Such are some of the points which countenance the idea that in the Mycenaean people we have the originals of the people of the Homeric poems. On the other hand there are difficulties, by no means inconsiderable, in the way of such a belief. Of these the chief is the question of the method in which the bodies of the dead are disposed of. The men of the Homeric poems burned their dead; the men of the Mycenaean civilization buried theirs. Undoubtedly this is a serious difficulty in the way of identification, presupposing, as it does, a different view of the destiny of the soul after death. The men who burned the bodies of their dead believed that the soul had no further use for its body after death, but departed into a distant, shadowy, immaterial region, so that the body, if it had any connection with the soul, acted rather as a drag and a defilement, from which it was well that the soul should be released. Therefore they dematerialized the body, and often the things used by the body during life, by the action of fire. On the other hand, those who buried their dead believed that the spirit of the dead man dwelt in some fashion in the tomb, or at least hovered around the body, waiting, perhaps, for a reincarnation, and capable of using the weapons, the utensils, and the foods of its former life. Therefore the body was carefully interred, sometimes even embalmed, and its weapons and foods, or at all events simulacra of these, were laid beside it. The distinction between the two lines of thought is clear and strong; but it does not necessarily presuppose an absolute distinction of race. It is not improbable that towards the end of the Mycenaean period, to which in any case the connection with the Homeric poems would belong, cremation was beginning to supersede the older practice of interment. In late Mycenaean graves at Salamis evidences of cremation are found, and at Mouliana, in Crete, there are instances of uncremated bones being found along with bronze swords on one side of a tomb, while on the other were found an iron sword and cremated bones in a cinerary urn. The distinction, then, is not necessarily one of race, but of custom, gradually changing, perhaps within a comparatively short period. It has even been suggested that no interval of time of any great extent is needed, as the practice of cremation may quickly develop among any race, being prompted by the comfortable idea that when the flesh is disposed of, the possibly inconvenient, possibly even vampire, ghost of a disagreeable ancestor goes along with it.