First Human Burials for Spiritual or Secular reasons?

This is somewhat of an odd query. I've never really gave it much thought before, but it is interesting to ponder. I wonder if the first human burials were for spiritual reasons or if the act itself was totally for secular (non-sacred) reasons? While digging back for some factoids, I see that a good bit of evidence suggests that the Neanderthals were the first human species to practice the art of burials. However, some people think that intentional burials started even before the Neanderthals, back when the Homo Heidelbergensis existed. Many of those very same people, that date this process further back, also speculate that these humanoid creatures simply buried their dead for secular reasons - like to keep additional wildlife from wandering into their area/camp.

For contrast, the image I used for this post is demonstrating a "sky burial." Yeah, I thought it would be a good idea to show another type of burial ceremony that doesn't involve digging any holes in the ground. In fact, before I changed my mind, I was originally going to do an entire post about these lovely "sky burials" but decided I'd rather have a shorter question-type post that asked about whether the origins of human burials were simply for spiritual manifestations or if they were not ecclesiastical at all and/or not sacred or secular in any way.

...But going back to sky burials, here is an excerpt from Wikipedia about such things: "For Tibetan Buddhists, sky burials and cremation are templates of instructional teaching on the impermanence of life. A sky burial is considered an act of generosity on the part of the deceased, since the deceased and their surviving relatives are providing food to sustain living beings. Such generosity and compassion for all beings are important virtues in Buddhism. Although some observers have suggested that sky burials are also meant to unite the deceased person with the sky or sacred realm, this does not seem consistent with most of the knowledgeable commentary and eyewitness reports, which indicate that Tibetans believe that at this point life has completely left the body and the body contains nothing more than simple flesh."

Personally, I don't give this stuff much weight. Whether you are shredded into space manure and ejected out of a spaceship while in deep space or you are cremated or buried deep underground in a gold casket, it won't affect what may or may not await thee. LOL! Plus, life recycles all around us; even the endless cycles of the universe demonstrate such things, so any type of belief that involves reincarnation doesn't ponder over such silly things like this. The End...

Image Credit: Bing Image Search using the 'free to use & share' function.

---End of Post "First Human Burials for Spiritual or Secular reasons?"