is it possible that burial is actually an act of defiance?
"that fucking lion's been eyeing my wife for months, and she might have died of plague, *cough*, but there's no damned way i'm letting that lion get to her, now. not after all the trouble i went through in evolving bipedalism. not after i've started eating protein. no fucking way. so, i'll tell you: if i can't have her, no other species can, either. *cough*."
because, it's kind of an anti-social act, in a broader food web kind of way, right? every other species gets eaten by scavengers. and, all carnivores and omnivores are opportunistic scavengers. we give the rest of the animals a really dramatic "fuck you" by leaving ours underground, where only the worms can get to them.
maybe our ancestors actually thought that through. maybe it's intentional - maybe we're really just assholes.
jagmeet singh must cut his beard.