Ancestor worship exists among the Bantu in Southern Africa, the Chinese, the Japanese and in the Melanesian and the Polynesian cultures. While it existed in the cultures of Greece, Rome, Babylonia, Ancient Europe and Asia, it mainly survives in folklore, although its influence is present for example in the sraddha rites in India, the imperial ancestor cult in Japan, and the European All Souls Day customs to honour the dead.
Ancestor worship is always associated with tenacious clinging to the old ways, and in modern primitive societies is an obstacle to development. Worship of the dead, particularly of ancestors, stems from the belief that they can intervene in the affairs of the living; it is the fear that this intervention will be detrimental, or even destructive, that motivates the living to offer propitiation to the dead through prayer, ritual, and sacrifice.