Dead people, like vegetables, can be pickled or preserved. You can also abandon them to the beasts of the field, burn them like rubbish, or bury y them lile treasure. From embalming to cremation, all sorts of techniques are used to do something with the corpse. But the point is, something must be done. (p203)
As their species moved forward, they began crossing boundaries whose very existence they never imagined. After nightfall, they looked up at a sky filled with stars and felt themselves small and fragile in the vastness. Soon they began to see everything in a way they had never had in olden times. When they found one of their own lying still and stiff, they now stood around the body as if there were something they should do that they had never done before. (p19)