Why the First Pet Cemetery Was Revolutionary | Hacker News Reader

Why the First Pet Cemetery Was Revolutionary

smithsonianmag.com

21 pointsgmays16 comments

Dogs have been buried even by human hunters millennials ago. Sometime with a last bone in its mouth for the passage to the afterlife.

The dog lived between 25,000 and 24,000 BC.... https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-makes-us-human/...

Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, lies buried beside his dogs, as requested in his testament. I have lived as a philosopher and wish to be buried as such, without circumstance, without solemn pomp, without splendour. I want to be neither opened nor embalmed. Bury me in Sanssouci at the level of the terraces in a tomb which I have had prepared for myself…

> Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, lies buried beside his dogs

There is a massive difference between being buried with slaves, pets and trinkets and having a burial for one.

So I guess you’re against having your wife sit on your funeral pyre too?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati_(practice)

I will hasard that yes, they are against. The practice is barbaric. I still fail to see how it relates to their very valid comment that having your dogs buried next to you as their owner is fundamentaly different that having a burial for your dog.

As far as I know, the dogs were not killed but were buried there before their master died.

> the dogs were not killed but were buried there before their master died

Sure. There is still a massive difference between a burial for a King having someone or something buried with them and conducting the ritual entirely for a pet. (And looping back to OP, several cultures conducted funeral rites entirely for beloved pets. The Egyptians and Romans come to mind.)

Forgive my ignorance, but is the difference because a burial FOR a dog implies some meaningful significance since the focus is on the pet, whereas being buried WITH the dogs is just a way for the dogs to be sent to the afterlife with the deceased (and the focus isn't on them, they're just along for the ride)?

Yes. The one is focused on the pet, elevating it to the same level of respect and dignity as funeral rites for people.

The other is not - it could be respectful (I loved my pet please bury them by me) or not (bury my jewels and slaves with me) but it still isn't the raising of the pet status to that of your own species.

>“Until then, it was considered eccentric to care so much about an animal that you would bury it,” Koudounaris says.

The thing that I think is evolving rapidly in our era is empathy for other beings, human and also animal. To understand what it would be like to be in their shoes and understand that very little separates us from them. It's not all about selfishness and just looking out for yourself and what happens to you. I know many will disagree, but that's what it looks like from a zoomed out view of our history to me. I think love and empathy is a natural progression that accompanies intelligence. And that comforts me about the universe.

Calling it "the first" seems both myopic and awfully Eurocentric to me. Even pop culture history is enough to know that, for example, the ancient Egyptians often mummified pets.

Asking out of ignorance & curiosity: did other cultures make cemeteries before Christianity spread that practice? I specifically mean burial plots with marked graves, for which Egyptian mummified pets don't seem to qualify.

In some ways, ancient Egyptian culture was more progressive than modern puritan derived pop cultures.

Victorian era London loved to steal mummified cats and corpses to use in early medicinal rituals. Now instinctively one would assume they were primitive savages too, but the antibacterial properties of the pitch used to preserve mummies was recently discovered to be an effective disinfectant.

In general, culture was propagated through literacy, religion, trade, slavery, and wars. Even the ancient Greeks wrote about wandering Troglodytae.

Note people have on average dropped an estimated 23 IQ scale corrected points since the Victorian era. One may find some comfort in knowing the crass film Idiocracy was a documentary about the present. =3

Such a random collection of sentences.

Unfortunately the Wikipedia article has multiple issues.

Found this article which claims 7500BC.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/etimes/trending/10-oldes...

I loved my pets, but I can't help but wonder if I wouldn't be more callous/practical about them if I was in the 1800s, back when the infant mortality rate was in the 30-50% range.

for additional context - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivisection#David_Ferrier_and_... - it were the years when they started to at least limit vivisection somewhat and require anesthesia during it.

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