19 denied that the death of an individual affects directly the life, as well as the juridical situation, of other individuals, especially his relatives (as illustrated, in the frameword of civil law (droit civil), by the norms of family law and the law of successions). (...) Universal human rights find support in the spirituality of all cultures and religions70, are rooted in the human spirit itself; as such, they are not the expression of a given culture (Western or any other), but rather of the universal juridical concience itself. All the aforementioned advances, due to this universal juridical conscience, have taken place amidst cultural diversity. Contrary to what the spokesmen of the so-called - and distorted - "cultural relativismo" preach, cultural manifestations (at least those which conform themselves with the universally accepted standards of treatment of the human being and of respecto for their dead) do not constitute obstacles to the prevalence of human rights, but quite on the contrary: the cultural substratum of the norms of protection of the human being much contributes to secure their effectiveness. Such cultural manifestations - such as that of respect for the dead in the persons of the living, titulaires of rights and duties - are like superposed stones with which is erected the great pyramid71 of the universality of human rights"72. 56. Subsequently, in the Judgment on reparations in the same Bámaca Velásquez versus Guatemala case (2002), I further pondered, in my new Separate Opinion, that in social circles strongly impregnated with a communitarian vision, there prevails a feeling of harmony between the living and their dead. Thus, in the oldest graves known, those of the Neanderthal man times, the dead are buried in a foetal position, as if indicating the belief in after-life or rebirth73, and funerary rites help to perpetuate the cultural legacy and to contribute to face the reality of death and the anguish provoked by it74 (par. 20). And I added that "in my view, what we conceive as the human kind comprises not only the living beings (titulaires of the human rights), but also the dead (with their spiritual legacy). The respect for the dead is in effect due in the persons of the living. Human solidarity has a wider dimension than the purely social solidarity, . Cf. [Various Authors,] Les droits de l'homme - bien universel ou fruit de la culture occidentale? (Colloquy of Chantilly/France, March 1997), Avignon, Institut R. Schuman pour l'Europe, 1999, pp. 49 and 24. 70 . To evoke an image quite proper to the rich maya culture. 71 . Paragraphs 19 and 28. 72 . Edgar Morin, O Paradigma Perdido: A Natureza Humana, 6a. ed., Sintra/Mem Martins, Publs. Europa-América, 2000, pp. 93 y 135-137. 73 . Ibid., p. 95, y cf. p. 165. El conocimiento humano - inclusive el científico - no ha logrado dar una respuesta a los problemas transcendentales enfrentados por el ser humano (como el de su destino); es posible que esteamos todavía en el "inicio del conocimiento"; ibid., p. 212. 74