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The religions of hunter gatherers.

Gauss

Is it common for hunter gatherers to have religion?

I often wonder what the common themes of religions of hunter gathered would be compared to those in modern society.

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Death and Taxes

Yea, they believed in talking snakes and magical fruits!

Ghost Buster

Gauss wrote: »

Is it common for hunter gatherers to have religion?

I often wonder what the common themes of religions of hunter gathered would be compared to those in modern society.

As far as i can figure and have ascertained religion stemmed from increasingly elaborate ways of mourning the dead, from here to belief in an after life and yadda yadda yadda SCIENTOLOGY!!!!!!!

mikom

Gauss wrote: »

Is it common for hunter gatherers to have religion?

I often wonder what the common themes of religions of hunter gathered would be compared to those in modern society.

Well, if they are hunting and gathering altar boys..............

Shryke

Just wait for Wibbs.

Knasher

The Piraha are modern day hunter gathers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_people

According to Everett, the Pirahã have no concept of a supreme spirit or god and they lost interest in Jesus when they discovered that Everett had never seen him. They require evidence based on personal experience for every claim made. However, they do believe in spirits that can sometimes take on the shape of things in the environment. These spirits can be jaguars, trees, or other visible, tangible things including people.

3ndahalfof6

Ghost Buster wrote: »

As far as i can figure and have ascertained religion stemmed from increasingly elaborate ways of mourning the dead, from here to belief in an after life and yadda yadda yadda SCIENTOLOGY!!!!!!!

You shout well sir, OP they hunted they gathered, drank well, made babies, no religion required, it is religion which stopped these activities.

Riddle101

I would say Hunter Gatherers had some superstitious beliefs. But as far as religion is concerned, who would know.

Chuck Stone

Religion:

Old fuckers trying to control young people.

Mardy Bum

Animism most probably. The beginning and founding point of all religion.

MadYaker

They were probably pagans? Worshipping the sun etc.

B.A._Baracus

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Religion:

Old fuckers trying to control young people.

Sounds to me you want a good ol' fashioned After Hours style religious bashing thread by saying things like that Chucky

Rigol

I imagine they probably were asking the same questions as you.

Why am I here, why do I feel, why do I cry/laugh, where did I come from, where am I going, why does the sunset/stars make me feel like that.

mattjack

Gauss wrote: »

Is it common for hunter gatherers to have religion?

I often wonder what the common themes of religions of hunter gathered would be compared to those in modern society.

OP you often wonder ? you need a hobby or a girlfriend or maybe need to find drugs .

Jake Rugby Walrus666

They would have hunter gods - who bring good luck and success to the hunt.

It's all employment related. Like port workers and the Cargo religion.

krudler

Worshipping the sun, the earth etc etc. oh and sea monsters.

3ndahalfof6

Rigol wrote: »

I imagine they probably were asking the same questions as you.

Why am I here, why do I feel, why do I cry/laugh, where did I come from, where am I going, why does the sunset/stars make me feel like that.

I would be guessing, where is the next meal coming from,

I am here, I feel like shiit, it makes me cry then I see one from my clan die who I hated I laugh, I came and she is going to wreck my head so I am going,

the day is over I must sleep, those fooking stars are to bright keeping me awake,

hey slave woman, leg over please.

I think I would of fitted in well with these humans.

Chuck Stone

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

Sounds to me you want a good ol' fashioned After Hours style religious bashing thread by saying things like that Chucky

What do you have to say about?

wendell borton

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

hmmm

Religion is just the new word for witchcraft.

3ndahalfof6

wendell borton wrote: »

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

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

biko

Do hunters gather? Or do they believe?
That is the question.

philologos

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Religion:

Old fuckers trying to control young people.

Perhaps in some religions. Certainly not in mine.

Geo10

An animistic primal "religion" of sorts would have began with the peoples of the Middle Palaeolithic Era. Burial sites mark the first evidence we have for the search for meaning as they are the earliest archaeological evidence for people seeking answers to probably the biggest question they had: what happens when we die? It marks the transition from simply dumping bodies in bushes to the creation of elaborate burial rituals with significant meaning attached. The grave goods these Middle Palaeolithic peoples started to place in these graves signify the genesis of a belief in an afterlife- the belief that this is not the only world. This sort of primal religious behaviour actually doesn't comes from the Homo neanderthalensis. We actually have evidence of this "search for the spiritual" in the Homo heidelbergensis species first! I can't remember exactly where but we have evidence for the earliest burial pit in Spain where the bones of thirty homo heidelbergensis were found! For these Palaeolithic hominids (and indeed the Mesolithic hunter gatherers) "religion" only really signified a belief in something more than that there was evidence for in this world. This may have included animistic deities or spirits, the whole concept of the spiritualisation of nature, an afterlife or 'other world', ritualism, and finally primal religious concepts such as mana (the power or spirit embedded in certain things that were cordoned off rom society and deemed 'tabu'), shamanism (mediation between this world and that of the spirits) and totemism (natural objects/living things supposed to occupy the spiritual essence of certain tribes/ families).

The whole concept of organised religion didn't really start until Neolithic times when most hunter gatherers started to adopt a sedentary lifestyle with the onset of agriculture. Thus when civilisations began to develop these religious beliefs and traditions started to become 'organised' and more uniform. Organised religion did have a political agenda in many civilisations though and often acted as a means by emperors/ kings to control their peoples.

Wibbs

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.

ToddyDoody

A ritual of spitting on your hands and waving them at the sun first thing every morning to ensure it continues to rise every morning, and so forth. Peniseses were symbols of fertility and would be carved in stone, fully erect, and displayed at meeting points, someone would be killed and sacrificed to great mother nature to ensure her favour and renewed fertility of the land having received her bridegroom,

mackg

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Religion:

Old fuckers trying to control young people.

Do what I tell you now and when you die you'll get whatever the fcuk you want forever.

Chuck Stone

mackg wrote: »

Do what I tell you now and when you die you'll get whatever the fcuk you want forever.

With the added bonus of revelling in the eternal torture of those less obedient than you who will go to hell.