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Neanderthals are the most-researched extinct members of genus Homo. They have been gone for between 28,000 and 40,000 years, far beyond the reach of cultural memories. An expanding number of archaeologists conclude that Neanderthals are, as genetics confirms, co-human with us whose lineage emerged in Africa about 300,000 years ago. Were they the same as us? No. Do archaeological discoveries of tools and behavioral clues indicate what may have been Neanderthal religion? Taking religion as spirituality realized in common, Hughson answers the controversial question with a conjecture assisted by anthropology. Neanderthals were hunter-gatherer animists associated with bears, burials, defleshed bones, and care for invalids. Hughson goes further, exploring a theology of Neanderthal animism. He argues it was an early, non-verbal revelation of the divine. Experiential consciousness of being-alive meshed with all living things in one web of life that exceeded any living individual. Neanderthals encountered the source of being-alive filtered through nature and the cosmos. Far from complete, the encounter may have had an acuity lost to modernity and many Christians. The book concludes by relating Neanderthal religion to special revelation and biblical faith, with attention to the Gospel of John on the divine Logos and Aquinas on divine immanence.

The new and updated edition of The Archaeology of Religion explores how archaeology interprets past religions, offering insights into how archaeologists seek out the religious, ritual, and symbolic meaning behind what they discover in their research.The book includes case studies from around the world, from the study of Upper Palaeolithic and hunter-gatherer religions to religious structures and practices in complex societies of the Americas, Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China. Steadman also includes chapters on the origins and development of key contemporary religions—Judaism, Christianity, Islam, among others—to provide an historical and comparative context. Three main themes are threaded throughout the book. These main themes involve the intersection between cultural and religious structures (“religion reflects culture”), including the importance of environment in shaping a culture's religion, the role religion can sometimes play as a method of social control, and the role religion can sometimes play as a key component in revitalizing a culture.Updated with new discoveries and theories and with two new chapters (Hunter-Gatherer Religions; and Cultures in East Asia) and with new sections on Neolithic Western Asia, the book remains an ideal introduction for courses that include a significant component on past cultures and their religions.

On the question of how far the almost universal belief in the survival of the human spirit after death, which is implied by the fear of the dead, can be regarded as evidence of the truth of that survival, or opinions will doubtless always be divided. From the crudities, inconsistencies and absurdities in which the belief commonly clothes itself, an impartial observer might be tempted to conclude that the spirits of the dead exist only in the imagination of the fond and foolish portion of mankind; but this conclusion, so little consonant with the natural wishes, and perhaps the instincts, of humanity, is not likely to be ever popular, and it seems probable that the great majority of our species will continue to acquiesce in a belief so flattering to human vanity and so comforting to human sorrow. And it cannot be denied that the champions of eternal life have entrenched themselves in a strong, if not impregnable, position; for if it is impossible to prove the immortality of the soul, it is, in the present state of our knowledge, equally impossible to disprove it. But the batteries of science have an ever longer range, and on this side they may yet make a deep breach in the frowning bastions of faith.Sir James G. Frazer (1854-1941) is famous as the author of'The Golden Bough.'

It is perhaps a truism to note that ancient religion and rhetoric were closely intertwined in Greek and Roman antiquity. Religion is embedded in socio-political, legal and cultural institutions and structures, while also being influenced, or even determined, by them. Rhetoric is used to address the divine, to invoke the gods, to talk about the sacred, to express piety and to articulate, refer to, recite or explain the meaning of hymns, oaths, prayers, oracles and other religious matters and processes. The 13 contributions to this volume explore themes and topics that most succinctly describe the firm interrelation between religion and rhetoric mostly in, but not exclusively focused on, Greek and Roman antiquity, offering new, interdisciplinary insights into a great variety of aspects, from identity construction and performance to legal/political practices and a broad analytical approach to transcultural ritualistic customs. The volume also offers perceptive insights into oriental (i.e. Egyptian magic) texts and Christian literature.

Before the rise of monotheism, the early Hebrews were pagan and God had a wife, the Mother Goddess. The Bible tells the story of their divorce. Goddess worship promoted equality for women, social justice, spiritual connection to nature and the cycles of life, cannabis, sexual freedom, celebrated transgenders, and practiced abortions. When the Goddess was thrown out of the Hebrew temple by the monotheists, so too were all of these deeply ancient traditions. Many familiar Bible stories and characters are reinterpreted by showing where the Goddess appears and the Bible is reframed by comparing it to the mythologies of neighboring cultures.

'Der Ursprung der Religion'ist das große Alterswerk von Robert N. Bellah, einem der führenden Soziologen unserer Zeit. Mit den neuesten Erkenntnissen der Biologie, Kognitionswissenschaft und Evolutionspsychologie rekonstruiert er, wie die Menschen vom Paläolithikum bis zum ersten Jahrtausend v. Chr. Fähigkeiten und Bedürfnisse entwickelten, die zu neuen Vorstellungen des Lebens und Formen des Zusammenlebens führten. Bellah zeigt, wie sich in vier großen Zivilisationen der Achsenzeit – das alte Israel, Griechenland, China und Indien – Religionen durchgesetzt haben, die wir heute als Weltreligionen kennen.

A profound exploration of the simple numerical ratios that underlie our solar system, its musical harmony, and our earliest religious beliefs • Reveals how the orbits of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus relate to the Moon and the inner planets as an octave with musical scales • Explores how this harmonic planetary knowledge was encoded within ancient monuments and temples then spread within oral traditions • Explains how the solar system functions as a musical instrument and how this led to the rise of intelligent life, civilization, and culture on our planet As modern humans first walked the Earth roughly 70,000 years ago, the Moon's orbit came into harmonic resonance with the outer planets of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. The common denominators underlying these harmonic relationships are the earliest prime numbers of the Fibonacci series--two, three, and five--the same numbers that interact to give us the harmonic relationships of music. Exploring the simple mathematical relationships that underlie the cycles of the solar system and the music of Earth, Richard Heath reveals how Neolithic astronomers discovered these ratios using megalithic monuments like Stonehenge and the Carnac stones, discoveries that informed later myths and stories including the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Resurrection of Osiris, the Rg Veda, the Hebrew Bible, Homer's epic tales, and the Return of Quetzalcoatl. He explains how this harmonic planetary knowledge formed the basis of the earliest religious systems, in which planets were seen as gods, and shows how they spread through Sumer, Egypt, and India into Babylon, Judea, Mexico, and archaic Greece. He exposes how the secret knowledge encoded within the Bible's god YHWH was lost as Greek logic and reason steadily weakened mythological beliefs. Revealing the mysteries of the octave and of our musical scales, Heath shows how the orbits of the outer and inner planets gave a structure to time, which our Moon's orbit could then turn into a harmonic matrix. He explains how planetary time came to function as a finely tuned musical instrument, leading to the rise of intelligent life on our planet. He demonstrates how this harmonic science of numbers can be read in the secret symbolism and sacred geometry of ancient cities such as Teotihuacan and in temples such as the Parthenon, connecting the higher worlds of planetary time and harmonics with the spiritual and physical life on Earth. Recasting our understanding of the solar system, Heath seeks to reawaken humanity's understanding of how sacred numbers structure reality, offering an opportunity to recover this lost harmonic doctrine and reclaim our intended role in the outer life of our planet.

Religion has been a central part of human experience since at least the dawn of recorded history. The gods change, as do the rituals, but the underlying desire remains—a desire to belong to something larger, greater, most lasting than our mortal, finite selves. But where did that desire come from? Can we explain its emergence through evolution? Yes, says biological anthropologist Barbara J. King—and doing so not only helps us to understand the religious imagination, but also reveals fascinating links to the lives and minds of our primate cousins. Evolving God draws on King's own fieldwork among primates in Africa and paleoanthropology of our extinct ancestors to offer a new way of thinking about the origins of religion, one that situates it in a deep need for emotional connection with others, a need we share with apes and monkeys. Though her thesis is provocative, and she's not above thoughtful speculation, King's argument is strongly rooted in close observation and analysis. She traces an evolutionary path that connects us to other primates, who, like us, display empathy, make meanings through interaction, create social rules, and display imagination—the basic building blocks of the religious imagination. With fresh insights, she responds to recent suggestions that chimpanzees are spiritual—or even religious—beings, and that our ancient humanlike cousins carefully disposed of their dead well before the time of Neandertals. King writes with a scientist's appreciation for evidence and argument, leavened with a deep empathy and admiration for the powerful desire to belong, a desire that not only brings us together with other humans, but with our closest animal relations as well.

This books sets out to explain how and why religion came into being. Today this question is as fascinating as ever, especially since religion has moved to the centre of socio-political relationships. In contrast to the current, but incomplete approaches from disciplines such as cognitive science and psychology, the present authors adopt a new approach, equally manifest and constructive, that explains the origins of religion based strictly on behavioural biology. They employ accepted research results that remove all need for speculation. Decisive factors for the earliest demonstrations of religion are thus territorial behaviour and ranking, coping with existential fears, and conflict solution with the help of rituals. These in turn, in a process of cultural evolution, are shown to be the roots of the historical and contemporary religions.

Steadman fills an empty niche in the offerings on how archaeology interprets past religions with this useful textbook. The book includes case studies from around the world, from the study of Upper Paleolithic religions and of shamans in foraging societies to formal religious structures in advanced complex societies of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India and the Andes. Steadman also includes key contemporary religions—Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, among others—to provide an historical and comparative context. This is an ideal text for a archaeology of religion courses and classes that include a significant component on “past religions,” as well as an excellent guide for general readers.

A crucial text for any university course on the interaction of archaeology and the Bible The world of early Christians was not a world lived in texts; it was a world saturated with material reality and concerns: what, where and when to eat or drink; how to present oneself in the space of bodily life and that of death; how to move from one place to another; what impacted status or the adjudication of legal charges. All these and more controlled so much of life in the ancient world. The Christians were not immune from the impact of these realities. Sometimes they absorbed their surrounds; sometimes they quite explicitly rejected the material practices bearing in on them; frequently they modified the practice and the rationale to create a significant Christian alternative. The collection of essays in this volume come from a range of international scholars who, for all their different interests and critical commitments, are yet united in treasuring research into the Greek and Roman worlds in which Christians sought to make their way. They offer these essays in honor of one who has made a lifetime's work in mining ancient material culture to extract nuggets of insight into early Christian dining practices: Dennis E. Smith. Features Rich examples of method in the utilization of ancient material culture for biblical interpretation. Thirteen essays with a response from Dennis E. Smith Maps, diagrams, and plates

Human actions are often deeply intertwined with religion and can be understood in a strictly religious context. Yet, many volumes and articles pertaining to discussions of religion in the archaeological past have focused primarily on the sociopolitical implications of such remains. The authors in this volume argue that while these interpretations certainly have a meaningful place in understanding the human past, they provide only part of the picture. Because strictly religious contexts have often been ignored, this has resulted in an incomplete assessment of religious behavior in the past. This volume considers exciting new directions for considering an archaeology of religion, offering examples from theory, tangible archaeological remains, and ethnography.

L'existence de véritables religions au Paléolithique supérieur reste controversée et l'étude de la question se base souvent sur l'observation des populations qui suivaient encore au début du XXème siècle des modes de vie ancestraux. Se fondant plutôt sur l'étude rigoureuse des grandes compositions pariétales de la grotte de Lascaux, l'auteur nous invite à une perception inédite de la pensée symbolique des populations du dernier âge glaciaire. Il parvient à l'idée que les croyances actuelles de l'humanité s'enracinent dans le paléolithique.

An exploration of sacred geometry, space, and time encoded in stone structures during four successive ages of megalithic building • Examines the sacred knowledge carefully preserved in the Stone Age structures of Carnac, Stonehenge, Giza, and Teotihuacan • Shows how our Stone Age ancestors created a practical system of mathematics, sophisticated enough to discern cycles lasting up to thousands of years • Reveals how the Earth's shape and proportions mirror the time cycles of the heavens above Our Stone Age ancestors discovered that the geometry of the Earth provided a sacred connection between human experience and the spiritual worlds. Exploring the numerical patterns of time and then the size and shape of the Earth, they created an exact science of measures and preserved their discoveries within sacred structures, spiritualized landscapes, and mythologies, which interpreted the religious ideas associated with their science. In this way, the ancient measures of space and time reached our present age and still embody the direct but forgotten truths of our sacred planet. By recovering the megalithic secrets of space and time, carefully preserved in megalithic stone structures, Richard Heath tells an untold story of four megalithic ages. He identifies a first age of astronomical discovery in the French sites around Carnac, where, using only counted lengths and simple geometries, the ancients created a sophisticated cosmic clockwork. A second age centered in Britain, and including Stonehenge, successfully measured the Earth and revealed a simple pattern held within the Earth's shape, using metrological ratios. A third age, centered in Egypt and Greece, saw a perfecting of the monumental arts, associated metrology, and religious ideas, revealing the Earth and the heavens as the work of a numerical genius. The fourth age saw pyramids and other metrological buildings spread to the New World, at Teotihuacan in Mexico, and also to the Far East. Examining Earth's harmonic relevance to the Universe as a whole, Heath shows how we can recognize the long-forgotten foundations of our own civilization and revive the sacred teaching preserved by the four great megalithic ages.

How did religion emerge—and why? What are the links between behavior, environment, and religiosity? Diving millions of years into the past, to a time when human ancestors began grappling with issues of safety, worth, identity, loss, power, and meaning in complex and difficult environments, GregoryJ. Wightman explores the significance of goal-directed action and the rise of material culture for the advent of religiosity and ritual.The book opens by tackling questions of cognitive evolution and group psychology, and how these ideas can integrate with archaeological evidence such as stone tools, shell beads, and graves. In turn, it focuses on how human ancestors engaged with their environments, how those engagements became routine, and how, eventually, certain routines took on a recognizably ritualistic flavor. Wightman also critically examines the very real constraints on drawing inferences about prehistoric belief systems solely from limited material residues. Nevertheless, Wightman argues that symbolic objects are not merely illustrative of religion, but also constitutive of it; in the continual dance between brain and behavior, between internal and external environments, lie the seeds of ritual and religion. Weaving together insights from archaeology; anthropology; cognitive and cultural neuroscience; history and philosophy of religions; and evolutionary, social, and developmental psychology, Wightman provides an intricate, evidence-based understanding of religion's earliest origins.

Archaeologists have been increasingly turning their attention to the study of religion, but the field so far has lacked a cross-cultural overview. This text challenges archaeological conventions by refusing to respect the geographic and temporal boundaries with which archaeologists too often define their field. Worldwide in range and comparative in perspective, this exploration is guided by several fundamental questions: how do we recognize religion in the archaeological record? When should we recognize the first activities we call religious? What distinguishes a world religion? How can we see the formations of modern world religions in the archaeological record? An Archaeology of Religion begins with the first glimmers of what might be considered religious expression in the Paleolithic period and concludes with the complexities of world religions today. This book is an ambitious attempt to survey how scholars approach the identification of religious sites and practices in the archaeological record.

A New York Times Book Review Editors'ChoiceAn ABC Australia Best Book on Religion and Ethics of the YearDistinguished Book Award, Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological AssociationReligion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition—a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution.“Of Bellah's brilliance there can be no doubt. The sheer amount this man knows about religion is otherworldly…Bellah stands in the tradition of such stalwarts of the sociological imagination as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. Only one word is appropriate to characterize this book's subject as well as its substance, and that is ‘magisterial.'”—Alan Wolfe, New York Times Book Review“Religion in Human Evolution is a magnum opus founded on careful research and immersed in the ‘reflective judgment'of one of our best thinkers and writers.”—Richard L. Wood, Commonweal

Gentlemen and Amazons traces the nineteenth-century genesis and development of an important contemporary myth about human origins: that of an original prehistoric matriarchy. Cynthia Eller explores the intellectual history of the myth, which arose from male scholars who mostly wanted to vindicate the patriarchal family model as a higher stage of human development. Eller tells the stories these men told, analyzes the gendered assumptions they made, and provides the necessary context for understanding how feminists of the 1970s and 1980s embraced as historical'fact'a discredited nineteenth-century idea.

Drawing on the latest research, this brilliantly argued, elegantly written book examines belief, myth and society in the Neolithic period, arguably the most significant turning point in human history, when the society we know was born. Linking consciousness, imagery and belief systems the authors create a bridge to the thought-lives of the past.

At once polemical, insightful and thought-provoking, Conceiving God is essential reading for all those interested in the origins of religious thought, and the respective roles of science and religion in contemporary society. Building on the insights and discoveries of his two earlier books, The Mind in the Cave and Inside the Neolithic Mind, cognitive archaeologist David Lewis-Williams explores how science developed within the cocoon of religion and then shows how the natural functioning of the human brain creates experiences that can lead to belief in the supernatural realm.

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion provides a comprehensive overview by period and region of the relevant archaeological material in relation to theory, methodology, definition, and practice. Although, as the title indicates, the focus is upon archaeological investigations of ritual and religion, by necessity ideas and evidence from other disciplines are also included, among them anthropology, ethnography, religious studies, and history. The Handbook covers a global span - Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, and the Americas - and reaches from the earliest prehistory (the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic) to modern times. In addition, chapters focus upon relevant themes, ranging from landscape to death, from taboo to water, from gender to rites of passage, from ritual to fasting and feasting. Written by over sixty specialists, renowned in their respective fields, the Handbook presents the very best in current scholarship, and will serve both as a comprehensive introduction to its subject and as a stimulus to further research.

This book's aim is to go beyond the limits of the contemporary scientific paradigm of “material culture” by presenting some of the issues confronting archaeology, as it attempts to approach the spirituality of the past.It brings together archaeologists from Western and Eastern Europe, and the USA who, more or less obviously, have used their experientiality to approach the world view and mystic experience of ancient peoples.The book intends to present several arguments in support of an archaeology of spirituality through a series of seven case studies.What method should we use to approach spirituality? Are we still dependent on quantitative methods? Is phenomenology an appropriate instrument? Can experientiality approach a spiritual experience? Is the emic approach efficient enough to approach the spiritual side of a studied phenomenon? Are the analogous ethnographic models suitable instruments for this task? How much of the spirituality of the past is still accessible today? Could we build artificial contexts that would allow the recreation of the phenomenological condition analogous to the originals?Archaeology Experiences Spirituality? goes beyond the archaeological study of material culture, offering a fascinating lecture for the reader of the twenty-first century.

Presents compelling evidence that civilizations worldwide became warlike and monotheistic after Earth passed through the tail of a comet in 1500 B.C. • Explores the violent effect of debris from comet 12P/Pons-Brooks on peaceful cultures such as the Olmec of Mexico and the Megalithic people who built Stonehenge • Shows how this comet's appearance was taken as a significant religious event that still has repercussions today In the year 2024, the comet 12P/Pons-Brooks is due to pass near Earth again for the first time in 3,500 years. In 1500 B.C., Earth passed through this comet's tail, and in the decade following, cultures the world over began to exhibit significant aggressive tendencies. Civilizations in India, the Middle East, China, Japan, Europe, and Central America suddenly abandoned their peaceful ways and devoted themselves with uncharacteristic fervor to making war on their neighbors and fighting among themselves. But this was not the only effect that is linked to this celestial event. Sudden outbreaks of monotheism--the worship of a single god, and a new idea at the time--occurred simultaneously in locales spread widely throughout the world. Most of these monotheistic religions represented their god symbolically as a circle with a series of lines extending below--resembling a simple drawing of a comet. In The End of Eden, Graham Phillips chronicles the sudden shifts in social demeanor and religious philosophy that swept the world in the wake of 12P/Pons-Brooks. He argues that there is no other explanation for these changes other than the presence of this massive comet in the skies above Earth. He contends that debris in the comet's tail contaminated the atmosphere with a chemical known to cause aggressive behavior, and that after little more than a decade, worldwide hostility abruptly abated. He also explores how the appearance of a celestial body that outshone the moon would have been interpreted as a significant religious event--the premier appearance of a powerful new god to supplant the deities previously worshipped around the world.

The archaeology of religion is a much neglected area, yet religious sites and artefacts constitute a major area of archaeological evidence. Timothy Insoll presents an introductory statement on the archaeology of religion, examining what archaeology can tell us about religion, the problems of defining and theorizing religion in archaeology, and the methodology, or how to'do', the archaeology of religion.This volume assesses religion and ritual through a range of examples from around the world and across time, including prehistoric religions, shamanism, African religions, death, landscape and even food. Insoll also discusses the history of research and varying theories in this field before looking to future research directions. This book will be a valuable guide for students and archaeologists, and initiate a major area of debate.

Sacred Sites, Sacred Places explores the concept of'sacred'and what it means and implies to people in differing cultures. It looks at why people regard some parts of the land as special and why this ascription remains constant in some cultures and changes in others. Archaeologists, legislators and those involved in heritage management sometimes encounter conflict with local populations over sacred sites. With the aid of over 70 illustrations the book examines the extreme importance of such sacred places in all cultures and the necessity of accommodating those intimate beliefs which are such a vital part of ongoing cultural identity. Sacred Sites, Sacred Places therefore will be of help to those who wish to be non-destructive in their conservation and excavation practices. This book is unique in attempting to describe the belief systems surrounding the existence of sacred sites, and at the same time bringing such beliefs and practices into relationship with the practical problems of everyday heritage management. The geographical coverage of the book is exceptionally wide and its variety of contributors, including indigenous peoples, archaeologists and heritage professionals, is unrivalled in any other publication.