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The Buried Soul:

How Humans Invented Death
Front Cover
8 Reviews
Beacon Press, Aug 15, 2005 - Social Science - 353 pages
Do cannibals exist? Is there evidence for contemporary human sacrifice? What are vampires? The Buried Soul charts the story of the human response to death from prehistory to the present day. At some moment in human history, our ancestors invented "death." Retracing four million years, this book investigates the many ways that humans, in facing death, first understood what it was to be alive. Their dramatic conforntation with mortality survives in early accounts of sacrifices, in blindfolded bodies preserved in peat bogs, and in the elaborate burials of disabled or deformed individuals among Neanderthals and the people of the Ice Age. Timothy Taylor has spent his life sifting through the relics of encounters with death. In The Buried Soul he gathers evidence of how the ancients saw their universe and asks how we came to have not only a sense of the afterlife but also an image of the soul. After we began to speak, but before we could write, Taylor suggests that early humans, in an astonishing conceptual leap, divided the body from the spirit that animated it. Rituals arose that attempted to placate, tempt, scapegoat, destroy, or contain this potentially malevolent spirit. Death was seen as a form of birth that set loose not only souls but also deities. Appeasing them required rites so powerful they have echoed down through the ages to make macabre new puzzles for archaeologists and forensic scientists. In Taylor's radical investigation of the human soul we encounter vampirism, cannibalism, near-death experiences, modern-day human sacrifice, and modern mummification. His search spans all of human prehistory and history through to the present and interweaves the author's own experience of the bewilderment of death. Book jacket.

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Review: The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death

User Review  - Daenerys - Goodreads

The Buried Soul provides a good overview of cultural attitudes to death, from cannibalism to the fear of vampires. It is well written and well researched, and various scholars' different takes on each ... Read full review

Review: The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death

User Review  - Michelle - Goodreads

going to start reading it again right away Read full review

All 7 reviews »

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References from web pages

The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death
The buried soul: how humans invented death. x, 353 pp., maps, figs., tables, illus., bibliogr. London, New York: Fourth Estate, 2003. ...
www.questia.com/ PM.qst?a=o& se=gglsc& d=5007356102

Sunday Herald, The: A window on the afterlife
The buried soul: how humans invented death by timothy taylor (fourth estate, (pounds) 20). IN a world of six billion mortal souls, we are never far away ...
findarticles.com/ p/ articles/ mi_qn4156/ is_20020929/ ai_n12578935/ print

Metaphilm - bloodviolet
bloodviolet. Perfect Evolution (and the Buried Soul). What this year's four vampire-hybrid films have in common is an overcoming of our oldest fear. ...
metaphilm.com/ philm.php?id=470_0_2_0_M5

I eat cannibals, it's incredible, you bring out the animal in me ...
Citing archaeological evidence and recent findings in molecular biology, archaeologist Timothy Taylor, author of The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death, ...
www.metafilter.com/ 29870/ I-eat-cannibals-its-incredible-you-bring-out-the-animal-in-me-I-eat-cannibals

News and Views September 2002 - University of Bradford
News and Views September 2002 - University of Bradford
www.brad.ac.uk/ admin/ pr/ sept2002/ stoneage.php

Book Search
The Buried Soul - How Humans Invented Death ...
www.beacon.org/ productdetails.cfm?PC=1792

soma Review - Bringing Out the Dead - Timothy Taylor
In my book, The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death, I examine the human response to death, in our earliest prehistory, in the present day, ...
www.somareview.com/ timothytaylor.cfm

Blackwell Synergy - Amer Anthropologist, Volume 108 Issue 2 Page ...
The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death. Timothy Taylor. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2002. 353 pp. Death, Dismemberment, and Memory: Body Politics in Latin ...
www.blackwell-synergy.com/ doi/ abs/ 10.1525/ aa.2006.108.2.398

BBC Radio 4 - Thinking Allowed - 25 September 2002
Information about the Radio 4 factual topical discussion programme Thinking Allowed 25 September 2002
www.bbc.co.uk/ radio4/ factual/ thinkingallowed_20020925.shtml

Channel 4 – Time Team
The Bone Cave Alveston Gloucestershire 1 March 2001. Find out more. This website contains links to other websites which are not under the control of and are ...
www.channel4.com/ history/ microsites/ T/ timeteam/ archive/ 2001alv_2.html

About the author (2005)

Timothy Taylor, author ofThe Prehistory of Sex, has appeared on National Geographic channel and HBO as an expert in ancient cultures; he teaches in the Department of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom.

Bibliographic information

QR code for The Buried Soul
TitleThe Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death
AuthorTimothy Taylor
Editionillustrated, reprint
PublisherBeacon Press, 2005
ISBN0807046671, 9780807046678
Length353 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Social Science / Anthropology / General
Social Science / Death & Dying
Social Science / General
  
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