A. Middle Paleolithic (100,000-25,000 years ago)
1. Deliberate and meticulous care of burying dead, with ceremony
2. Instances of dead buried in a “fetal” position—may have represented a “return to the womb”
B. Upper Paleolithic (25,000-10,000 years ago)—more developed religious practices
1. Clear examples of burials are present in Iberia, Wales, and Eastern Europe. All of these, also, incorporate the heavy use of red ochre. Red ochre is a natural earth pigment.
2. Additionally, various objects are being included in the graves (i.e. periwinkle shells,weighted clothing, dolls, mammoth ivory beads, fox teethpendants, ivory artifacts, antlers, flint blades, etc.). These are called grave goods. As the dead cannot use tools, grave goods reveal that early humans at this time may have thought their dead would need them in the afterlife.
C. Mesolithic Period (Middle Stone Age, 10,000-7,000 years ago)
1. This age was a transitional age which saw the vanishing of the ice sheet and a gradual shift from nomadic to village life
2. In one grave site in Brittany were found a great ossuary with tenburial sites, including the remains of 23 individuals. An ossuary is a site made to serve as the final resting place of human remains.
D. The Neolithic (New Stone Age, 7000-3000 years ago
1. This age is characterized by several great changes
a. Early forms of agriculture, with active tilling of the soil
b. Domestication of animals and their gathering into flocks and herds
c. Advances in the arts of pottery, plaiting, weaving, and sewing
d. Establishment of settled communities with an accompanying growth of population
e. The invention of the wheeled cart
f. The first surgery
2. Religion also being radically transformed
a. The Mother Goddess or GreatGoddess of earlier hunting culture became associated with creation and regeneration
b. Female divine power went beyond the animal models of birthing and nurture to the watering, tending, and protecting of the whole world of vegetation
c. Studies of Old Europe (Balkans) reveal a pantheon of mostly female deities (supernatural being thought of as divine).
For Discussion and Reflection
•Religion sprung up when humans gained awareness of self or conscious thought. What is the relationship between the two?
•Are our brains hard-wired to seek religion?