order to present an additional barrier to evil spirits that might wish to seize the soul of the dead.

The fear of evil spirits also gave rise to the universal dread of cemeteries and the belief that burial grounds are haunted. As shall be shown in this section, many early funeral observances were transformed into aspects of religious ceremonies that still exist today.

Preserving the Body. As early religions began to teach that there was a spirit within each person who died that might some day wish to return to its earthly abode, it became increasingly important that efforts be made to preserve the body. Burial ceremonies, which had at first been intended solely as a means of disposing of the dead, came to be a method of preserving the physical body as a home for the spirit when it returned for a time of rebirth or judgment.

Today, in many countries such as the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and the European nations, bodies are embalmed and every effort is made to preserve the body as long as possible. Coffins are sold to the bereaved families as dependable containers that will be able to preserve and protect the body of their beloved for centuries. Crypts and vaults to contain family coffins are placed above ground and constructed of concrete or granite.

Embalming the body of the deceased was practiced in ancient Egypt where the warm, dry climate assured its success. The Egyptians anointed, embalmed, and buried their dead, and made mummies of the men and women of power, rank, and importance.

To mummify, the Egyptians extracted the brain and the intestines, cleaned out the body through an incision in the side, and filled the body cavities with spices. The body was then sewn up and set aside to lie in salt for a period of 70 days. Then it was placed in gummed mummy cloth and fastened into its ornamental case. The poorer classes were not mummified but merely salted.

In Africa, many native people smoke their corpses to preserve them. In the Congo, tribes build fires above the graves of the dead and keep the fires burning for a month. After that period, the bodies are unearthed, smoked, and wound in great swaths of cloth. The smoked corpse is placed upright in the hut where the person died and remains there for years.

Laying the Body to Rest. The followers of Tao, a Chinese belief system, envision the soul of the deceased crossing a bridge to the next life. Ten courts of judgment await the new soul, and if it passes this series of trials, it may continue on the path to heaven. If it fails because of bad deeds during the person's lifetime, the soul must be punished before it is allowed to go to a better place.

The family and friends of the deceased place the body in a wooden coffin and carry it to the graveyard. Well aware of the trials awaiting the soul of their friend or relative in the afterlife, they pound drums, clang cymbals, and shoot off fireworks to frighten away any evil spirits that might attempt to catch the soul even before it reaches the 10 courts of judgment. Beside the grave as the coffin is being lowered into the ground, paper representations of houses, money, and other material objects are burned, symbolically providing the soul of the deceased with property with which to pay the judges.

After 10 years have passed, the coffin is dug up, and the remains are cleaned and placed in an urn, which is then sealed. A Taoist priest assesses the home of the person's immediate family and decides the most harmonious spot for the urn of bones to be placed. It is of utmost importance that the priest find a place where the spirit of the deceased will be happy among its surviving family members, or the spirit may return to punish those it deems disrespectful of its physical remains.

For Buddhists, funerals are happy occasions, for they believe in reincarnation. Death in the present life frees the soul from Dukkha (worldly existence) and returns it to the path that leads to nirvana, where all misery and karma cease. The coffin of one who has died in the Buddhist belief system is taken to the funeral hall in a brightly decorated carriage. The coffin is carried three times around the Buddhist temple or funeral hall and then brought in where it is set down in the midst of the flowers and gifts that friends and family of the deceased have placed around it.

A Buddhist monk leads the people in a prayer known as the Three Jewels that helps the soul find refuge in the Buddha, the dharma (the true way of life that a devout Buddhist seeks to lead), and the sangha (the unified faith of the Buddhist monks). Together with the people in the funeral hall, the monk recites the Five Precepts, the rules by which Buddhists strive to live.

Throughout the ceremony, food is served and music is played. There are few tears of mourning, for the family and friends are reminded by the monk that the soul will be reborn many times in many bodies. After the service, the body is cremated, and the ashes are buried or kept in the temple in a small urn.

Because Christians believe that Jesus (c. 6 b.c.e.–c. 30 c.e.) is the son of God who died on a cross on Good Friday and who rose from the dead on Easter Sunday, the followers of this religion believe that if they have faithfully followed the teachings of Jesus, they, too, will be physically resurrected on a future day of judgment. Generally, the body of the deceased is embalmed in a funeral home, then taken in a coffin to a church for a religious service before burial or cremation. In many churches, the deceased is displayed for mourners to pay their last respects until the formal service begins.

The minister or priest conducts a service during which selections from the Bible that speak of the resurrection of the dead are read, prayers are offered, and hymns are sung. If it is a Roman Catholic funeral, the priest will celebrate the Mass in remembrance of the last meal that Jesus shared with his disciples before his crucifixion. After the service is concluded, pallbearers carry the closed coffin to a hearse, which carries it to the place of burial. Family and friends follow on foot or in automobiles in a funeral procession to the cemetery where the coffin is lowered into the ground.

During an earlier period of Christianity, the priest used to place a pass to the next world on the chests of those who had died in the faith as they lay in the coffin. Such a pass also provided the deceased person's Christian name, the dates of birth and death, and a certificate of baptism, piety of his or her life, and a testimonial that the person had taken the sacrament of communion before death.

There is an old legend that Jesus was placed in the tomb facing toward the west. While some Christian traditions bury their dead facing west, many other churches within Christianity place their dead looking toward the east, because of the old custom of facing the east when praying. Interestingly, the aboriginal people of Australia believe that the sun will rise late in the morning if the dead are not buried with their faces to the west. The people of the islands of Samoa and Fiji bury their dead with their faces directed toward the west, where, according to custom, their souls have preceded them.

Many scholars believe the Christian minister's tradition of throwing handfuls of dirt on the coffin lid while intoning "from ashes to ashes, from dust to dust," is a survival of a custom in ancient Egypt in which relatives and friends of deceased persons ceremonially cast sand three times upon the body before it was entombed or buried.

The coffin has taken many shapes and forms in its evolution as a final resting place for the deceased. Many authorities attribute the presence of trees in the churchyard or cemetery to ancient notions concerning a hollowed-out tree as a dwelling place for the spirits of the dead. In Babylonia, great boxes of clay were baked to form a kind of coffin in which the dead were buried.

The first actual coffins, as they are known today, probably originated in ancient Egypt where the people believed that the body of the deceased must be kept safe until a future time of resurrection. The Egyptian word for "coffin" is from kas, which means "to bury." Another form of the word became kast, indicating the receptacle into which the body is placed, the coffin.

In the Hindu faith, the deceased are given a ceremonial washing; then the body is wrapped in a burial cloth and placed in a coffin. If at all possible, within one day of death, the coffin is to be carried to a place of cremation by six male relatives. The coffin is placed on a stack of wood and covered with flowers. Melted butter is poured over the coffin to help it to burn, and the eldest son or nearest male relative of the deceased lights the funeral pyre.

Traditionally, the cremation takes place outdoors and the ashes are collected and scattered in the waters of a holy river, such as the Ganges. In other countries, Hindu dead are taken to a crematorium. Followers of the Hindu religion believe that the soul, the atman of each individual, is reborn many times in a cycle of spiritual evolution before it can become one with God.

Those who follow the path of Judaism bury their dead in a plain coffin after the body has been washed and dressed. If possible, the funeral takes place on the day after the death has occurred. The coffin containing the deceased is taken first to the synagogue and then to the place of burial. Mourners often cut a portion of their outer clothes as a sign of grief; but no flowers are allowed, for it is tradition that the service should be kept as simple as possible.

At the grave site, the rabbi says a few words of remembrance about the deceased, and the coffin is placed in the grave. The closest male relative of the deceased says a prayer called the Kaddish to help the soul travel to the Olam Ha'ba, the world to come, and the family of the dead person fill in the grave with earth.

Muslims prefer not to use coffins for their dead unless they are residing in a country that requires such a containment for the deceased. If it is possible to do so, the dead are buried on the day following their death. The deceased is washed, perfumed, and wrapped in three cotton burial cloths.

Those who follow the religion of Islam believe that the soul of the deceased is guarded by the angel of death in a place called Barzakh until the Day of Judgment. If at all possible, friends and relatives gather around a dying person and read verses from the Koran. With his or her last breath, the dying person always tries to say the Shahadah: "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger."

Large graves and headstones are not permitted to mark a Muslim burial site, but the grave itself is to be raised above ground level. As the body is being taken to the burial ground, the Salatul Janazah, a prayer for the deceased, is read. The body is buried facing Mecca, the sacred city toward which all Muslims turn when they pray.

In times of death, the human tendency seems to be to relieve in some way the tension caused by fear, superstition, and the dread of the unknown. Among the most well known of such traditions of holding a celebration to honor the deceased is the Irish wake. According to an old legend, when St. Patrick (fifth century) was dying he requested his weeping and lamenting friends to set aside their grief and to rejoice at his comfortable exit from a world of sadness, sin, and confusion. In order to better shift the emotions from sorrow to joy, St. Patrick is said to have instructed each person gathered around his deathbed to take a drop of something to drink. This last request of the saint is observed in deep reverence at every Irish wake.

The charming story of St. Patrick aside, some authorities believe that the Irish wake was intended originally to prevent the dead person's restless soul from prowling around the homes of the surviving family members. Friends and relatives would gather in the family home as the body of the deceased lay in its coffin awaiting burial. Once respects were said and memories of the deceased were shared, the mourners would eat, drink, and dance to relieve the tensions and fears of the bereaved. The party would last until dawn so there would always be someone who was awake to watch the body and keep the soul from doing mischief.

Yet another theory of the origin of the wake has it that because lead cups were often used to drink ale or whiskey, the potent combination would sometimes literally knock a person out for a couple of days. A friend walking along the road from the tavern might come upon an unconscious person and assume that he was dead. The apparently deceased would be carried home and laid out on the kitchen table for a day or so before being prepared for burial. Family and friends would gather around the body, eating, drinking, and talking, as they waited to see if the corpse on the table was going to "wake up."

Marking the Burial Place. The marking of graves goes back into remote antiquity. Paleolithic humans (c. 250,000 b.c.e.) placed stones and other markings on graves, but it cannot be determined for certain whether they did so to keep evil spirits from rising from the burial place or to be able to distinguish one grave from another for the purpose of mourning. In the Neolithic time period (c. 8000–9000 b.c.e.,) humans set up great stone megaliths above burial mounds; these protected the dead from desecration and quite likely had certain religious significance.

The ancient Hebrews buried their dead and used stone pillars to mark the graves. The Greeks often placed gravestones and various kinds of ornate sculpture on their burial sites.

Not everyone who died in ancient Egypt was buried in a tomb. Although the Egyptians believed firmly in an afterlife, they were also of the opinion that only the powerful and important in the earthly life would have any notable status in the world to come. According to rank and wealth, those who were great in Egypt and therefore likely to be important in the next life were laid to rest in magnificent tombs with treasure, servants, food, and weapons to accompany them and the ordinary people were buried in rude stone compartments.

The rulers of the ancient city of Thebes, once capital of upper Egypt (1580–1085 b.c.e.), and their subjects never constructed massive pyramids to house their coffins, but cut their tombs from rock. As soon as a pharaoh would ascend the throne, his loyal subjects began the preparation of his tomb. Excavation went on uninterruptedly, year by year, until death ended the king's reign and simultaneously the work on his tomb—which also became a kind of an index revealing the length of his reign. These tombs, cut from the rock in the mountains in Upper Egypt, are still to be seen.

The Assyrians (c. 750–612 b.c.e.) dug huge excavations that sometimes reached a depth of 60 feet into which they cast the bodies of their dead, one upon the other. Even when they began to place their dead in coffins, the Assyrians continued to pile one above the other in great excavations.

The Iberians, the original people who inhabited the peninsula where modern-day Portugal and Spain exist, buried their leaders with great pomp and ceremony in chambers made of huge stones, covered over with earth. The bodies were placed in these megalithic chambers in a sitting posture. The Aryans, an Indo-European people, burned their dead and placed the ashes in urns shaped like rounded huts with thatched roofs.

Decorating graves with flowers and wreaths is an old custom that appears to date back to the earliest human burial observances. Wreaths made of thin gold have been found in Athenian graves during archaeological excavations. The Egyptians adorned their mummies with flowers, and paintings on the walls of tombs depict the mourners carrying flowers in their hands.

A custom in sixteenth-century Europe was to make wreaths of flowers from ribbon and paper and give them to the church in memory of the deceased. These artificial wreaths of long ago evolved into the contemporary mourning wreath of living flowers, usually brought by friends or relatives of the deceased and placed upon the grave.

Cremation. Because early humankind so feared the evil spirits that caused death and believed that they continued to dwell in the corpse awaiting new victims, it is not surprising that cremation, the burning of the body, became one of the earliest methods of disposing of the dead. Cremation appears to have been practiced widely in the ancient world, except in Egypt, in China, and among the Hebrews.

In ancient Greece only suicides, infants who had not yet grown teeth, and persons who had been struck by lightning were denied the privilege of cremation and were buried. When cremation was conducted, the ceremonies were elaborate and solemn and the ashes of the deceased were placed in urns of burned clay and buried. Later, when burial became the custom in Greece, the bodies were enclosed in elaborate stone caskets, similar to the Roman sarcophagi.

The Vikings of old Scandinavia sometimes buried their kings and queens in their ships, but the traditional Viking funeral was to set the dragon-headed longboat afire and send it out to sea to burn. On the Danish colony of Greenland, the Vikings who settled on its shores believed that there was danger of pollution from the evil spirits that lurked around the corpse until the smell of death had passed away. They burned the dead body almost before it became cold and tried to avoid inhaling any of the fumes from the fire. They also burned every object in the dead person's house.

The Zulu tribe of Africa always burns the property of the dead to prevent evil spirits from remaining in the person's home. Many Native American tribes followed the same custom of burning the possessions of the deceased, and it is not uncommon to hear of contemporary men and women who, after the funeral of a relative, superstitiously burn the individual's clothes and other belongings.

Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs employ cremation as a standard method of disposing of the dead. In India the body is cremated on a funeral pyre whenever possible, and in ancient times widows were sacrificed alive on the burning pyres with their husbands.

For many centuries, the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body discouraged the custom of cremation. The early followers of Christianity feared that if the body were to be burned after death there would be nothing but ashes to be resurrected on Judgment Day. Although cremation is not popular among contemporary Christians, many theologians have argued that the same power of Christ that can resurrect the body that has decomposed in the grave could also resurrect the body that has been cremated and reduced to ashes.

Remembering the Dead. Among the original people of Patagonia in South America, it was the custom to open the coffins of the dead and redress them each year on the anniversary of the person's death. The same custom is found among the Eskimo, who annually take new clothes as a gift to the dead. Among many Native American tribes in earlier times, the widow was obligated to remain beside the tomb of her deceased husband for a year, while other family members brought food daily for her and for the spirit of the dead man.

The ancient Egyptians shaved their heads in time of mourning, and for a certain period abstained from mixing with any other than their immediate family. When it came to looking after the needs of their deceased in the afterlife, the Egyptians provided weapons, food, drink, furniture—all went into the tomb with the mummy. Wealthy Egyptians were buried with their slaves so they might be certain of good service in the next life. Frequently, a child was buried alive with a dead parent so the parent would not miss the child left behind on Earth.

In ancient Rome, those who had lost a loved one to death remained at home and avoided all feasts and amusements. The men cut neither their hair nor their beard. For several weeks, those who mourned did not socialize with friends or relatives, remaining only with their immediate family.

Today, black is considered the universal color of mourning, because of the age-old traditions of somberness associated with it. However, in Japan and in China, pure white is worn when mourning. In some sections of Africa, red is the color of mourning, with red paint applied to the naked body.

Among various tribes of equatorial Africa, tattooing and mutilating of the bodies of family members are practiced for purposes of indicating that one of their loved ones has been taken by death. The people of the Andaman Islands, in the eastern part of the Bay of Bengal, disinter the body after it has been buried long enough to decompose, then wear the bones of the dead to indicate mourning. While they wear these bones, it is considered taboo to approach them and to interfere with their grief.

In earlier times, it was customary for the Hindu widow to throw herself upon her deceased husband's funeral pyre. Today, she may shave her head, give away her valuable possessions, retire from social life, and spend the rest of her life performing menial duties for the family of her late husband. Among some Native American tribes of North America it was customary to cut the hair of widows and forbid them to remarry until the hair had grown again to its original length. The Chick-asaws decreed that the widow was obliged to live a single life for three years. Navajo beliefs stated that a widow must live in retirement for a certain period before she could marry.

Although many early humans in various societies around the world observed the responsibility of providing the necessities of life for their dead until they felt the soul had become accustomed to its new spiritual environment, there are a number of religions and cultures today that continue to remember their dead by conducting certain rituals that extend far beyond a few weeks of bringing food and drink to the grave.

On the day after a follower of the Hindu faith has been cremated, friends bring various gifts to his or her relatives. On the 11th or 12th day after the cremation, all those who attended the funeral service gather once again to offer a meal of rice balls and milk to the spirit of the deceased. This custom is a form of reciprocity to the departed for all the acts of kindness that he or she performed during life.

For the next week after a member of the Jewish faith has died, the family mourns, "sitting shiva," conducting religious services in the home. During this time, friends bring them food and express their condolences. The next month, a period known as sheloshim, the family does not go out to any type of entertainment. For the next 11 months (shanah ), they say the prayer of Kaddish every day. Each year on the anniversary of their loved one's death, they pray the Kaddish and burn a candle for 24 hours in memory of the deceased.

Muslim people mourn for their dead for three months after the burial service. It is customary for families to read aloud from the Koran and to pray for the deceased loved one.

Each year the Taoist Chinese hold the festival of Ching-Ming to honor the memory of the dead. Many Christian Hispanic nations celebrate an annual Day of the Dead, and in the United States, All Hallow's Eve, Halloween, rather than a night of trick-or-treat, is traditionally a time to pray for those loved ones who are deceased.

Delving Deeper

arnold, caroline. what we do when someone dies. new york: watts, 1987.

crim, keith, gen. ed. the perennial dictionary of world religions. san francisco: harpersanfrancisco, 1989.

davies, jon. death, burial and the rebirth in the religions of antiquity. london and new york: routledge, 1999.

dickerson, jr., robert b. final placement. algonac, mich.: reference publications, 1982.

elias, norbert. the history of manners. translated by edmund jephcott. new york: random house, 1982.

frazer, sir james george. the golden bough. new york: collier/macmillan, 1950.

grant, michael. the world of rome. cleveland, ohio: world publishing, 1960.

grimal, nicolas. a history of ancient egypt. cambridge, mass.: blackwell, 1994.

hazlitt, w. c. dictionary of faiths and folklore. london: bracken books, 1995.

jones, prudence, and nigel pennick. a history of pagan europe. london and new york: routledge, 1995.

opie, iona, and moira tatem, eds. a dictionary of superstitions. oxford, uk: oxford university press, 1989; new york: barnes & noble books, 1999.

quigley, christine, and christ wuigley. the corpse: a history. jefferson, n.c.: mcfarland, 1996.

walker, barbara a. the woman's encyclopedia of myths and secrets. new york: harper & row, 1983.

waring, philippa. a dictionary of omens and superstitions. london: souvenir press, 1978.