# Ancestor Veneration · The Canon · The Atlas · The Congregation of Tomorrow

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The Canon · No. 004
Ancestor Veneration
The cult of the dead
c.8000 BCE – present · Indigenous / Folk · Living · China, Africa, Rome, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Madagascar, Mesoamerica — near-universal
I. BEFORE HISTORY — c.100,000 – 3000 BCE
### How many
### Who began it
### What it is for
### What it worships
### What it holds
### What it does
### After death
### Its texts
### Its branches
### Of note
### Its timeline
- c.8000–6000 BCE Plastered ancestral skulls at Jericho and Ain Ghazal — the skull removed, remodelled in clay, eyes inlaid with shells, kept in the house.
- c.1200 BCE Shang dynasty oracle bones record kings consulting dead ancestors on war, harvest and childbirth.
- c.500 BCE Confucius makes filial piety toward the dead the ethical centre of the whole system.
- 1st c. BCE Roman parentalia and the wax imagines of ancestors carried in funeral processions.
- 1645–1742 CE The Chinese Rites Controversy: Jesuits argue ancestor rites are civil, Dominicans that they are idolatry. In 1742 Benedict XIV's bull Ex quo singulari rules against the Jesuits and forbids further discussion — costing Christianity its foothold in Qing China.
- 8 December 1939 The decree Plane compertum est, issued under Pius XII, reverses the ruling: the rites are reclassified as social custom and Chinese Catholics may honour ancestors and Confucius.
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution attacks lineage halls and ancestral tablets as the Four Olds; most are rebuilt after 1980.
### Sources
Verified 2026-09-13, against these.
- Chinese Rites controversy
- Encyclopedia.com, Chinese Rites Controversy
- Plastered human skulls
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