We will never know what our prehistoric ancestors believed, as they left no written records. But there are many indicators – such as ritual disposal of the dead, grave goods, statuettes and cave paintings – that religious behaviour first emerged tens if not hundreds of thousands of years ago.
It is likely that the increase in the brain size of early humans around half a million years ago gave them the capacity for abstract thought. Imagining something that does not yet exist is essential for developing tools, as is a grasp of cause and effect. These are prerequisites for religious belief, but plainly do not constitute religious belief itself. It is unlikely that religious belief could have appeared in any recognizable form until the emergence of symbolic communication, especially complex speech – and this only appeared with the emergence of Neanderthals and modern humans.
There are indications that Neanderthals disposed of their dead in a ritual fashion. Neanderthal remains dating from 65,000 to 35,000 years ago found in the Shanidar caves in Iraqi Kurdistan include the body of a man who may have been buried on a bed of flowers. Elsewhere corpses appear to have been coloured with red ochre. Clearer evidence emerges with the appearance of modern humans, especially in the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic (see here ). Bodies were sometimes buried with grave goods, indicating a belief in some kind of afterlife where the dead might use them. Evidence for cremation has been found by Lake Mungo in Australia, dating from 40,000 years ago. One of the earliest known pieces of figurative art, dating from the same period, comes from the Hohlenstein-Stadel cave in Germany. Carved from mammoth ivory, the standing figure has a human-like body but the head of a lion, and may represent a deity.
From 30,000 years ago, ‘Venus’ figurines begin to appear at Upper Palaeolithic sites across Europe and Siberia – small sculptures of naked women, only a few centimetres in height, carved out of materials including stone, bone and ivory. The figures have highly stylized legs and heads, and the arms and feet are missing, but the breasts, buttocks, stomachs and pubic areas are depicted in detail, and on an exaggerated scale. This has given rise to the theory that they are associated with some kind of fertility cult, or that they are depictions of a mother or creator goddess.
‘Religion is the dream of the human mind.’
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (1841)
At least some of the magnificent rock paintings dating from 30,000 to 10,000 years ago found in caves in France and Spain may have had religious significance. Those at Lascaux include mysterious beasts, some half human and half lion, while others are human–bird hybrids. This suggests that the people who painted them may have practised some form of shamanism. In shamanism – still found today among various hunter-gatherer groups – particular individuals take on the role of a kind of priest. The shaman enters a trance, sometimes induced by drumming, sometimes by taking psychotropic plant extracts. In this trance the shaman may take on the identity of an animal and go on a spirit-journey to ensure good hunting. Shamans may also claim other supernatural powers, such as divination and healing.