Modern Humans, it seems, have always had belief – indeed it is generally believed that humanity is hardwired to need some form of religion to provide meaning to existence. Certainly, this would appear to be something that modern Homo Sapiens have always had. It is probable that earlier species of humans, such as Neanderthals, also had a tendency towards ritual and belief.
What brought this about – this belief in otherness? Call it faith, or the supernatural, Spiritualism, or fantasy. It would seem that one of the attributes of the later human species, and certainly with the evolution of Homo Sapiens, was thought and imagination. The ability to create other worlds in thought that could exist in the mind alongside the real material world in which we are held. When and how humanity came to possess these abilities is still a mystery.
Homo Sapiens are thought to have possessed thoughts and conscience as they evolved from an earlier species of humanity. Humanity developed rituals, for celebrations and to deal with death, were able to paint and draw images of objects, recreating imagined thoughts, particularly of animals, as carvings or wall paintings that can still be found today. These acts of creativity are thought to have always had some ritualistic meaning. For instance, cave wall paintings were unlikely to have been painted simply for the artistic value – they were more likely to have had a ritual significance. Caves may have been viewed as an entrance to the spirit world. Early findings of human habitation indicate that ritual practices formed an important part of their lives. At least from the period known as the Upper Palaeolithic, about 40,000 BC, carvings of figures, such as Venus goddesses, and signs of ritual behaviour, have been found at the earliest archaeological digs. And through all the ages, central to all societies, were these cultural beliefs and practices, and they can be described as the beginnings, or foundations, for religion, if not actually a religion.
This belief in spirits, or animism of the natural, to produce a supernatural world in our minds beyond what can be seen, can be described as a state of mind to which we are all subject. Born with thought and imagination, it is natural feature of our (cognitive) way of thinking. It is easy for us to thus attribute a vital force to the inanimate, to imagined characters, to believe in a being watching over us – the spirit of a loved one perhaps, or a supernatural being. For the hunter gatherer societies that existed before agriculture, this animistic way of thinking would was probably how they formed their beliefs. In an age before science and development humans needed to make sense of the world. Until our modern age, within only two or three lifetimes indeed, life was much shorter and harsher for the majority. Before modern medicines and electricity made our lives so much more comfortable most people did not live much beyond the age of thirty, only the aristocracy could hope to live longer. Indeed, most died before the age of two, child mortality has run at more than fifty percent throughout most of human existence. If you survived into adulthood life was harsh and painful, most lived with parasitic illnesses, ailments and life long injuries that never fully healed. You were old before the age of thirty and did not expect to live beyond it. There needed to be a meaning for this. This was, after all, the lot for most humans for hundreds of thousands of years. Once humanity had the capacity of thought in terms of supernatural beings or spirits, they would have begun to ask what became of those who had died – did their spirits live on – was there a place where all the deceased went; an afterlife?
After more than a hundred thousand years in the continent of Africa, modern humans began to spread across the world, and they took with them their culture and society, their beliefs in supernatural beings. The greatest indication for this animist belief, indicating that it had always been a part of a modern human conscience, is the similarity in behaviour and beliefs in all the early societies, no matter where in the world they settled, or how isolated they were through the ages. This indicates that it predates the arrival of agriculture and the rise of the first civilisations by some considerable time. The hunter gatherers had their rituals and customs long before, spanning a period greater than any other age. In this period, an established pattern of rituals and customs, such as burial practices, surrounding belief could well have become so fixed in the human mind that it was these that were taken out of Africa when Homo Sapiens finally began migrating. This would explain that often asked question, when latter day European explorers discovered the existence of tribal societies in newly discovered lands: How was it that their pagan religions had so many similar traits when they were apparently so far apart and seemingly isolated? The apparent similarities of spirits and gods, shamanism and ancestor worship found in all early human societies. These ideas, it would seem, were spread around the world many tens of thousands of years earlier.
Conjecture, archaeology and studies of hunter gatherer tribes can give us a functional idea of what such beliefs may have consisted of in early human societies. The hunter gatherer beliefs may not have been considered a fully formed religion, more like a mythology, but it still consisted of gods and spirits that may or may not have concerned themselves with happenings of humanity. With shaman who used ritual dances and trance induced visions to communicate with the spirits of animated objects or with the spirits of ancestors. Such ritual based beliefs and traditions fitted with the day to day lives of such small and mobile societies. This type of thinking would appear to be as old as humanity, and no doubt helped provide meaning and stability in a world that otherwise appeared harsh and uncompromising. These societies came to understand the world through their beliefs. The shaman, those man or woman who possessed conscience in both the material and spiritual world, who possessed knowledge and powers known to no others. In such hunter gatherer societies people may well have believed the world they lived in was filled with spirits, the animation of natural objects, beings that inhabited the rocks, trees, rivers and springs. And then there were the spirits of their ancestors, who lived in sacred places from where they would intercede in the affairs of the living from time to time. These were the sacred places where many tribes and people would gather on special occasions, often distant high places where only the spirits of the dead could roam.
It was the shaman that was the link between the spirit realm and the material world. It was he or she who held the tribal community together, possessed spiritual knowledge, looked after the sick and ensured the survival of rituals and customs. Thus, it was the shaman that communicated with the spirits of the dead and acted for the well-being of the tribal community.
As communities grew in size the ideas of higher gods seem to have emerged. Around thirty-five thousand years ago miniature figurines became very common and these were being made for more than twenty thousand years, covering the latter part of the period known as the palaeolithic age. Called Venue figurines they were probably fertility goddesses that may have represented mother earth. The Earth being the source of all life, these figurines possibly represented the great mother. And the cycles of the moon and the earth came to define rituals and customs. The figurines could be found right across Europe and into Siberia and thus seems to have represented a widespread goddess-based religion. This change from animism and spiritual belief to a goddess representing a higher god seems to coincide with the deepening of the ice age and the spread of glaciers.
In more recent times, relatively speaking, with the advent of agriculture which may have started to emerge as long ago as twenty thousand years ago, larger habitations began to form. The time came when the earlier beliefs became in adequate for the larger populations. During the Neolithic age more organised religions based around gods with organised priesthoods emerged. Thus, high priests replaced shaman and the belief in spirits and the supernatural were replaced with gods. It was in the Neolithic age that human society began to expand, with the inventions first of more sophisticated stone tools, the rise of agriculture and domestication of animals, to the emergence of the first civilisations. This period saw a great change in the way belief was practiced. At the centre of these larger societies, it was the beliefs and customs which became central to their organisation, Seasonal gatherings, when to plant crops, how to appease the gods all became part of this religious process. It was the gel that held their society together.
This was the beginning of organised religion.