#Neanderthal cave painting ritual chants

[inspofromancientworld]

Prehistoric religions

By David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada - Prehistoric Rock Paintings, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51016097

Without a written record, it's difficult to know exactly what prehistoric humans thought or believed. We have to interpret the things we find, like burials, artifacts, and gathering sites, including the first cities after the Neolithic Revolution and the dawn of agriculture and before the development of writing.

Given that all societies that we have written records of have some type of religion, it's thought that religion in some form developed early in human history. The study of early records and modern hunter-gatherer societies help us figure out what those religions might have been like.

With a lack of written documents, and therefore literacy at all, prehistoric religions would not be like anything we know now, with set doctrines and beliefs. Based on current research, animism likely would have been the first religion or spiritual practice.

By Unknown author - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=841006

Animism can be understood as everything, even things like weather and words, have a spirit or are in some way sentient. This can include a belief in the personhood of things that are non-human. A modern group that has a belief along these lines are the Ojibwe of modern Canada.

CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=391673

Shamanism may have been a logical next step from animism as it has a designated representative of the group who interacts with the spiritual world, possibly with altered states of consciousness. These altered states can be entered through rhythmic drumming, chanting, dancing, or even drugs. There is also a belief in benevolent and malevolent spirits that can give visions or aid in healing. A modern group that practice their traditional shamanism by being too isolated and nomadic to have been prevented their practice are the Tuvan people of Siberia.

Religious ecstasy was likely a part of multiple religious practices, whether animism or shamanism. This is an altered state, often with a reduced awareness of the external world and increased awareness of the internal or spiritual world. This can be through meditation, trance, intoxication, dance, or any of a number of other activities. This is similar to shamanism, but done for the individual rather than the group, though these actions may be taken in a group.

By https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_1948-0710-0-8-1, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2270079

Ritual activities probably came about as a way to work as a group as rituals are seen in our relatives chimpanzees. Ritual, though, isn't a fully formed religion or system of beliefs. Burials, which also indicate death rites, appeared 150,000 years ago and were performed by the Neanderthals, our close relatives. Evidence suggests that Neanderthals also used bodily decorations, which has a spiritual significance among modern hunter-gatherer groups, so we can guess that they had spiritual significance among them as well. It is believed that Neanderthal beliefs include ancestor worship and possibly reverence for cave bears, given the number of cave bear remains found near Neanderthal burials and habitats. Interestingly, bear worship is still found among indigenous groups of Northern Eurasia, including the Sami and Ainu.

As our brains became more complicated, our capacity to seek something beyond the physical world also became more complex, as well as our use of symbolism. It's thought that our ability to influence our environment, such as building shelters, impacted our development of spiritual thought.