Origins of Condolence Phrases

When we first hear the news about someone`s death… we become bereft of any words or condolences phrases. That`s quite understandable. When I first heard the news about the death of my “GrandPa” , I was saddened beyond words. I started to ponder upon the true meaning of our lives.

My search continued and when I got into college, I chose History, as my major. I went on a search to find about the “origins of condolence phrases”. The journey ever since then, has been pretty astonishing. I have had the chance to visit countries such as Egypt, China, India, Australia, among others. They were the counties where the human civilizations existed even, thousands of years before.

There has been some mention of condolence phrases in the Hwang-ho river valley civilization (China), Indus valley civilization (India). Most of us might not be aware of these ancient civilizations. However, I am sure that you must have heard about the pyramids (and the Mummies, that lay beneath), in Egypt. Even during those times some words or phrases were carved into stones and infact, were buried along with the Tombs. These words or phrases were messages of condolence from the erstwhile, people & especially nobility of Egypt.

I myself, have had the pleasure to visit those pyramids & see those relics. My fellow archeologists believe that still, the Egyptian relics are not quite as old as some of the messages found in Australia. Those messages had been carved out in rocks by the original inhabitants of Australia, also known as the aboriginals.

Surprising is the fact that no one knows for sure, how these aboriginals managed to reach Australia (as its an island).

Then, there are the condolence messages written by the” Mayans”, a civilization, which flourished around South America & Mexico. So, it becomes quite puzzling to find about the origins of condolence phrases.

Nonetheless, what we can gauge from the aforementioned examples, is the fact that most of the ancient civilization valued the life of a person or a human being. However, there have been some other discoveries, which suggest that people were sacrificed to please the Sun god or some other god!!

However, let`s keep our focus on the origins of the condolence phrases. Although, the exact place of its origin, might be in some doubt, there is no doubt that the origin of the condolence phrases dates back to around thousands of years ago. The messages had a sole purpose of expressing grief at the demise of their loved ones. Most of the times, these writings are followed by some sort of drawings, which suggests a person caressing the other.

The graves that the archeologists have discovered around some of these civilizations have unearthed another important thing. Two or three people have been buried together holding hands of each other, carrying some rock carvings. These rock carvings contained some messages. These messages were some sort of condolence messages which, were deciphered much later, after their discovery.

These messages (majority of them carved on stones) show that the origin of condolence phrases is indeed thousands of years old.