I finished the first few chapters of Mircea Eliade's "A History of Religious Ideas Vol. 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries". The book starts with the earliest clues we can guess at with regard to prehistoric man, and then briefly explores each successive development as religious ideas and impulses are brought forth in subsequent civilizations.

Prehistoric men were hunters following the game. Their sense of spirituality centered around hunting, contemplating where their prey came from and therefore where man himself came from. I found the suggestion interesting that they purportedly felt a kinship with the animals they hunted and went to great lengths to honor and verify the remains of the animal, presumably under the fear that the animal might exact vengeance on them from the afterlife. To me, this presages some early awareness of karma, or cause and effect of killing. My favorite part about prehistoric religion is that they the deification of all this was wrapped into a archetype or figure named "The Lord of Wild Beasts". Awesome.

From there, you have the slow transition to agricultural society and the subsequent emergence of the oldest known civilization in Sumer. Like the hunters, man worships what he spends his time on; getting food. While growing food and paying dependent attention to the cycles in nature, man develops an awareness of the continuity of life after death. Crops dying in winter are reborn next season. This model gets applied to human life and presages later concepts of reincarnation. Society also shifts more feminine with greater emphasis placed on cycles, continuity and working/worshipping the natural world. The Sumerian myth of Inanna descending into the underworld to die and be resurrected, as well as her husband, Dumuzi, undergoing a periodic banishment seems to set the early tone for later figures of resurrected gods like Jesus. You've also got Gilgamesh and the quest of man to find immortality and be free of death.

Later, you've got the Egyptians, where preparing for death becomes a literal science. Also important is the emerging belief of an incarnated deity in the form of the pharaoh god-kings. Presently, I'm reading about the subsequent influence spread over Europe with all the stone monoliths like Stonehenge, which also seem to be contemplative of death. Perhaps stone was imagined to capture the soul and immortalize the deceased, resulting in the modern day gravestone?

Anyway, cool shit (to me). I've been loving the opportunity to chime in on my current read each weekend on this site. Makes me feel like I'm doing a book report in elementary school. Hopefully others find it half as interesting as I do.

Picture of the "Lord of Wild Beasts" below.