Neanderthal skeletons have been found interred with supplies (suggesting the idea of another life), accompanied by animal sacrifice (wild ox, bison, and wild goat), with attention to an east-west axis (the path of the sun, which is reborn from the same earth in which the dead are placed), in flexed position (as though within the womb), or in a sleeping posture - in one case with a pillow of chips of flint.

Sleep and death, awakening and resurrection, the grave as a return to the mother for rebirth; but whether Homo neanderthalensis thought the next awakening would be here again or in some world to come (or even both together) we do not know."

"Professor Weckler has suggested that Homo neanderthalensis may have come from the Oriental zone, pressing west across the tundras of Europe, where he was the first to use fire. Sinanthropus, it will be recalled, who had already captured fire as early as c. 400,000 B.C., was a cannibal; so also Neanderthal Man: we have mentioned the evidence of the opened skulls at Krapina and Ehringsdorf. But in Java too a number of such opened skulls have been found among the remains of Solo (Ngandon) Man, Neanderthal's Oriental contemporary; and these were opened precisely in the way of the skulls of the present-day headhunters of Borneo.

Neanderthal and Solo Man, therefore, may have practiced some form of ritual cannibalism in connection with an early version of the headhunt; and if so, the formula should perhaps be carried back even to the period of Plesianthropus, who killed and beheaded men as well as beasts - in which case, this grim cult might reasonably be proposed as the earliest religious rite of the human species.

But now, with respect to the earliest employment of fire, a curious problem arises when it is realized that although the heavybrowed family of Sinanthropus crouched around its hearth as early as c. 400,000  B.C. and that of Neanderthal Man c. 200,000, those lusty brutes gobbled their meals of fresh meat and brains - whether human or animal - absolutely raw. For it was not until the period of the far more highly developed races of the temple caves, c. 30,000 - 10,000 B.C., that the art of roasting was invented.

But then, why the hearths?

It has been suggested that they were used to heat the caves, and this, indeed, would seem to have been the only practical end to which they were turned. However, even if this were the case, one would still have to ask by what accident Sinanthropus could have learned that the blast of a forest, prairie, or volcanic fire could have been turned to such congenial use.

A possible answer is provided by the Ainu ritual of the mountain bear ceremonially entertained during his night-long conversation with the goddess of the hearth; for the fire in that context was not a mere device for the provision of heat but the actual presence of a divinity. The earliest hearths, too, could have been shrines, where fire was cherished in and for itself in the way of a holy image or primitve fetish. The practical value of such a living presence, then, would have been discovered in due time.

The suggestion is rendered the more likely, furthermore, when it is considered that throughout the world the hearth fire remains to this day a sacred as well as secular institution. In many lands, at the time of marriage, the kindling of the hearth in the new home is a crucial rite, and the domestic cult comes to focus in the preservation of its flame. Perpetual flames and votive lights are known practically everywhere in the developed religious cults. The vestal fire of Rome, with its attendant priestesses, was neither for cooking nor for the provision of heat. And we have already learned of the holy fire made and extinguished at the times of the installation and murder of the god-king."

(Campbell)