“It was like a hand, or a living prosthesis with distributed elements, each with its own specializations, needs, and abilities. Thus, when any member perished, all members felt the loss intimately, for their own way of being in the world was diminished. This, it seems, became the seed from which the endless plethora of funerary associations arose. Unexpectedly, I suggest that the onset of language has something to do with these matters, for the grave necessity of the formal preservation of the memory of the departed actually bears some resemblance to the function and form of the word.” — an anonymous informant