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Thursday 30 September 2021

Did cavemen have a religion?

Available archaeological evidence seems to indicate that they believed in a life after death and that they most likely practiced a form of totemism. Burials have been found with all the goods necessary to their way of life, indicating that they believed such would be necessary. Tattoos found on many mummified Ice Age persons indicate a belief in the power of some sort of spirit to protect and guide them. And there are those "Mother Goddess" statues and figurines cluttering up the Ice Age strata in Europe. You don't make stuff like that to represent real, live human females.

Oddly enough Jean Auel (of Clan of the Cave Bear fame), by using the best available scientific evidence concerning Ice Age Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, does have the closest version to what was probably really going on in their spiritual lives.