'Suppose I am an Apache indian circa 1800. Would you be as certain as to how I address the spirits of the trees, buffaloes, etc ? Or maybe I am an Australian aboriginal; would you venture to guess what my funeral would entail ?'

Thanks to George Grey we do know what an aboriginal funeral entailed.

Part 1

Saturday June 15 1839 near Perth in Western Australia.

Soon after daybreak I reached the entrance of Mulligo's hut: he was alive but his respiratiation was scarcely visible. His head rested on his mother's knees, and her withered breasts now rested on his lips as she leant crying over him; other women were seated round, their heads all verging to a common centre over the wasted frame of the dying man; they were crying bitterly and scratching their cheeks, foreheads, and noses with their nails until the blood trickled slowly from the wounds. The men in front of the huts were busied in finishing off their spears, ready for the coming fight.

I stood for some time watching the mournful scene, but other native females soon began to arrive; they came up in small parties, generally by threes, marching slowly forward with their wan-nas (a long stick they use for digging up roots) in their hands;the eldest female walked first, and when they approached within about thirty or forty yards of the hut in which the dying man lay they raised the most piteous cries, and, hurrying their pace, moved rapidly towards the point where the other women were seated, recalling the custom alluded to by Jeremiah (9:17, 18) Call for the wailing women that they may come, and let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters.'

And so from George Grey we have an observation that ritual transends cultures and time. The burial ceronomy of the ancient and our own are pretty much the same.