The religions of hunter gatherers.

As Mardy Bum said animism/shamanism most likely. Usually coming to ideas via various herbs and such... You can see this in later Neolithic examples. Look at the swirls and lozenges and dots all over Newgrange and Knowth. They're so called entopic forms that spring from the human mind/brain when altered states are reached and the same symbols tend to be found all over the world in people not connected by culture. Some of the earliest "art" or marks of homo sapiens going back near 80,000 years show similar, albeit less complex and finished forms as found in Navan and elsewhere.

Shamanistic faiths tend to have very similar memes. There's the meme of the underworld and the chosen shaman's skill and navigation of it to bring back the perfect knowledge found there. Funny enough when some HG's were exposed to Islam they responded by suggesting Muhammed was a shaman as he went into trances, had an angel/spirit guide and brought back wisdom from a perfect book that was in the otherworld. Others though similar of Jesus and rated him well effin hard cos he came back from the dead. "Dying" and being "reborn" symbolically is very big juju in shamanistic circles. Being told one Jewish dude pulled it off for real? Healing of the sick cinched it. In many modern religions the old faiths are can still echo.

wendell borton wrote: »

There is evidence of Neantherthals having ceremonial burials, maybe there was religion before homo sapiens started at it.

3ndahalfof6 wrote: »

I am hungry, but I promise guys, history will put it down to religion, now dig in.

Yea many Neandertal burials/remains show defleshing consistent with consumption of the meat. That said quite a number of cultures have seen this as a sign of respect for the dead. Theres a (IIRC and prolly don't) south sea island tribe who suffer from the human form of mad cow disease because they regularly consume the meat, especially the brains of their beloved departed(Kuru I think it's called). So defleshing may be for pure calorie reasons or it could be ritual after tribal war or it could be an act of deference or all three. Who knows?

One bit of tantalising evidence that it was some sort of ritual comes from a place in Spain. IN particular a deep cave where the defleshed bones of many individuals of Homo heidelbergensis(earlier Neandertals) have been found. It appears they were purposely thrown into this deep hole and over some time too. Interestingly they found among them a large stone handaxe of exquisite manufacture of a non local red quartzite. Judging by the lack of wear on the cutting edges it was never used(most show usage wear) and appears to be more a symbolic object. The researchers named it Excalibur as you do

Actually a few handaxes seem to show this symbolic thang. Some are truly exquisite in the making and would require phenomonal skill of the maker. Many would really tax a modern human knapper, but some of these are over a million years old. Others are impractically big, useless for purpose, so seem to have some other function. Maybe as simple as "look at this handaxe baby, you wanna rooooiiiide?".

Neandertals also sought out and refined pigments(mostly black) and particular bird flight feathers again mostly black so we might infer black held a special meaning for them, maybe even a religious one. It wouldn't altogether surprise me that they had religion. I be further surprised that big brains and symbolic thought and the pattern matching humans are effin brilliant at wouldn't come up with religion as a part/side effect of that need to explain, to label the world they opened their eyes to.

While many today see religion of any kind as anathema, I would consider it one of the great leaps in human evolution of mind, science and philosophy. All seek to explain the universe and our part in it. We may become too smug in denigrating early views of what we used to describe as reality(for all it's faults), but I think that's a mistake. I reckon it's importance is up their with tool use.

We're still trying to explain the universe and our place in it and we're still building tools, fantastic tools. Shít look at what I'm doing here, working through an abstract layer of plastic and electrons and speaking with other people and within arms length I have a 100,000 year old Mousterian(Neandertal) handaxe that would have been fantastic to them. Christ it's fcuking great to be human.