Within hours of the death of Steve Jobs earlier this month, impromptu memorials began to appear at Apple stores around the world. Well-wishers brought candles, flowers and apples (with bites taken from them), and they covered windowpanes with handwritten Post-It notes. Inventive and colorful, such outpourings are this generation’s way of memorializing public figures like Princess Diana and Alexander McQueen.
But creativity in sending off the dead is nothing new. Human beings are seemingly hardwired to use public rituals to mark such moments. We bury our loved ones in the ground. We burn them in fire. In some cultures, we leave corpses as carrion, inviting the birds to pick the bones dry. In others, we hang the dead in trees or stow them in caves. In naval circles, we consign them to the ocean.