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Anthropologist gather evidence that ever since cremation or burial has been observed in Stone Age era, funeral flowers have played a part in funeral exercises. Proofs of Funeral flowers during the Prehistoric age were found by a Smithsonian anthropologist, Reuven Yeshurun. A team of scientist of the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences led by Dani Nadel of University of Haifa recently published a paper, in this report they found a grave in Israel approximately 13,700 to 11,700 years old that were lined with flowers.  The team found the graves and it is from the Natufians, they are prehistoric people who lived in Mt.Carmel, Israel.   Anthropologist Reuven Yeshurun known to be co-author of the paper and also a researcher in the Program in Human Ecology and Archaeology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, he disclose 80 years ago in a valley in central Israel called “Natuf”, first defined the “Natufian” a Stone Age culture and also an anthropologist term. They discover many Natufinian sites in the Levant which was the biggest and wealthiest area in Northern Israel. Anthropologists also found out the Natufinian were hunter –gatherers that lived at the end of Old Stone Age era, Paleolithic and before the coming of the New Stone Age era, the Neolithic.

Natufian’s were the ancestors of the world’s first farmers and the last hunter-gatherers. To bury their the corpse, they build a specialized cave cemeteries placed the body in crevasses of the rock sculpted to make the rock smooth. The subject of Yeshurun and his team’s paper are the graves in Raqefet cave they also found out that before a burial were first line in a primitive plaster called mud-veneer. Yeshurun found out that a layer of flowering plants was laid down and the corpse was places on top of the funeral flowers. They also discover that one of the grave that they examine is a double burial – a 12 to 15 year old teenager and a 30-year old man. Even though they don’t found any flower pieces in the grave, impressions were left by the plants in the primitive plaster. Avinoam Danin, one of the paper’s co-authors, he even able to recognize some impressions which belong to the plant called Judean sage (in scientific term: Salvia judica). Other than the Judean Sage they also found another sage plant connected to the mint or figwort family and leaves from the Judas tree with a scientific term, Cercis silliquastrum L. The flowers that were found in their research still grow outside the mouth of Raqefet Cave every spring. Anthropologist believe the burials happened somewhere before summertime while examining the plants and the flowers that they found. Due to this kind of activity it is impossible to find any remnants of the flowers. However they found a pit and a skeleton inside. Upon the research of the Anthropologist they find a firm proof that Natufinians used thes plants for burials and funeral before.

source:https://insider.si.edu/2013/09/28455/