In general, many scientists recognise that the vast majority of extinct and currently existing religions originate from a single prehistoric belief that flourished among Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons a couple hundred thousand years ago. Is this statement justified? Yes and no. The fact is that there was, of course, some ancient cult, but not one – people did not live on earth in a bunch, but in several disparate communities; therefore, their beliefs were different. This means that more modern religions were formed almost independently of each other. The question arises – which of them was the very first?
Today, even the no minimum deposit casino Australia is arguing on this topic. The storefronts of virtual gambling clubs abound with slots on the theme of the history of religions. By the way, there is a chance to hit the jackpot in these games.
How did religion come about?
First, let’s define what can be considered a religion. If we simplify the definition of this institution from the school curriculum in social studies a little, we will get something like the following:
- faith in higher powers (spirits, gods, etc.);
- includes rituals and rituals aimed at appeasing these very higher powers;
- the prayer component and sacrifices aimed at appeasing, as well as receiving from higher powers something necessary for life, for example, food, rain in a drought, etc.
In general, everything is true, but we would also add here the subconscious desire of a person to understand and explain those phenomena of their environment that were inaccessible to our ancestors due to the primitive scientific and technical level of development. Now let’s mentally put ourselves in the place of a conditional Neanderthal who lived about 300 thousand years ago (the first cults and beliefs associated with the burial of the dead date back to this time). Thunder is booming – it’s scary, it’s dangerous. Nothing arises by itself, someone is “satisfied” with it, therefore, someone big and strong is sitting in the sky, behind the clouds, and is angry that we did something wrong. They didn’t bury the deceased…
On the one hand, it’s okay, on the other hand, an epidemic began soon after that everyone around became violently ill, and some died. Again, someone was displeased – you need to understand who exactly and what. And so on – through reflection and “experiments” that stretched over generations, ancient people created images of good and evil spirits that needed to be appeased to avoid trouble. And this is religion.
The Religion of the Sumerians
So, here we will talk about the religion of the inhabitants of the ancient Mesopotamia (Mesopotamia), which appeared, according to some historians, no later than 3500 BC. Would you say, not so long ago? We agree, but here’s the catch – this date does not indicate the year of the founding of the “denomination”, It says that at that time it already existed and, moreover, flourished. Yes, perhaps the Sumerian religion is not as ancient as, for example, Egyptian polytheism, but mentions of it are indeed the earliest, and the fact that it appeared, most likely, hundreds of years before the above moment, indicates the peculiarities of its pantheon.
The fact is that only the most ancient polytheistic religions (with polytheism) mean by their numerous deities not people who once really lived on earth (for example, Roman paganism, in which, judging by the results of some studies, all the gods have their prototypes from “mortals”), but the most real forces of nature without reference to personalities:
- Ki – land;
- Nannar – The Moon;
- An – heaven;
- Utu is the Sun.
And, of course, Enlil is the supreme Sumerian deity who included all the forces of nature and “coordinated” them. But there is a catch – this belief has been dead for a long time, it persists only in some pagan heresies of the Middle East, and even then in a greatly modified form.
Buddhism and Hinduism
In general, at first we wanted to write something about Zoroastrianism in the title, because it is from this ancient “denomination” that almost all current world religions originate, but we did not… According to some studies, it appeared around the 7th millennium BC, changed for a long time, and as a result, it has partly survived to this day, and partly was reborn into Hinduism. But how true is this statement?
In fact, there is nothing left of that ancient Zoroastrianism at all, besides, we do not know the exact time of its appearance, and it is unlikely that we will ever know for sure. The only thing that can be said more or less confidently is that the Zoroastrians massively entered India around the X century BC and seriously imbued the local people with their religious beliefs, in fact creating Hinduism in the form in which we know it.
The situation with Buddhism is different – it originated around 500 BC, and its founder is well known; this is the Buddha. No, he was not a god, an ordinary man, by the way, a noble, who at one point renounced earthly goods and developed his own teaching, which was accepted with a bang by Indian ascetics and hermits. However, there were conspiracy theories here too. There is a version according to which Buddhism originated as early as the IV millennium BC, although there are no serious sources on this topic.
