It is time to step back and pull this all together. The cognitive
revolution allowed homo sapiens to communicate store and decimate knowledge
from place to place and through time. This didn’t happen instantly. Writing probably
came after speech but for all we know primitive people may have used drawings
in the sand or on stones to get an idea across. The point is cooperation
requires coordination. Where do these elements come from?
Yuval Harari, in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
offers this
“Chimps. The alpha male usually wins his position not
because he is physically stronger, but because he leads a large and stable
coalition. These coalitions play a central part not only during overt struggles
for the alpha position, but in almost all day-to-day activities. Members of a
coalition spend more time together, share food, and help one another in times
of trouble. There are clear limits to the size of groups that can be formed and
maintained in such a way. In order to function, all members of a group must
know each other intimately. Two chimpanzees who have never met, never fought,
and never engaged in mutual grooming will not know whether they can trust one
another, whether it would be worthwhile to help one another, and which of them
ranks higher. Under natural conditions, a typical chimpanzee troop consists of
about twenty to fifty individuals. As the number of chimpanzees in a troop
increases, the social order destabilises, eventually leading to a rupture and
the formation of a new troop by some of the animals. Only in a handful of cases
have zoologists observed groups larger than a hundred. Separate groups seldom
cooperate, and tend to compete for territory and food. Researchers have
documented prolonged warfare between groups, and even one case of ‘genocidal’
activity in which one troop systematically slaughtered most members of a
neighbouring band.” (Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind).
So, homo sapiens eventually had a larger tribe. Harari
further suggests, “The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large
numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. …Unlike
lying, an imagined reality is something that everyone believes in, and as long
as this communal belief persists, the imagined reality exerts force in the
world. “(Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind).
“Most people probably enjoyed the close intimacy of the
roaming band, but those unfortunates who incurred the hostility or mockery of
their fellow band members probably suffered terribly. Modern foragers
occasionally abandon and even kill old or disabled people who cannot keep up
with the band. Unwanted babies and children may be slain, and there are even
cases of religiously inspired human sacrifice.” (Harari, Sapiens: A Brief
History of Humankind).
It seems likely that stories bonded homo sapiens in the
past and present. The trust in those beliefs allowed a larger group to be
accepting of others. If one believes as another individual, they are bound by
those beliefs. There are a wide variety of implications. If one doesn’t know
how the earth began one could make a story as a hypothesis OR over time it could
be a cult or even a religion. The simple need for humans to understand how or
where they came from is incredibly powerful. Those people can become the people
of something greater than themselves, the people of the creator. If one makes
this creator a god or God the people are the children of God. If we are all
children of God then we are bound together. We can defend ourselves, our beliefs,
our tribe. But defend against who? Anybody or thing NOT like us!
Religion is a story that exists to fill the gaps in any
reality that humans inhabit. It can be the means to explain the unexplainable. Religion
often explains creation via myth, represents good versus evil (or order versus
chaos), give purpose to existence and the requirement of an ethical code that
appeals to greater beings than oneself. It often includes the belief in and worship of a
superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods, tenets of
faith (implying there are no empirical proof for faith) and systems of worship.
The early homo sapiens did not judge anything with logic and reason. Those were concepts millennia in the future. Early people were often driven by fear. They wanted to be safe and secure. The daily interactions were with the physical world namely the sun, earth, wind, fire and water and characteristics that resulted namely rain, thunder, lightning, rockslides, and the animals they encountered.
“Religion is unique to humans…Results
indicate that the oldest trait of religion, present in the most recent common
ancestor of present-day hunter-gatherers, was animism, in agreement with
long-standing beliefs about the fundamental role of this trait. Belief in an
afterlife emerged, followed by shamanism and ancestor worship. Ancestor spirits
or high gods who are active in human affairs were absent in early humans,
suggesting a deep history for the egalitarian nature of hunter-gatherer
societies.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4958132/
Animists believe that there is no barrier between humans
and other beings. They can all communicate directly through speech, song, dance
and ceremony….Animism is not a specific religion. It is a generic name for
thousands of very different religions, cults and beliefs. What makes all of
them ‘animist’ is this common approach to the world and to man’s place in it.
Saying that ancient foragers were probably animists is like saying that
premodern agriculturists were mostly theists. Theism (from ‘theos’, ‘god’ in
Greek) is the view that the universal order is based on a hierarchical
relationship between humans and a small group of ethereal entities called gods.
(Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind).
“Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens have thus
been living in a dual reality. On the one hand, the objective reality of
rivers, trees and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods,
nations and corporations. As time went by, the imagined reality became ever
more powerful, so that today the very survival of rivers, trees and lions
depends on the grace of imagined entities such as the United States and Google.”
Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: A Brief History of Human
Religion emerged from
stories. Stories likely made the tribe larger as one could trust those with the
same stories. Stories can help Humans conceive of structures larger than themselves
or their understanding. What Harari means in the last paragraph “grace
of imagined entities such as the United States and Google” is that nations and
Google only exist because humans BELIEVE they do and continue to act as if they
exist. They are a derivative of our legal system, which humans respect for the
order they bring to our interactions. Nations and Google are a story. THAT WAS
THE REVOLUTION OF THE LARGER TRIBE.
So far, we only discussed early religious developments. Clearly there has been an evolution of religion which is one of Homo sapiens earliest stories. ©
