When did religion originate, Veeky Forums?

When did religion originate, Veeky Forums?
Can we reconstruct the earliest religion/worldview of humanity?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamanism_in_Siberia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorcerer_(cave_art)#Critique
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What's the thing comming out of its ass?

I don't remember the source but apparently some researchers put some gorillas in a cage and made a puppet that roughly resembles a gorilla and hung it up on a wall. It was noticed that the gorillas began to move their hands in a particular manner when they passed the puppet almost like a ritual. I think they even showed signs of fear in their body language when they were near it but I'm not sure. This lead to the speculation that apes can also have religions which is pretty rad imho.

I imagine human religion also began like that.

here is an ancient idol the interesting thing about it is that a miniature version of it was found from a site not too far away

35000-40000 date according to the wiki

Elephants have something resembling a cult

>Ronald K. Siegel has studied the precursors of religious faith in African elephants and concludes that "elephants are aware of natural cycles, as they practice "moon worship," waving branches at the waxing moon and engaging in ritual bathing when the moon is full."[7]

>While grief is common to many animals, funeral rituals are not. However, they are well documented in African elephants.

>Ronald K. Siegel writes that: "...one cannot ignore the elaborate burying behaviour of elephants as a similar sign of ritualistic or even religious behaviour in that species. When encountering dead animals, elephants will often bury them with mud, earth and leaves. Animals known to have been buried by elephants include rhinos, buffalos, cows, calves, and even humans, in addition to elephants themselves. Elephants have [been] observed burying their dead with large quantities of food fruit, flowers and colourful foliage.

Wow, that's also really interesting. Although I'm an atheist it really (unironically) makes you think if this religious behaviour in mammals is a by product of some evolutionary shenigans or a "sign" of the divine and that there is more to the universe that meets the eye. Highly speculative of course but it's funny that some gorillas and elephants made me question my beliefs more than any formal human religion. Kinda pathetic to be honest.

I highly doubt these findings so if you could please provide the source.

Siegel RK (1980). "The Psychology of Life After Death" American Psychologist, Vol. 35(10), October pp.911-931

That's interesting, but questionable, considering that even with Neanderthal burials it's controversial whether there was anything religious involved

>some modern critics have concluded that supernatural motives cannot be taken for granted. Corpses decay and, aside from the likely unpleasant aspects of this, the attraction of dangerous scavengers might have been a nonreligious reason for early human burials. ... Burial close to or within the living area might also have been the result of an attachment to the dead person that did not involve any beliefs about the soul or an afterlife.

>... The American anthropologist Anthony Wallace (1966, 224) suggests that religion more likely began as ritual because in evolutionary terms ritual as a general mode of behavior is older than symbolism and beliefs about the supernatural. ... Of particular interest are certain odd ritual reactions that cannot simply be interpreted as mating, fighting, or other biologically based patterns of behavior but that includes the performance of such behavior.

>"The over-excitement induced in animals by a plane roaring above release mating actions as Lack saw from a low-flying plane in Kenya Natoinal Park: when this monster in the sky appeared, one male ostrich after another sank to the ground and spread his wings as if worshiping it. In such cases cats suddenly begin washing their fur; birds abruptly start singing or pecking on the ground without picking anything up; a turkey may go to a spring and make drinking movements without swallowing any water." (Portman 1961, as quoted by Wallace 1966, 221)

(from Winzeler 2012 ch3)

Animal behaviors like these probably don't actually have any spiritual content but are still the sort of thing the spiritual became stacked on to when humans developed primitive religion

My anthropology professor said the same thing. He said that chimps have been observed offering sticks and food to some things in nature, so maybe primitive intelligence is somehow invested in a god. Besides, every known early civilization and tribal group on the planet has practiced some religion or spiritual belief, so it wouldn't be surprising that a creature's need to rationalize things that they cannot explain is just part of nature.

its backwards swinging dick

Animism obviously is the only answer.

I can't say whether thats true or not, but Elephants are highly intelligent social creatures, possibly more so than just about any non-human animal in terms of social intelligence, which is most likely due to highly developed brain/memory system. Their ability to copy, use tools, be altruistic even among cross-species, mourne deaths and hold death rituals, etc.

The actual system of religion, dharma, has no beginning nor does it have any end. Thus you'll find that the oldest religion, the Vedic religion, was not created at any point in history.

>Skinner conducted his research on a group of hungry pigeons whose body weights had been reduced to 75% of their normal weight when well-fed. For a few minutes each day, a mechanism fed the birds at regular intervals. What observers of the pigeons found showed the birds developing superstitious behavior, believing that by acting in a particular way, or committing a certain action, food would arrive.
>By the end of the study, three quarters of the birds had become superstitious. One pigeon, in pursuit of food, believed that by turning around in the cage twice or three times between being fed, but not just in any direction; the bird learnt to turn anti-clockwise and appeared to believe that this would mean it being fed.

Define religion

Yeah and Eurasian and North American shamanism seem to share a lot of similarities.
Nilotic tribes look pretty interesting too.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamanism_in_Siberia

Revered animals thought of as demons, angels, and spirits of the places they inhabit.
Natural occurrences/phenomenon/effects worshiped as gods.
The inevitable belief of a soul that is thought to leave the material body, its ascension beyond the physical and into the heavens, the underworld, or a plane of existence not known to mankind.
The result of honoured ancestors being venerated to the point of god-hood, and the idea of ascension of certain men as gods.
Offering of food to the gods/shrines(of dead men) to be blessed.

[lightning]

OOGA BOOGA!

STORM IS MAD YOU NO GIVE UGG YOUR ANTELOPE MEAT!

>moon worship
>idol worship
Is it time we extend Christendom to the beasts of the land?

Maximum autism

The bicameral brain seems like a good explanatio for the origin of animistic beliefs.

A nice topic, OP. Sadly there are too many nazis here poisoning this board to make a reasonable and objective discussion even possible. sigh

Are you butthurt from something? Either way
>sigh
Fuck off.

then go to reddit where you belong faggot

That's nothing to do with elephants

civilization is a mark of spirittual unity of a people who strive to meet an ideal.

Spirituality is inherent to humanity, Atheism is ego creating finite materialist comfort in senses

>He said that chimps have been observed offering sticks and food to some things in nature
>a creature's need to rationalize things that they cannot explain is just part of nature.

How is offering up sticks/food an attempt to rationalize/explain something?

Religion is a spook

>Religion is a spook

And? Spooks are more real than you, friend.

interesting perspective
ghosts are no different than you, according to system of a down

That pic is literally a fake, fabricated by Henri Breuil. This is what it looks like IRL, the antler head was never there.

Religions are scat

>what it looks like IRL
>shitty photograph from a bad angle

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorcerer_(cave_art)#Critique
>"The Sorcerer" is composed of both charcoal drawings and etching within the stone itself. Details, such as etching, are often difficult to view from photographs due to their size and the quality of the light source. Particularly celebrated prehistorian Jean Clottes asserts that Breuil's sketch is accurate ('I have seen it myself perhaps 20 times over the years').[7]

Every photograph of that crap looks the same.

i'm with you

When did humanity originate, OP?

>crap
This is the culture of our ancestors. Without them beeing what they were and doing what they did, you wouldn't even exist today. They lived in paradise. Big animals enough to feed everyone. They didn't know farming, they were just hunting and collecting fruits in the forest until at 12500 BC a large comet came down from the sky hitting the canadian glacier causing mayhem in the entire northern hemisphere and even south america. Covering the sky and every soil with dust making the temperature fall down for decades. Plants died and so did the big animals and the predators who depended on them. People were forced to eat gras because there was no animals around and so they learned to collect the finest grass and process its seed. They started to sow the biggest grains and agriculture was born. With agriculture the society changed and so did the religion.
...

The old hunter gatherer religion was oriented on the yearly animal reproduction and herd migration cycles of the wild animals. That's why each chamber of the caves have a different animal theme. Shamans celebrated the arrival of a herd or prayed to the animal gods to ensure a herd would come back next year.
The new post-younger dryas agricultural society's religion was rather oriented on the annual cycle of the growing plants. The people devided the year into twelve equal parts which made farming easier. The annual movement of the stars was used to set up farming plans. New deities have been invented that now lived in the sky becaused people believed that it is the stars who make the plants grow new each year. They thought, there in the sky on the stars the gods live who make the seasons and give us sunlight and rain for our farms.
The reason why the culture and religion in europe and north asia has changed in the last twelve thousand years while the hunter-gatherer cultures in the southern hemisphere stayed the same is the younger dryas catastrophe. Without this event we would still live as hunters gatherers until today, we would still live in 'paradise'.

My hypothesis is mimetic: because humans imitate one another more than animals, they have had to find a means of dealing with contagious similarity, which could lead to the pure and simple disappearance of their society. The mechanism that reintroduces difference into a situation in which everyone has come to resemble everyone else is sacrifice. Humanity results from sacrifice; we are thus the children of religion. What I call after Freud the founding murder, in other words, the immolation of a sacrificial victim that is both guilty of disorder and able to restore order, is constantly re-enacted in the rituals at the origin of our institutions. Since the dawn of humanity, millions of innocent victims have been killed in this way in order to enable their fellow humans to live together, or at least not to destroy one another. This is the implacable logic of the sacred, which myths dissimulate less and less as humans become increasingly self-aware. The decisive point in this evolution is Christian revelation, a kind of divine expiation in which God through his Son could be seen as asking for forgiveness from humans for having revealed the mechanisms of their violence so late. Rituals had slowly educated them; from then on, humans had to do without.

Animism is also the only objectively correct worldview if there is a God who is everywhere, everyone and everything.

If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.

>asking Veeky Forums
You'll get a load of anthrocuck answers like: They are all wrong, yet they think they are correct because they are all wrong.

Wrong. Fuck off, anthrocuck.

1/ read the Dao De Jing
2/ compare all available translations
3/ ????
4/ profit!

nice contribution to the thread
fuck you very much

Give us the correct answer then

>inb4 Our Savior And Favorite Personnal Bro Jesus Christ™ And His Angry Dad™
>Don't forget to like, subscribe and buy my book guys!

> 1/ read the Dao De Jing

...

It's animism.

>correct answer
>THERE MUST BE LE ANSWER TO LE EVERYTHING RIGHT FUGIN NOW
kys
I'm not a proddy
>tylor sed it so its troo

>tylor sed it so its troo
Was for: You fuck off back to /pol/ you illiterate little reductionist.

Earliest religion was matriarchal societies worshipping female deities, so pure evil. It's slowly coming back and we need to revolt against nature.

i think you should stop posting for a while, user

noahdic monotheism.

/thread

Define religion first.

Who is tylor? I gained knowledge of animism through visions from psychedelics.

>psychedelics
Delusion.
Tylor is the tool who came up with the popular theories of animism. You only have the concept because of him. Stop acting enlightened you pseudo-hippy.

People like to feel in control

Is this actually true?

Didn't the Romans believe elephants worshiped the stars?

Just because it's the culture of our ancestor doesn't mean it wasn't total crap. They were also worshipping and making statues of obese women, is that worth praising too?

Clearly you have never taken psychedelics, or at least not done them with any reverence or respect for the substances. You still have not given me his full name, so I have no idea who you are talking about.

>Stop acting enlightened

I should ask the same of you guy.

I have and they are terrible

Well know I KNOW you did them without any reverence or respect. Let me guess, you did them at a party?

I enjoy the sight of a fat woman and there are plenty other people like that.
Praise and despise whatever you want but I think it is not wise to consider your truth to be universal truth (or such truth to be at all).

>ancient religous idol
>not just a childs lionman action figure

>revering drugs
Hippies were a mistake

>I am a chubby chaser and you should too

just lol

I consider this an instant forfeit in any debate btw. Basically just admitting "I have no balls"... keke

>I enjoy the sight of a fat woman and there are plenty other people like that.
Same goes for pedophilia. Just because it exists it doesn't mean it's not dysgenic.

>hurr durr let me play with powerful psychoactives without preparing myself mentally in anyway
>dats just hippy shit
>*visible drooling*

Your brain.

>implying you shouldn't revere all of Nature in all its glory and beauty and ugliness

I wouldn't take drugs to begin with, because I'm not a subhuman degenerate.
Pretty sure all of nature is evil, since nature created women.

go back to /pol/ dude, find or start a self improvement thread and get your ass in gear

One day we'll hang all of you druggies, remember that.

People with your attitude don't get anywhere in life, so I doubt you'll be doing much of anything in the near future.

>if you don't do drugs you're a loser
This is what junkies actually believe

No you're a loser because you believe in a sky fairy

I'm an atheist. You're the one worshipping your drug induced hallucinations.

im with ya user seeing the world get all wiggly around me is worth just for the spectacle

>believing in good and evil
>an atheist
Hah, what an inconsistent retarded twat. Fuck off to /pol/ nigger

Try to sober up junkie fuck, you're barely making sense.

You're obviously a troll, go back to /pol/ and stop shitting up the thread

You already shat up a thread with your drug addiction.

>he doesn't know psychedelics are anti-addictive

Looks like you've done ZERO research at all, which is probably why you had such a bad time on them.

Also, religions, symbology almost defintely come from early psychedelic usage. How do you not know this?

You are the same than the poltard you are replying to though. Your "knowledge gained through visions from psychedelics" are nothing but anecdotal evidence. You have no basis for your argument.
It should've given you humbleness and an open mind; instead, you became [in the eyes of everyone else except you] part of the "DUDE DRUGS LMAO" culture. Fuck off with your fanaticism.
>inb4 you haven't done drugs
I have, and I have learned a lot from them.

Did I say it? Did I say that you should too, or did you just pull it from your ass?

>you had such a bad time on them
I had no time on them considering I never took that garbage.
>this is what junkies actually believe

You should look into western mysticism and esotericism. The truly spiritual isn’t something “out there” that’s just like us but extra big and special, it lies in the internal experience of an awe inspiring universe and how our subjectivities are something inherently attuned and connected to any outside world. Something like proves that point from an evolutionary standpoint in showing that other creatures ALSO share that connection (e.g., elephants sense a connection to the moon), which can also be taken as “the moon is supreme over all creatures” in a literal way if you’re not reading it more deeply - the point is that our entire sense of reality is something biologically conditioned by the force of the universe (e.g., we are bipeds for an evolutionary reason, we have two eyes and a nose and a mouth and two ears to experience the world with, we can’t fly, etc etc) and the recognition of that very real and literal (but not) connection between our lives and processes that create us and act on us constantly.

The Earth is 6000 years old and the true God is Christ or Yehowah. All other religions are false and their gods are stupid idols. Shintoism, Buddhism and other are deceptions to make sinners feel good.

>That is known of and written about? Babylonian/ Sumerian

>That is some shitty cave scratching?
Nigerians

Well, Neanderthals, even though they aren't directly related to us, buried their dead with grave offerings. So, probably since the start of homo sapiens.

Not an argument.

>not an argument
>posts no argument himself

Not an argument is the most fedora tier shitty phrase.