Thursday, September 16, 2010
Kelsey Brooks - Flower Tokens
While reading a passage in The Original Visions, I found it very interesting the different practices of the Indigenous Peoples. Specifically, the Neanderthals. The Neanderthals buried their dead very cautiously with flowers. They believed these flowers were tokens because they believed the dead should be buried with the beauty they enjoyed on Earth. I thought about this passage and what it meant today. Today, people send flowers out of instinct because it is the "right" thing to do. Many of us see the flowers as a token of sympathy instead of a token as beauty. Some Neanderthals believed the dead would enter a new form existence and the flowers would resonate more than they did in previous life. We have a more broad view today. The funeral takes place with the flowers surrounding the casket. Days past and we begin to throw the flowers away. Why do we not think of flowers as a token of beauty like the Neanderthals? Do people take more things for granted today rather than appreciate what we have?
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Alexandra Brown
ReplyDeleteI think you're right, that today we've lost whatever meaning there is behind burying our dead with flowers. But we haven't completely lost the ritual. Yes, we send flowers to a funeral without really knowing why, but some ceremonies involve dropping a rose down into the grave with the casket. I've never understood what that actually meant, but now I think I get it. We haven't completely lost that original idea of burying our dead with something beautiful. We even dress up our dead so that they themselves are beautiful. Those instincts are still in place, and while we may have lost our understanding of what they mean, at least we haven't lost the idea.