Where did it begin

Whispered

I was watching a programme about marine life and the creation of tropical beaches by the droppings of parrot fish after they had eaten coral (apparently they drop a couple of tonnes every year :eek:) and hearing about the birth of an island got me thinking about evolution and religion.

Where is human history did we begon to worship? Was it a fluke, or a natural progression in our evolution?

If it is a natural progression, will we see similar as other animals evolve (such as apes).

Asiaprod

helena.ryan wrote: »

Where is human history did we begon to worship? Was it a fluke, or a natural progression in our evolution?

Nice question, have always pondered on this. I would imagine fear and ignorance of natural phenomena could well lead to this.

helena.ryan wrote: »

If it is a natural progression, will we see similar as other animals evolve (such as apes).

Are there any other life forms that we know of that exhibit a tendency to worship.

Whispered

I've heard theories before that they do, can't for the life of me remember where but from what I do remember it was a photographer who claimed to noticed that herds of Zebras tend to go into a "trance" for a few mins occasionally, almost like they are meditating. (Not saying I believe it before you all start taking the P :rolleyes:).

http://b2e.portonvictor.org/index.php/christian/2005/10/06/birds_animals_pray - right so not a scientific source, but the theroy is there.

If humans started to worship when we were just a little bit further developed than apes it makes sense to me that as apes develop (obv over thousands of years, I'm not talking decades here) they might begin to form their own "religions" (maybe even worshiping humans ) - However I know fairly little about evolution so I may well be wrong.

Dades

helena.ryan wrote: »

Where is human history did we begon to worship? Was it a fluke, or a natural progression in our evolution?

Maybe it started at the point in our evolution that we started questioning our surroundings. When you don't have answers, the tendency is to create an explanation supernatural in nature.

I have no idea when in our development that might be, however!

cavedave

Where is human history did we begon to worship? Was it a fluke, or a natural progression in our evolution?

The act of burying corpses is thought to have begun around 200,000 years ago during the Paleolithic period by homo sapiens

Sculptures possibly fertility gods have been found that are twice this age

will we see similar as other animals evolve (such as apes)

Also, another Neanderthal had been buried with flowers, showing that some type of burial ceremony may have occurred.

The best examination I have seen of the evolution of belief is here. Darwin's God

estebancambias

http://www.apollon.uio.no/vis/art/2006_4/Artikler/python_english


So far, this is where it all began.


In Ireland, tombs were built with like an opening where archaeologists believe was meant to be used so the spirits of the dead could escape.

Pompey Magnus

I imagine it had something to do with the emergence of settled agricultural communities, the dependence that these people had on the sun would have soon become evident, years with lots of sun would be followed by a larger harvest than years where the sun was less common. Perhaps from this a primitive religion may have developed whereby humans attempted to appease the sun by offering it gifts (and perhaps in the case of Newgrange they even offered the sun a chance to have sex).

The occurance of sun worship among early human populations was so frequent that I think it must have had a large role to play in religion. I mean look at any number of Christian paintings and you will still see evidence for the remnants of pagan sun worship in the form of Deus Sol Invictus surrounding the head of Jesus or a saint as a halo. Perhaps that is how Judaism developed as well, a cult of sun worship which over time personified their deity but still the basic qualities of pagan sun religions remained.

Zillah

helena.ryan wrote: »

Where is human history did we begon to worship? Was it a fluke, or a natural progression in our evolution?

Everything in evolution is a fluke, what happens happens and is therefore the natural progression. As for when we began to worship, its a bit like saying "When did we start to think?" I think religious thought its an inevitable side effect of intelligence + ignorance, so picking a point where it began is very hard. Suffice to say, its not a matter of when in our history it occured, but when, far far back in the pre-history of our species and its forbearers, did it begin? Just as a rough estimate, I'd say the seeds of religious thinking were germinating in our tree climbing ancestors.

If it is a natural progression, will we see similar as other animals evolve (such as apes).

Its very possible all sorts of animals are engaging in spiritual thinking, its just not a complex enough or social enough phenomenon for us to document it.

Besides, evolution is slow. Our species is likely to be destroyed or moved on to other things by the time apes are building temples. Or we'll have killed off everything but ourselves...

Dades

Zillah wrote: »

Our species is likely to be destroyed or moved on to other things by the time apes are building temples.

Those damned, dirty apes!

seamus

The actual act of worship may very well be a side-effect of our evolutionary stage.

However, I think the fundamental thing it boils down to is that on a basic level, when we see something happening, we make a determination on what causes it. This determination will usually be based on our experiences and memories. Being able to examine cause-and-effect and remember the process has a clear evolutionary advantage.

If you're starting from a very rudimentary position of "hot sun", then you're going to assume that the sun is something alive which you can influence and which influences you. This can cause a certain "misfiring" of the cause-and-effect examination - if years ago, someone started dancing and it started raining, then they did it again, they could put a link between them. I lack the knowledge to know why or how it rains, but hey it started raining when I danced, so maybe my dancing causes the rain.

And I don't think this is something that's unique to the human or even primate brain.

For example, my girlfriend's cat is noisy at the best of times. However, when it rains, the cat looks out the window and meows at you and constantly looks at you. It's clearly obvious that the cat thinks we can control the rain. If you look at it from the cat's POV, we produce food from nowhere and are stronger than she is. When it starts raining, the back door doesn't get opened. When the back door next gets opened, it has stopped raining. Ergo, we stopped the rain. So when it rains, just pester us enough and it will stop raining.

It sounds ridiculous, but I'm convinced that's exactly what the cat is thinking, so I don't see why belief systems have to be confined to humans.

Tim Robbins

seamus wrote: »

For example, my girlfriend's cat is noisy at the best of times. However, when it rains, the cat looks out the window and meows at you and constantly looks at you. It's clearly obvious that the cat thinks we can control the rain. If you look at it from the cat's POV, we produce food from nowhere and are stronger than she is. When it starts raining, the back door doesn't get opened. When the back door next gets opened, it has stopped raining. Ergo, we stopped the rain. So when it rains, just pester us enough and it will stop raining.

It sounds ridiculous, but I'm convinced that's exactly what the cat is thinking, so I don't see why belief systems have to be confined to humans.

Does the Cat says thanks when it's sunny?

seamus

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Does the Cat says thanks when it's sunny?

Of course not. The cat thinks she controls the sun. We only control the rain.

Whispered

seamus wrote: »

It sounds ridiculous, but I'm convinced that's exactly what the cat is thinking, so I don't see why belief systems have to be confined to humans.

Wow! amazing cat, all my cats think is "look at meeeeeeeee, I am zo booooootiful" or "feed meeeeeee and I will love you for today" or "you may ztroke my zilky furrrr" little feckers, don't even thank me for frosty mornings which means they get to stay in bed a bit longer - and all the dancing I do for them!

tricky D

Dades wrote: »

Maybe it started at the point in our evolution that we started questioning our surroundings. When you don't have answers, the tendency is to create an explanation supernatural in nature.

Quite right about that: humans abhor gaps in knowledge and often fill them with any old rubbish. Hence gods and conspiracy theories. Things can't just 'be', there has to be an explanation.

Dades wrote: »

I have no idea when in our development that might be, however!

About the time when humans developed collective reasoning - discussing rain with peers, telling kids stories as explanations for phenomena...

Dave!

seamus wrote: »

For example, my girlfriend's cat is noisy at the best of times. However, when it rains, the cat looks out the window and meows at you and constantly looks at you. It's clearly obvious that the cat thinks we can control the rain. If you look at it from the cat's POV, we produce food from nowhere and are stronger than she is. When it starts raining, the back door doesn't get opened. When the back door next gets opened, it has stopped raining. Ergo, we stopped the rain. So when it rains, just pester us enough and it will stop raining.

It sounds ridiculous, but I'm convinced that's exactly what the cat is thinking, so I don't see why belief systems have to be confined to humans.

I'm sure there's alot of truth in that. See Skinner's Superstitious Pigeons experiment to demonstrate how operant conditioning works. It's how we train dogs, etc., to do tricks. ie. if I do this, this happens (sit down and I get a treat..... in the case of the superstitious pigeons, if they turn anti-clockwise, they might get a treat, etc.

It's not that hard to see how something like that could to a degree explain certain religious customs. If you're a primitive man, and you slaughter a cow, and it starts raining on your crops, then you might think "sweet, I'll try that again". If it happens again, then you might just keep trying it... From that, you could see how primitive religious beliefs emerge.

In college today I was actually learning a bit about the relationship between perception and action, and how they are directly related. It was explained by going back in the evolutionary chain to bacteria, and their primitive ability to recieve information from their environment.
Then as you move up in the chain to jellyfish larvae, whom have photoreceptors on their surface which directly affect the positioning of tiny hairs on the larva, and so make it move a particular way. Neither of these have any nervous system, but then we discussed hydra, which have got a very primitive nervous system. This allows information on one side of the organism to be relayed to a location on the other side of it, and this means it is capable of more elaborate actions than bacteria.

As you keep evolving and the nervous system keeps on getting more and more and more complex, and brains are introduced, and sensory organs develop, the number of potential actions which may be carried out as a result of the information taken from your environment becomes massive! But the basic principle remains, and experimental evidence shows, that perception and action are still clearly directly related in humans.

This is all a bit off topic and probably wrong , but the point I was getting at is that once you start introducing more complexity to the organism, actions become more elaborate, and it's not as clear cut as it might be for a single cell organism, but the basic principles are often the same, since we are all products of a long history of this evolution, and we carry with us remnants of that.

As such, while it mightn't appear to be the case at first, we are alot like the superstitious pigeons in Skinner's experiment, and so the development of religious/mystical/superstitious beliefs are probably simply a natural result of the operant conditioning (or something similar) observed in other animals. It just gets more complicated, as did perception and locomotion, as the nervous system gets more elaborate.

lostexpectation

im sure we were dependent on the sun before farming, i wonder how apes treat thunder and lighting, are the afraid of it, do they try to explain/warn it in someway to each other on an animal level..

so we make up stories to explain things we don't understand do animals?

why would it suit elephants to go die in the one place as i've heard they do.

Scofflaw

Reckon it all started about five minutes after the first child asked "why?".

cordially,
Scofflaw

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

i blame magic mushrooms tbh, you take them and you really do feel like a prophet