Kindest Regards, Z, and welcome to CR!
origins of religion.
it seams that the last ice age was a critical time in the history of man, people were forced to merge and the indo europeans emerged. before the ice age there was religion based mainly [i think] on astrology and probably similar to early celtic egyptian and hindu religions.
A very interesting subject to me.
The period roughly 30 thousand to 12 thousand years ago is a very active one in the history of humanity. At the earliest part there were at least two species of Homo,
Sapiens and
Neandertalensis, living in the same region. (This is not to discount Homo Floresiensis!) Some say they comingled, others say they fought like cats and dogs. Officially, Neandertal died out about 25 thousand years ago, but there is at least one body that suggests Sapiens and Neandertal could and did interbreed, and it dates to around 20 thousand years ago iirc.
Artwork like cave paintings and "Venus" carvings are primarily limited to known Sapiens sites. Neandertal art tends to be more geometric, although there is at least one example of a bone flute (Neandertals played music). There are examples among both Cro Magnon and Neandertal that show medical care and nurturing of sick and wounded long after their "usefulness" was gone. There is also a leopardskin cape found wrapped around a Neandertal skeleton, apparently a shaman. So even though the cave paintings at Lascaux and many, many other places are Cro Magnon (modern human), there is strong evidence suggesting Neandertal were just as "religious." In the Fumane cave in northern Italy a depiction of a man in a horned mask was found, believed to be representative of a shaman. Other caves in France and Spain had cave bear skulls laid out on alters.
I feel it is also important to note that based on genetics, all humans living stem from three distinct lineages: The Ainu found now only in an isolated pocket on the northern island of Japan, who once dominated the whole of the Asian continent; the Lapplanders of far northern Europe now isolated I believe in Finland; and the oldest of all is the Bushmen of the Kalahari in Africa.
There is even disagreement among scholars about when and how the first humans arrived in America. It seems a number of possible scenarios besides the usual "Bering Sea landbridge" are plausible and supported by archeology, particularly the finding of Solutrean arrowheads in most of the states, as well as a cave accidentally discovered in south America (I want to say Chile) that far predates any known possibility of human presence that would of necessity imply seafarers across the Pacific before the last ice age.
Astrology is ancient, more ancient than most of us realise. There is evidence that our ancestors knew of astrology as far back as 27000 years ago, before the destruction of 90% of the world’s flora and fauna at the end of the last ice age 12000 years ago. This is evident from the depiction of Taurus , the Pleiades and the lunar cycles, discovered in the caves of Lascaux in the Dordogne region of France.
Considering ancient humanity had little else to do except forage and hunt for food, fend off the occasional saber toothed tiger, chip stones into arrow / spear heads and other tools, and keep from freezing to death; there wasn't a whole lot of entertainment except watching the stars and the moon. I have seen a few examples of calendars that used the moon's shadow or the rising and setting sun to mark the passage of the seasons, but little to indicate "astrology" in the sense you are suggesting. I don't think that came along until a bit later, somewhere between 10 and 6 thousand years ago, primarily in Mesopotamia.
steps to power:
somewhere along the lines religion become a way for the kings and priests to control the masses, perhaps though we read a lot into ancient religion by what it become.
This would be referring to religion as an institution, distinct from the personal religious quest. This is not a subtle distinction. I believe you are attempting to trace the institutions of religion, whereas the personal quest seems to have been with us all along, or at least as far back as we can determine.
shamans etc had visions and tended to wander around correlating data, and this is an important point; they would have argued over these points just as we do, i cannot imagine you could say any ole thing and it would be believed. when two people have similar experiences it tends to add juice to what they are saying, when you get a collective of shamans like e.g. the druids and they all correlate their ideas then we have the beginnings of religion.
I think I understand what you are saying. At the same time I can't help but think my shaman friend might disagree. This is really oversimplified and presumptuous, to be polite.
In my opinion, the important thing to take away from early tribal societies is that morality was observed. This may be a natural extension of evolution, in that morality is observed in many pack and herd mammals even today. Why were such early peoples moral if there were no rational reason to do so? In other words, I don't think personal religion is an accident, or a farcical imagination. There
is room to argue over religious institutions.
after that we have the next step e.g. the veda’s, these were basically a collection of works by sage’s etc over quite a long period of time and put down into written form, this is the next step to the correlation of ideas by a priestly cast.
I have heard it said the
original Vedas may be as much as 10 thousand years old, but I haven't seen anything to back it up. What we can know, is that sanskrit was likely the earliest language we can find, and it is the root language of the greatest number of languages on earth, with the notable exception of eastern "oriental" languages which seem to have an independent source. There is still an ongoing debate whether or not sanskrit developed in India, or whether it was brought by nomadic warriors from the Steppes.
It should be noted that Taoism has roots perhaps as ancient as the Vedas. I am of the opinion, supported by at least one Taoist whose name I have forgotten, that Taoism grew out of animism and shamanism. This from a book on Feng Shui. Alchemy (and by extension science) has its roots in Taoism.
after this we have monotheism and the word of god, previous to this we had ‘interpretations’ of divinity. with a myriad of different often contradicting deities, even if one did say ‘this [X] is the word of god’, others would be able to counter it with quotes from their gods/deities.
There is actually quite a bit in between you have overlooked. Mesopotamia had a series of polytheisms and hero-worship type religions. Zoroastrianism is usually held out as the first monotheist faith, if one discounts Akenaten in classical Egypt. And there is question over whether Akenaten predates Abraham in the land of Ur, whose descendants became slaves in Egypt.
ok, so how do you see the origins and progression of religion?
so what do you think the origins of religion are and how did the ice age and other negative events [e.g. great flood in the black sea] affect it?
There are similar flood myths across a great many ancient religions. While I am uncertain about the possibility of a world-wide flood (the physical dynamics do not add up), I do believe that the receding glaciers did create massive flooding in a variety of places, the Black Sea being only one such place.
While it may seem Monotheism took the world by storm, that is not quite factual. In the case of Judaism, it is the story of a singular people trying to make a way for themselves in an otherwise polytheistic world. Monotheism until around 300 AD was a minority religion, surrounded on all sides by polytheism and shamanism, Hinduism in India and Buddhism born out of Hinduism. In a strict sense, Hinduism is Monotheistic as well, as the "multiple" gods are considered many faces of one god. Buddhism could arguably be considered more of a philosophy than a religion, depending who it is one asks. Confucianism is certainly more of a philosophy than a religion.
Even today, Monotheism is not the dominant religion of the world. It makes up somewhat less than half if I remember the figures.
I realize I covered a lot more territory than "just" religion. One must consider that religion is only one facet of what makes us human. To follow our ancestors back before written records requires looking at far more than a single facet. We must keep our story in context, or we run the risk of rewriting the story to suit our own agenda, instead of letting the story speak for itself.
