+71+. 5. A radical transformation in the conception of the state of the dead was effected by the introduction of the idea of moral retribution into the life of the Underworld.[141] The basis of the movement was the natural conception of life as determined by ethical considerations, but the process of transformation has extended over thousands of years and has hardly yet reached its completion. In the lowest eschatological systems known to us there is no marked difference in the status of departed souls; so among the Central Australians, the tribes of New Guinea and the Torres Straits islands, the Zulus, the Malagasy, the West African peoples, and some North American tribes.[142] +72+. The earliest grounds of distinction are ritualistic and social; these occur among the higher savages and survive in some civilized peoples. The Fijians assign punishment in the other world to bachelors, men unaccompanied by their wives and children, cowards, and untattooed women.[143] Where circumcision was a tribal mark, the uncircumcised, as having no social status, were consigned to inferior places in hades: so among the Hebrews.[144] The omission of proper funeral ceremonies was held in like manner to entail deprivation of privilege in hades: the shade had an undesirable place below, as among the Babylonians and the Hebrews,[145] or was unable to enter the abode of the dead, and wandered forlorn on the earth or on the border of the Underworld, as was the Greek belief.[146] Exposure of the corpse to beasts and birds, making funeral ceremonies impossible, was regarded as a terrible misfortune for the dead.[147] +73+. Such of these beliefs as relate to violations of ritual appear to spring from the view that the tribal customs are sacred, and from the consequent distinction between tribesmen and foreigners. All persons without the tribal mark were shut out from the privileges of the tribe, were outlaws in this world and the next; and those whose bodies were not properly disposed of lost the support of the tribal deities or of the subterranean Powers.[148] It was also held that the body retained the form in which it went down to hades;[149] hence the widespread dread of mutilation, as among the Chinese still. On the other hand the brave were rewarded.[150]