I'm making the case for conflating death and memory. Yes, picking up a book and reading the words of a dead author is restoring in that moment the author's influence on the world of the living. The trilobite is not a good example since we're talking about people specifically here. Plus, if you want to take it from that angle, a human skeleton is not going to bridge the gap because it is not emblematic in itself of the contributions and effects it had in life. If the trilobite wrote a book, the story would be different. The gravestone is infinitely more important than the body it marks, because the essence of that person--the memory he or she leaves with others in life--is transferred away from that person's body in death, and into the artifacts that symbolically represent them. Writings for an author, or music for a composer, perhaps. Why do you think people who study paintings engage with the personality of the painter in their analysis?
This is a bit subjective, and I think you'd agree it's a cultural construct. It breaks down when it is considered that human beings evolved from creatures which were not human beings- so we would find it difficult to 'limit things to people specifically,'. We would find ourselves asking where the line is drawn.
The frozen hair of a mammoth, or the residual DNA of a stone age woman, both fire the imagination- or at least my imagination, in the same way that ancient hieroglyphics do. I understand that this residue doesn't construct an argument for mixing death with memory.
This is not an argument to suggest that musing about a painter's intentions and personal disposition is pointless- I'm all for that, but suggesting it brings them back to life to any capacity greater than poetic would be erroneous.
Taking the genetic material of a frozen mammoth and cloning it, that would be more of a resurrection, although again we'd have to be satisfied with the fact we weren't resurrecting the
actual frozen mammoth. That organism would be dead, even if new organisms derived from it survive.
I can sort of symapthise with the notion that gene-line, organism and meme-line [for want of a better word] are not completely separable, but bleh- it feels too much like humans trying to bullshit their way out of death by investing themselves in cultural artifacts, like Voldemort's horcruxes.
Consider this: I am alive, and you have read my thoughts. Am I more alive? Is there a fragmentary copy of me now living inside your head?
What if I died before you read this, and you didn't know? Would that make a difference- would I be 'brought back' to an extent?
Not really, in either case.