Buffalo sacrifice and megalithic funerary cults in Sulawesi and Southeast Asia

From the analysis of the Indonesian funerary rites (Sulawesi and Sumba), and more generally in Southeast Asia, a conceptual plot emerges including the erection of megaliths, the ritual sacrifice of the water buffalo (psychopomp animal par excellence), the cult of the Ancestors and its link with the fertility of rice fields. Let us try to understand how such different symbolic areas have harmonized with each other over the millennia.