among the ancient Gauls, and horses and other creatures were sacrificed. ‘When they have conquered,’ writes Cæsar, ‘they sacrifice whatever captured animals may have survived the conflict.’ ‘Their funerals, considering the state of civilization among the Gauls, are magnificent and costly; and they cast into the fire all things, including living creatures, which they suppose to have been dear to them when alive; and a little before this period, slaves and dependents who were ascertained to have been beloved by them, were, after the regular funeral rites were completed, burnt together with them.’[1]
With regard to Britain, Sir John Lubbock[2] remarks, that the very frequent presence of the bones of animals in tumuli appears to show that, with prehistoric man, sepulchral feasts were generally held in honour of the dead; and the numerous cases in which interments were accompanied by burnt human bones, tend to prove the prevalence of still more dreadful customs, and that not only horses and dogs, but slaves also, were frequently sacrificed at their masters' graves.
All the remains of horses found in prehistoric barrows
‘The chiefs of Unyamwezi generally are interred by alarge assemblage of their subjects with cruel rites. A deep pit is sunk, with a kind of vault or recess projecting from it; in this the corpse, clothed with skin and hide, and holding a bow in the right hand, is placed sitting, with a pot of pombe, upon a dwarf stool, while sometimes one, but more generally three female slaves, one on each side and the third in front, are buried alive to preserve their lord from the horrors of solitude.’ — Burton. The Lake Regions of Central Africa, vol. ii.
According to Crantz, the Esquimaux lay a dog's head by the grave of a child, for the soul of a dog, say they, can find its way everywhere, and will show the ignorant babe the way to the land of souls.
