Prehistoric religion
Prehistoric religion is the religious practice of prehistoric cultures. Prehistory, the period before written records, accounts for the bulk of human experience; over 99% of it occurred during the Paleolithic period alone. Prehistoric cultures spanned the globe and existed for over two and a half million years; their religious practices were many and varied, and studying them is difficult due to the lack of written records detailing the details of their faiths.
The cognitive capacity for religion likely first emerged in Homo sapiens sapiens, or anatomically modern humans, although some scholars posit the existence of Neanderthal religion, and sparse evidence exists for earlier ritual practice. Excluding sparse and controversial evidence in the Middle Paleolithic, religion emerged with certainty in the Upper Paleolithic around 50,000 years ago. Upper Paleolithic religion was possibly shamanic, centered on the phenomenon of special spiritual leaders entering trance states to receive esoteric knowledge. These practices are extrapolated from the rich and complex body of art left by Paleolithic artists, particularly the elaborate cave art and enigmatic Venus figurines they produced.
The Neolithic Revolution, which established agriculture as the dominant way of life, occurred around 12,000 BC and ushered in the Neolithic. Neolithic society grew hierarchical and inegalitarian compared to its Paleolithic forebears, and their religious practices likely changed to suit. Neolithic religion may have become more structural and centralised than in the Paleolithic, and possibly engaged in ancestor worship both of one's individual ancestors and of the ancestors of entire groups, tribes, and settlements. A well-known feature of Neolithic religion is the stone circles in the British Isles and Brittany, of which the most prominent today is Stonehenge. A particularly notable feature of late-Neolithic through Chalcolithic religion is Proto-Indo-European mythology, the religion of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The Proto-Indo-Europeans spoke the Proto-Indo-European language, which has been partially reconstructed through shared religious elements between early Indo-European language speakers.
Bronze Age and Iron Age religions are understood in part through archaeological records, but also, more so than in the Paleolithic and Neolithic, through written records; some societies had writing in these ages and were able to describe those that did not. These eras of prehistoric religion are the focus of modern reconstructionists, with many variants of modern pagan religions based on the pre-Christian practices of protohistoric Bronze and Iron Age societies.
Background
is the period in human history before the advent of written records. The lack of written evidence demands the use of archaeological evidence, which makes it difficult to extrapolate conclusive statements about religious belief. Much of the study of prehistoric religion is based on inferences from historic and ethnographic evidence, for example analogies between the religion of Paleolithic and modern hunter-gatherer societies. The usefulness of analogy in archaeological reasoning is theoretically complex and contested, but in the context of prehistoric religion can be strengthened by circumstantial evidence; for instance, it has been observed that red ochre was significant to many prehistoric societies and to modern hunter-gatherers.Religion exists in all known human societies, but the study of prehistoric religion was popularised only around the end of the nineteenth century. A founder effect in prehistoric archaeology, a field pioneered by nineteenth-century secular humanists who found religion a threat to their evolution-based field of study, may have impeded the early attribution of a religious motive to prehistoric humans.
Prehistoric religion differs from the religious format known to most twenty-first-century commentators, which is based around orthodoxy and religious text. Rather, prehistoric religion, like later hunter-gatherer religion, possibly drew from shamanism, experiences of religious ecstasy, and animism. However, analyses indicate animism may have emerged earlier. Although the nature of prehistoric religion is speculative, the evidence left in the archaeological record is strongly suggestive of a visionary framework whereby faith is practised through entering trances, personal experience with deities, and other hallmarks of shamanism—to the point of some authors suggesting, in the words of archaeologist of shamanism Neil Price, that these tendencies and techniques are in some way hardwired into the human mind.
Human evolution
The question of when religion emerged in the evolving psyche has long intrigued paleontologists. On the whole, neither the archaeological record nor the current understanding of how human intelligence evolved suggests early hominins had the cognitive capacity for spiritual belief. Religion was certainly present during the Upper Paleolithic period, dating to about 50,000 through 12,000 years ago, while religion during the Lower Paleolithic and Middle Paleolithic "belongs to the realm of legend".In early research, Australopithecus, the first hominins to emerge in the fossil record, were thought to have sophisticated hunting patterns. These hunting patterns were extrapolated from those of modern hunter-gatherers, and in turn, anthropologists and archaeologists pattern-matched Australopithecus and peers to complex rituals surrounding such hunts. These assumptions were later disproved, and evidence suggesting Australopithecus and peers were capable of using tools such as fire was deemed coincidental. For several decades, prehistoricist consensus has opposed the idea of an Australopithecus faith. The first evidence of ritual emerges in the hominin genus Homo, which emerged between 2 and 3 million years ago and includes modern humans, their ancestors, and their closest relatives.
When the ritual shaded into the recognizably religious is unknown. The Lower and Middle Paleolithic periods, dominated by early Homo hominins, were an extraordinarily long period of apparent cultural stability. No serious evidence for religious practice exists amongst Homo habilis, the first hominin to use tools. The picture complicates as Homo erectus emerges. H. erectus was the first hominid to have developed an appreciation for ritual, the intellectual ability to stem aggression of the kind seen in modern chimpanzees, and a sense of moral responsibility. Although the emergence of ritual in H. erectus "should not be understood as the full flowering of religious capacity", it marked a qualitative and quantitative change to its forebears. An area of particular scholarly interest is the evidence base for human cannibalism and ritual mutilation amongst H. erectus. Skulls found in Java and at the Chinese Zhoukoudian archaeological site bear evidence of tampering with the brain case in ways thought to correspond to the removal of the brain for cannibalistic purposes, as observed in hunter-gatherers. Perhaps more tellingly, in those sites and others, a number of H. erectus skulls show signs suggesting that the skin and flesh were cut away from the skull in predetermined patterns. These patterns, unlikely to occur by chance, are, in turn, associated with ritual.
File:Gib neanderthals.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|alt=Neanderthals around a fire|Reconstructed Neanderthals of St. Michael's Cave, Gibraltar
The lineage leading to anatomically modern humans originated around 500,000 years ago. Modern humans are classified taxonomically as Homo sapiens sapiens. This classification is controversial, as it runs counter to traditional subspecies classifications; no other hominins have been treated as uncontroversial members of H. sapiens. The 2003 description of Homo sapiens idaltu drew attention as a relatively clear case of a H. sapiens subspecies but was disputed by authors such as Chris Stringer. Neanderthals, in particular, pose a taxonomic problem. The classification of Neanderthals, a close relative of anatomically modern humans, as Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis is a decades-long matter of dispute. Neanderthals and H. s. sapiens were able to interbreed, a trait associated with membership in the same species, and around 2% of the modern human genome is composed of Neanderthal DNA. However, strong negative selection existed against the direct offspring of Neanderthals and H. s. sapiens, consistent with the reduced fertility seen in hybrid species such as mules; this has been used as a recent argument against the classification of Neanderthals as a H. sapiens subspecies.
The study of Neanderthal ritual, as proxy and preface for religion, revolves around death and burial rites. The first undisputed burials, approximately 150,000 years ago, were performed by Neanderthals. The limits of the archaeological record stymie extrapolation from burial to funeral rites, though evidence of grave goods and unusual markings on bones suggest funerary practices. In addition to funerals, a growing body of evidence suggests that Neanderthals used bodily ornamentation with pigments, feathers, and even claws. As such, ornamentation is not preserved in the archaeological record; it is understood only by comparison to modern hunter-gatherers, where it often corresponds to rituals of spiritual significance. Unlike H. s. sapiens over equivalent periods, Neanderthal society—as preserved in the archaeological record—is one of remarkable stability, with little change in tool design over hundreds of thousands of years. Neanderthal cognition, as backfilled from genetic and skeletal evidence, is thought to be rigid and simplistic compared to that of contemporary, let alone modern, H. s. sapiens. By extension, Neanderthal ritual is speculated to have been a teaching mechanism that resulted in an unchanging culture, by embedding a learning style wherein orthopraxy dominated in thought, life, and culture. This is contrasted with prehistoric H. s. sapiens religious ritual, which is understood as an extension of art, culture, and intellectual curiosity.
Archaeologists such as Brian Hayden interpret Neanderthal burial as suggestive of both belief in an afterlife and of ancestor worship. Hayden also interprets Neanderthals as engaging in bear worship, a hypothesis driven by the common finding of cave bear remains around Neanderthal habitats and by the frequency of such worship amongst cold-dwelling hunter-gatherer societies. Cave excavations throughout the twentieth century found copious bear remains in and around Neanderthal habitats, including stacked skulls, bear bones around human graves, and patterns of skeletal remains consistent with animal skin displays. Other archaeologists, such as, find the evidence for the "bear cult" unconvincing. Wunn interprets Neanderthals as a pre-religious people and the presence of bear remains around Neanderthal habitats as a coincidental association; as cave bears, by their nature, dwell in caves, their bones should be expected to be found there. The broader archaeological evidence overall suggests that bear worship was not a major factor in Paleolithic religion.
In recent years, genetic and neurological research has expanded the study of the emergence of religion. In 2018, the cultural anthropologist Margaret Boone Rappaport published her analysis of the sensory, neurological, and genetic differences between the great apes, Neanderthals, H. s. sapiens, and H. s. idaltu. She interprets the H. s. sapiens brain and genome as having a unique capacity for religion through characteristics such as expanded parietal lobes, greater cognitive flexibility, and an extensive capacity for both altruism and aggression. In Rappaport's framework, only H. s. sapiens of the hominins is capable of religion for much the same reason as the tools and artworks of prehistoric H. s. sapiens are finer and more detailed than those of their Neanderthal contemporaries; all are products of a unique cognition.