Jan 30, 2024 06:21 PM
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...-religious
EXCERPTS: . . . That query brings to mind long-standing questions about how religions and religiosity are usefully characterized in the first place. Is, for example, burial of the dead sufficient evidence for either or both? What sort of mind treats dead conspecifics in such a way? As Rebecca Sykes notes, ”Neanderthals neither ignored corpses nor treated them like rubbish.”
[...] some comparative observations about Neanderthals’ activities and those of our own ancestors 50,000 years ago seem apt. First, it’s worth noting that the earliest uncontroversial burial unearthed so far was a Neanderthal burial. Second, it does not appear that contemporaneous Homo sapiens buried many of their dead either. Nor did their burials at this point in time, as opposed to 30,000 years later, include substantial amounts or kinds of grave goods.
[...] Thirty-five years ago, archaeologists had yet to find any convincing evidence for Neanderthal grave goods. In the years since, though, archaeologists have turned up numerous items of cultural significance in Neanderthal burials. They include such things as goat horns, horses’ hooves, panthers’ claws, eagles’ talons, feathers, and perhaps most significantly, in a few cases, lithics, i.e., stone tools.
[...] Since religions are routinely associated with collective rituals, the discovery of a Neanderthal site in Bruniquel Cave in southwestern France may be the most telling evidence for Neanderthal proto-religiosity.
[...] How much these arrangements resemble familiar ritual sites today is striking. What is even more startling, though, is that the Bruniquel site was constructed, and the fires burned roughly 175,000 years ago—more than 100,000 years before Homo sapiens entered Europe! (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: . . . That query brings to mind long-standing questions about how religions and religiosity are usefully characterized in the first place. Is, for example, burial of the dead sufficient evidence for either or both? What sort of mind treats dead conspecifics in such a way? As Rebecca Sykes notes, ”Neanderthals neither ignored corpses nor treated them like rubbish.”
[...] some comparative observations about Neanderthals’ activities and those of our own ancestors 50,000 years ago seem apt. First, it’s worth noting that the earliest uncontroversial burial unearthed so far was a Neanderthal burial. Second, it does not appear that contemporaneous Homo sapiens buried many of their dead either. Nor did their burials at this point in time, as opposed to 30,000 years later, include substantial amounts or kinds of grave goods.
[...] Thirty-five years ago, archaeologists had yet to find any convincing evidence for Neanderthal grave goods. In the years since, though, archaeologists have turned up numerous items of cultural significance in Neanderthal burials. They include such things as goat horns, horses’ hooves, panthers’ claws, eagles’ talons, feathers, and perhaps most significantly, in a few cases, lithics, i.e., stone tools.
[...] Since religions are routinely associated with collective rituals, the discovery of a Neanderthal site in Bruniquel Cave in southwestern France may be the most telling evidence for Neanderthal proto-religiosity.
[...] How much these arrangements resemble familiar ritual sites today is striking. What is even more startling, though, is that the Bruniquel site was constructed, and the fires burned roughly 175,000 years ago—more than 100,000 years before Homo sapiens entered Europe! (MORE - missing details)