The First Gods Weren't in the Sky: A New History of Belief

Why did ancient humans start believing in gods? It probably began with a brain built to see a someone behind every rustle, and with awe; the oldest belief wasn't a single god in the sky but a world full of spirits, and watching, judging gods came much later with villages and kings. Long before farming, hunters on a hilltop in Turkey carved giant stone pillars with foxes, snakes and vultures, about 11,600 years ago. We follow the clues: a brain built to see someone behind every rustle, chimpanzees staring at waterfalls, a 40,000-year-old ivory figure with a lion's head and a human body, and a woman buried with fifty tortoises, one of the earliest known shamans. And the twist: the oldest belief shared by hunter-gatherers wasn't a single god in the sky, but a world full of spirits. Chapters 0:00 Stone pillars older than farming 0:45 Your brain sees someone 2:13 Clue 1: The 40,000-year-old lion-man 3:29 Clue 2: The woman with fifty tortoises 4:30 Clue 3: The temple on the hill 5:34 Not a temple, and not one god 6:49 Case closed Sources Schmidt, K. (2006). Sie bauten die ersten Tempel. C. H. Beck. Dietrich, O. et al. (2013). The role of cult and feasting in the emergence of Neolithic communities: new evidence from Göbekli Tepe. Antiquity, 86, 674–695. Clare, L. et al. (2019). Göbekli Tepe, Turkey. A brief summary of research at a new World Heritage Site (2015–2019). e-Forschungsberichte des DAI, 2019(2). Barrett, J. L. (2000). Exploring the natural foundations of religion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(1), 29–34. Kelemen, D. (1999). Why are rocks pointy? Children's preference for teleological explanations of the natural world. Developmental Psychology, 35(6), 1440–1452. Kind, C.-J. et al. (2014). The smile of the Lion Man. Recent excavations in Stadel cave (Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany) and the restoration of the famous Upper Palaeolithic figurine. Quartär, 61, 129–145. Grosman, L., Munro, N. D. & Belfer-Cohen, A. (2008). A 12,000-year-old Shaman burial from the southern Levant (Israel). PNAS, 105(46), 17665–17669. Munro, N. D. & Grosman, L. (2010). Early evidence (ca. 12,000 B.P.) for feasting at a burial cave in Israel. PNAS, 107(35), 15362–15366. Peoples, H. C., Duda, P. & Marlowe, F. W. (2016). Hunter-gatherers and the origins of religion. Human Nature, 27(3), 261–282. Narration is AI-generated. Illustrations are AI-generated from our own prompts. #AncientHumans #Archaeology #HumanHistory