Religion in the Palaeolithic Age
More than a century and a half ago, the pioneering anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor wrote in Primitive Culture (1871), “Are there, or have there been, tribes of men so low in culture as to have no religious conceptions whatever?” For all the mountains of research done on this question, Tylor’s rhetorical question remains fundamentally sound (with the exclusion of his apparent prejudice toward “low” cultures). And even though much of the scholarship of Tylor and other nineteenth- and early twentieth-century anthropologists has been superseded by later, more precise work or discarded altogether as being based on flawed premises, the notion that there is such a thing as a “natural history of religion” (a methodology by which the origin and development of religion from “primitive” times to the present day), and that it can account far more plausibly and accurately for the prevalence of religion in our time, are central hermeneutical tools in presenting a compelling case for the validity of a secularist outlook on human life, culture, and society.
Although it was David Hume who first published a full-fledged treatise on this subject, precisely titled The Natural History of Religion (1757), speculation on the subject can be traced to Greco-Roman antiquity at the very latest. Such speculations—including Hume’s—were largely founded on philosophical presuppositions and were, therefore, almost wholly cognitive in their approach. In some popular accounts, such as John Fiske’s Myths and Myth-Makers (1872), the thrust appeared to be that primitive people were simply bad philosophers who misconstrued natural phenomena—ranging from the growth of trees to the course of the sun over the sky to the flow of rivers downstream—as the product of human-like forces (although infinitely more powerful than themselves), leading to the development of the concept of deity. And the facile theory that Sir James George Frazer (The Golden Bough, 1890–1915) and others put forth—that early animism (the personification or deification of natural forces) and the practice of magic led first to polytheism, then to monotheism, and at last to the proper understanding of Nature through science—has been shown to be crude and erroneous, even if some of these scholars gathered together valuable information on the issues in question.
Many of these scholars overused the principle of analogy; that is, they attempted to extrapolate the contours of primitive religion by a study of the primitive peoples in their own midst; but the utility of this approach is now under strong question, chiefly because it is impossible to determine to what extent such present-day peoples have been affected by the civilised people they may have come into contact with. Today, the natural history of religion is overwhelmingly based on such disciples as evolutionary neuroscience, archaeology, sociology, psychology, and of course anthropology; and there is a significant emphasis on the social context of religious belief.
What these disciplines tell us is that, although the precise origin of religion—even, or indeed especially, in its earliest stages, when it may have been manifested as magic, ritual, shamanism, animism, and totemism—is lost in the mists of time, we can make compelling conjectures on how it developed over millions of years, stretching back to the earliest species of hominin life. (Note: The term hominin is now applied to all human species, extinct and modern. Hominid refers to modern humans and the extinct Great Apes.) Numerous strands of primitive thought, belief, and action—especially those that contributed to the protection and expansion of the group, therefore rendering them evolutionally beneficial—all fused into what can only be regarded as an inescapable tendency toward belief in gods, a soul, and an afterlife.
It has been observed that, in human groups at all levels of development, empathy is in fact favourable to the preservation of the group. Those who can show empathy—often through the triggering of the so-called “mirror” neurons—can modify their own behaviour for the benefit of the group. This allows the group to be more than the sum of its parts, even though the resulting “ingrouping” can also have deleterious effects—for example, it can lead to xenophobia and tribalism. When a group engages in synchronic action, such as ritual dancing, a state of ecstasy can occur from the intensifying rhythmic and repetitive action that results. But, for purposes of self-preservation, the group is compelled to find ways to control this ecstasy, especially during key rites of passage—birth, sexual maturation, marriage, and so on. In this way, collective or corporate ritual develops. As Australian archaeologist Gregory J. Wightman has put it, “Corporate ritual is about enacting shared ideas and values.” Ritual, by allowing individuals to place themselves within the group structure, allows the individual’s brain to accept information sanctioned by the group.
Anthropomorphism is, from the evolutionary standpoint, a vital and even necessary component of human survival, stemming from the human need to guard against threats in the natural world and the tendency to recognise (or imagine) patterns that might be human faces. In primitive societies there is less likelihood of a clear distinction between the human and the non-human, leading to a kind of identification with the animals that are needed to maintain the group. As the killing of animals for food increases, the need arises for rituals to atone for the act. The celebrated cave paintings found in the south of France and elsewhere, probably dating to the Upper Palaeolithic (50,000 to 10,000 years ago), are a vivid testament to this. Some paintings point to a magical belief that depicting the killing or injuring of the animals will result in the death of the animals in real life; other paintings suggest rituals—sometimes involving a shaman or sorcerer, sometimes a group of dancing women—that are enacted to ensure the animals’ fertility so that they can continue to provide sustenance to the group.
Just as individuals are inclined to perceive that they are part of something greater (i.e., the social group), the group itself comes to feel the need to see itself as part of something greater. As the social group becomes larger, the need for hierarchies arises, with select individuals attaining supremacy for the sake of the efficient performance of social needs. The whole society then looks to a non-human external leader who becomes a kind of parent of the group. Rules come into being for the preservation of the group; eventually these rules become concretised as a coherent and recognisable morality. Ritual and punishment play significant roles in the development of morality, as do anthropomorphised non-human agents.
It is now conjectured that belief in spirits, ghosts, and other such phenomena was a result of the brain’s need to “keep alive” individuals of significant value to the individual. Death is, in a sense, the most significant “rite of passage” in human existence, and it is no surprise that it has long been regarded with fear and awe, with efforts made to deny or circumvent it reaching back to the remotest antiquity. Indeed, earlier generations of scholars believed that the phenomenon of death was either the chief or even the only factor that led to the birth of religion, but it is evident that many other factors come into play. In any case, the primitive need to take account of death led to the concept of the ghost or phantom of the dead, who then came to be regarded as part of the natural order. But this can only happen on a social level when communication systems have developed to such a degree that sharing of such experiences can occur. The existence of material objects associated with the dead also play a role. Grief over the death of a loved one, and a desire (wish-fulfilment) that the dead still be present, contribute to the idea of life after death. The social group as a whole adopts this belief, resulting in the practice of ancestor-worship. Animals and natural phenomena are endowed with agency and thus with spirit. Then all such manifestations are attributed to a single agent—in other words, a supreme deity.
The role of dreams is also critical. Probably all hominins dreamed, but the ability to remember and communicate dreams only occurred once certain parts of the brain—specifically, the hippocampus—developed; this probably occurred over a long period in the Lower Palaeolithic period, from about 800,000 to 200,000 years ago. Individuals’ dreams then became co-opted by the group, although this process probably did not begin until about 50,000 years ago. Daydreams, hallucinations, and other altered states of consciousness may have been particularly prevalent among certain primitive peoples, especially those who lived or spent a significant amount of time in caves or in featureless landscapes such as the African savannah or the sub-arctic regions of northern Europe. Such terrains are conductive to altered states of consciousness.
Language obviously plays an immense role in both the development of the human race (especially in regard to its mental functions) and the growth of religion. But ritual developed on a separate track from language and probably preceded it, since many if not most rituals are inherently non-verbal. Such non-linguistic phenomena as music, gesture, and the like also come into play here. But when did language emerge? Some scholars place it as early as one million years ago, but this view has not gone unchallenged. Probably language developed very slowly over a long period; it may possibly—although not certainly—have done so in conjunction with tool-making.
The dating of all the phenomena just described is necessarily a matter of conjecture. Evidence of primitive peoples fashioning or collecting anthromorphic or zoomorphic objects can be traced to as far back as the period from 500,000 to 200,000 years ago—in other words, from the Lower to Middle Palaeolithic. The use of red ochre as a pigment—traditionally thought to symbolise blood—probably dates to about 400,000 years ago and suggests that the ritualisation of death was beginning to occur. The burial of the dead by Homo sapiens probably began around 120,000 to 80,000 years ago; and the fact that grave goods—objects ranging from food to clothing to items of many other sorts—have been found clearly suggests belief in an afterlife when the dead could make use of these objects.
Groups of Homo sapiens are believed to have emerged in Africa as far back as 300,000 years ago. The period from 150,000 to 50,000 years ago saw the evolution of Homo sapiens as culturally and cognitively distinct from Homo neanderthalensis. In the period from 80,000 to 45,000 years ago there began an extensive migration of peoples from East Africa to southwest Asia, the Near East, the Caucasus, and Europe. We find death rituals, objects signifying the development of a mother-goddess concept, and other elements of proto-religious belief by around 30,000 years ago. By the Neolithic period (12,000 to as late as 4,000 years ago or even later in some regions of the world), all the elements were in place for a full flowering of religion throughout the world.
This essay is excerpted from The Downfall of God: A History of Atheism in the West—Volume 1, From Prehistory to 1600, which is available for purchase at these paid links: Amazon, Bookshop, and Pitchstone.
S. T. Joshi is a writer, editor, and scholar whose previous books include Atheism: A Reader and The Unbelievers: The Evolution of Modern Atheism.