Death and beauty go hand in hand. As paradoxical and macabre as that idea might seem, many anthropologists will tell you that ancestral burial rituals are a significant measure of human civilization. Many of the first objects shaped by human sensibilities, such as the Triangular Tombstones from Le Moustier in Peyzac-le-Moustier, Dordogne, France, were related to death and the afterlife. Ancient humans were entombed with their most precious possessions. Bones of ancestors conferred legitimacy upon rulers, proving royal descendance, giving birth to modern notions of cultural heritage or, in the case of relics, like the Byzantine Reliquary in the Shape of a Sarcophagus (400–600) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, an unbroken lineage with divine actors.