I believe it is connected to the epitaph, for it might have originally been the published version of just that.

The first obituary is very difficult to trace, however many candidates are found at the advent and popularization of the printing press circa 1500s. The first obituaries were concise simply containing the deceased name, birth date, death date, and cause of death. During the late 1800s John Thadeus Delane, an English editor of the London paper "The Times", saw the potential for obituaries and began promoting publishing them. This entailed newspapers recognize a person's death as a solemn and important event and that it needed more than just a plain short announcement. As a result, obituaries grew in length and elaboration containing short prayers, poems, and brief biography within them. At the onset of the 1900s with modern advances in printing technology allowed obituaries to contain images; this allowed obituaries to become more elegant, but more solemn as well. As the late 1900s and early 2000s provided the onset and popularization of the internet, obituaries became digitized and available as a search result in addition to news papers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obituary

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No one seems to know when the first obituary was published. The word obituary is derived from Latin roots meaning "to meet one's death". Obituaries were originally sung out, and often published in local church records. The advent of the printing press encouraged the publication of obituaries as a newspaper staple. They sell papers. Births, weddings and deaths have always been the grist for small local publications, and for some these features are all that keep them going. People in microcosm and macrocosm measure their own lives and events in terms of births, weddings and deaths, and there is a certain fascination with the details - what family member isn't mentioned and why? Does it say when he moved to Eagle Creek? How old was ol' Smitty, anyway? Why are they burying him in Springfield? Did they mention him running that BBQ business into the ground? It's sort of like rubbernecking when we pass a car wreck. There's also the need for continuity and connection that obituaries feed. You know ol' Smitty's bookkeeper, or he owed your Dad money, or you went on a date with him when he was between wives. Obituaries don't bring closure (what really does?), but they can tie up old memories. Of course, obituary writing can be an art in itself, or a competition. And what would the neighbors think if ol' Smitty's 2nd wife has not placed a piece in the paper, lauding the ol' skinflint's great qualities and family? So as to the custom, we have several elements. Obituaries are newsworthy, they have commercial value, they provide historical continuity and psychological connection, and they are perpetuated as well by social competition.

Why? Are you writing one?

curious minds wanted to know!!!

I would assume that obituaries date back to the time when Guttenberg invented the printing press around 1440 AD. The need to let the public know about the deceased probably made people in townships post little blurbs on public message boards giving some details about the lives of the departed. The more I think about this, perhaps these little blurbs may have been depicted on the walls of caves back in the Bronze age. There was always a desperate need for keeping people informed.

My guess would be that it probably grew out of the practice of tolling the bells when someone died. You know, "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." They used to ring the church bells when someone died, one time for each year they lived. They also used to publish certain information by posting it on the church doorframe, such as upcoming weddings (publishing the banns). They might have done the same for deaths. I don't know, I'm just making an educated guess based on what I do know.