archaeologists and historians dispute whether prehistoric humans were capable of cultural expressions such as religion, altho they do sometimes find evidence of what appear to be rituals or talismans among the ruins they excavate, but maybe their premise is wrong from the start.
practicing a religion is not the same thing as having a spiritual connection to the world around you, which prehistoric man absolutely did have.
as hunter-gatherers, they would have said prayers to the animals, and the plants, and the earth, recognizing that they could not exist without sacrifice and cooperation from the other living souls they shared this planet with.
they would have recognized, and been very familiar with, death, realizing that it’s best to make friends with, and respect, something you cannot change or avoid.
even as the agricultural age began, as humans settled down into one place and started individual farming, they still sent prayers to mother earth, and the plants, and the animals, for a good harvest.
but one thing you notice when you stay in one place long enough is the weather, and the seasonal changes, things you might not have noticed when you were changing locations every time the environment changed.
and those things can be brutal.
unless you were in an extremely temperate zone, you wouldn’t be able to grow the same crops year-round, which affected not just you, but your livestock as well.
some years there may be droughts, some years floods, some years an insect infestation….
not to mention earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, and the rest.
and no amount of prayer to earth, or the rain beings, or the sun is working.
now what do you do?
well, if you’re modern humans, you start fighting back against nature, using your intellect to invent technology that helps mitigate the damages caused to human endeavors by earth’s normal functioning.
and, in the process, you start to feel quite full of yourself, imagining that you are now king of the world, able to control the plants, the animals, and even earth herself, fundamentally disconnecting yourself from the rest of nature.
but something doesn’t feel right, something’s missing…….
so, around the same time the wheel is being invented, the first human-like god appears on the scene, a god worthy of those who created him.
this god, or gods – every culture had at least one – created earth, and the plants, and the animals, and the first humans, often creating earth and its contents especially for those humans.
so now, not only could you pray to a larger than life version of yourself for all your needs, but you also had permission to mistreat the plants, and the animals, and mother earth herself, because hey, they were created for you to use however you like, right?
thing is, while the human ego is obsessed with itself and its gods, the soul within every living thing is still connected, however tenuously, to the source of all life, and to each other.
but it’s up to each individual to choose which connection to focus on.
choose wisely…..
peacewillow's perspective 