Welcome to Haines, Lauren and Emily's FYE Web Site
Introduction to Cultural and Biological Anthropology
AN101/102 Mario Montano, Christina Torres-Rouff
Lauren, Haines and Emily are currently first years at Colorado College. They are taking Mario and Christina's First Year Experience: Introduction to Cultural and Biological Anthropology. We chose to take this course because none of us had ever taken an anthropology course before and were all intrigued by this new study. We are fascinated by other cultures and leaning about their peoples and practices. The focus of this course was on death. We studied death through both a cultural and biological point of view. This web site is the final project for our second block. This project deals with a biological aspect of death. Through this site we will analyze the differences between cultures and how they deal with death and burial.
This web site is an introduction to the death and burial rituals and practices of two different groups of people: Early Humans and Muslims. These two groups have drastically different ideologies regarding death. Our official assignment prompt was: Different perceptions of burials and it's attendant rituals and treatment of the body by a modern religious group and early humans. For our early human group we chose the Neanderthals simply because they were the first species to demonstrate purposeful and symbolic burials. They are also the group we have the most information on. For the modern religious group we chose Islam because it has many specific rituals regarding death and burials. While many religions have official rituals regarding death, some of these rituals have become relaxed. What happens after a person dies has become more about the individual's wishes than the ultimate practices of their religion. Islam is an exception to this trend. The principals and rituals of the Muslim world are still practiced with strict adherence. This uniformity of practice, Muslims believe, is part of the pleasing God and will in part result in an afterlife in Heaven.
This site will facilitate an understanding of these two groups through the exploration of their funerary and mortuary practices. ENJOY!
