Pretty interetsing news story here. I have always thought the same thing, as Religion was possibly used to explain the unexplainable. Then again, taking psychedelics has opened me up to that world anyway.
Humans are naturally predisposed to believe in gods and life after death, according to a major three-year international study.
Led by two academics at Oxford University, the £1.9 million study found that human thought processes were “rooted” to religious concepts.
But people living in cities in highly developed countries were less likely to hold religious beliefs than those living a more rural way of life, the researchers found.
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Will post more later. Off to do some research. Quite a fascinating topic really.
What do you mean by "very early groups of humans"?
Lizard people?
And 'very early groups of humans' was also incredibly vague and off the mark. I should have said in certain civilizations/groups/what have you. It was by no means global...But considering my initial statement was plain incorrect, its all sort of irrelevant anyway.
My bad.
The former consisted of sites were skeletal remains were found to have been buried with artifacts such as tools, weapons, and cosmetic items that were not damaged at the time of entombment. There are also cases of bodies buried together hinting at relationships between the dead ranging from siblings, mother and child, and even owner and pet.
While there's no way to be completely sure at this time what they were thinking when they did this it does show a possibility that they were burying their dead with these artifacts and their companions with the thought that perhaps it would affect their afterlife.
The case of the Cult of the Cave Bear on the other hand consists of several sites ranging in Europe in which up to twenty bear skulls were found in unearthed human habitats and arranged in a way that is believed to have had some sort of meaning to the inhabitants.
So yes, people have been spiritual for a very long time. Technically anatomically modern day humans are not descended from Neanderthals, we're more like their younger cousins, but one gets the general idea that our ancestors did not lead purely material lives.
Brown lizard people.
Dostoyevsky (I think it was) puts it well...Something along the lines of 'even if god does not exist, it was absolutely necessary for man to create him'.