It is evidence of burial — of the deliberate treatment of the dead as something more than mere biological remains, as persons who deserve care and attention beyond the end of life.

The practice of deliberate burial, with associated grave goods and symbolic elements, is one of the clearest markers of modern human behavioral capacity in the archaeological record.

When a community buries its dead with care — when it deposits objects, applies pigments, arranges remains in specific ways, and treats the entire event as a ritual requiring specific knowledge and participation — it is demonstrating a cluster of cognitive and social capacities that distinguish modern humans from all other species and from earlier human forms.

Burial implies belief in something beyond death.