Relations between people in the groups that Neanderthals lived in are becoming stronger. Realizing that they belong to a chain of successive generations, people began to bury their dead. Some animals also do not abandon their dead relatives: for example, elephants throw branches at them. Perhaps the ancestors of the Neanderthals also hid their dead. People specially dug pits where they put the dead. Often burials, and numerous ones, were made in caves. Everyone was buried - women, children, old hunters. Often such burials were surrounded by stones, weapons, the skull of some small animal, even flowers were left in them. The remains were sprinkled with red ocher or pieces of this mineral were placed next to the deceased. Probably, red color was already perceived as the color of life.
People not only realized the need to take care of the weak and sick, they got the opportunity to do so. In order for a seriously wounded person to recover, it was necessary to take care of him, to share food with him. Skeletons of obviously seriously ill people are found in the burials, and in one of them the remains of a man without an arm were found. This means that people could already get enough food to feed not only growing children, but also weak, sick, old people. Probably, in such conditions, ideas about good and bad in people's relations began to take shape, i.e. moral standards.
Neanderthals were the first people about whom we can say that they performed some kind of rites. In the caves, specially collected and even arranged in a certain order, the skulls of bears are found. Around them, apparently, there were some rituals. It is noteworthy that human skulls were also treated in a special way: separate burials of skulls were found in special pits. Of course, it is difficult for us to imagine what happened in the caves around these skulls. There is no way to judge this by the customs of even the most backward modern tribes, because the Neanderthals were our extinct ancestors and the peculiarities of their perception of the world, of course, differed from the worldview of more developed people. It can be assumed that Neanderthal hunters considered themselves relatives of bears, like people of later eras who believed in their relationship with different types of animals. Such representations are called totemism. Most likely, the Neanderthals believed in magical powers - the ability to influence people or other creatures in order to achieve the desired actions from them. Magical actions require the presence not of the one you want to address, but of his symbolic replacement: an image or something belonging to him - a hair, a piece of clothing. You can talk to the image, and this creature will do what you want. An enemy's hair can be burned, and he will fall ill and die. Such simple ideas could already be in the Neanderthals.
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