What Was the First Religion?

[sojourner]

All religions are derivative of something else. If you think your religion, as you practice it now, is "pure," you're kidding yourself. There is only one religion, and it's about how the human relates to the Divine. Whatever form it takes, it doesn't really matter. It's all about the relationship of humanity to the Divine.

 

[Hema]

Sanatan Dharma or Eternal Religion. It is a way of life...living according to righteousness and the teachings of the Vedas. The Vedas were not composed by any human being. At the beginning of creation, the first Saints and Sages meditated and heard the sounds of the universe. They heard the Vedas. The Vedas are manifested at the beginning of each cycle of creation. Many, many years later, some Persians started to refer to people following this way of life as Hindus. They were referring to people who settled along the Indus or Sindhu river but they mispronounced "Sindhu" and said "Hindu". Hence, those who followed Sanatan Dharma came to be known as Hindus.

 

[gnomon]

This is obviously nothing more than a guessing game for me.

The world's oldest religion?

Depends. As far as organized religion still in practice I would say either Shamanism or Hinduism. Though I think the polytheism of the Sumerians predates a cohesive Hindu religion. At about the same time there were various religious beliefs among the Aryan and other ethnic groups which formed the basis of Hinduism. I would posit that a cohesive Sumerian religion developed prior to Hinduism. So technically it would be older but...I'm not a scholar. I could very well be wrong.

Shamanism and/or Animism are the world's oldest forms of spiritual ritualism (or religion) still in practice today. I don't think they are granted the same status as the other religions since the specific rituals will vary among different cultures and lack the massive popular appeal that the others hold.



I obviously need to learn more.

edit: What about Dravidianism. What is that all about?

 

[doppelganger]

Before there were the "Heavens and the Earth", before the Divine Logos, before "OM" was the first word, when there could be no striving for the Tao that isn't the Eternal Tao, there was primal Chaos. The first transcendence sprung up when the first dream carried the first dreamer outside the world as it is. The first religion was when he tried to explain to someone else what happened.

 

[sojourner]

Before there were the "Heavens and the Earth", before the Divine Logos, before "OM" was the first word, when there could be no striving for the Tao that isn't the Eternal Tao, there was primal Chaos. The first transcendence sprung up when the first dream carried the first dreamer outside the world as it is. The first religion was when he tried to explain to someone else what happened.

The creation story in Genesis explained "why things are the way they are." Its account is not transcendent, but immanent. Just as the "rule" of Christianity is not transcendent, but immanent. The first religion was when humanity realized that its nature was Divine.

 

[painted wolf]

There is good evidence that the Neandertals had "religion" before we were around, and there is some tentitive evidence that the H. erectus may have held some sort of early 'spiritual' beliefs.Religion is part of our species from before we were human. What that "first" religion looked like, we will likely never know.wa:do

 

[doppelganger]

The creation story in Genesis explained "why things are the way they are." Its account is not transcendent, but immanent. Just as the "rule" of Christianity is not transcendent, but immanent. The first religion was when humanity realized that its nature was Divine.

Yes. That's actually part of my point.

 

[PrinzessinSatanica]

i suppose it would be some sort of pagan religion wouldn't it? most of those are pretty old, and most of today's religions are a spin-off of them somehow, so it would make sense.

 

[Pariah]

This is obviously nothing more than a guessing game for me.

The world's oldest religion?

Depends. As far as organized religion still in practice I would say either Shamanism or Hinduism. Though I think the polytheism of the Sumerians predates a cohesive Hindu religion. At about the same time there were various religious beliefs among the Aryan and other ethnic groups which formed the basis of Hinduism. I would posit that a cohesive Sumerian religion developed prior to Hinduism. So technically it would be older but...I'm not a scholar. I could very well be wrong.

Shamanism and/or Animism are the world's oldest forms of spiritual ritualism (or religion) still in practice today. I don't think they are granted the same status as the other religions since the specific rituals will vary among different cultures and lack the massive popular appeal that the others hold.



I obviously need to learn more.

edit: What about Dravidianism. What is that all about?

It surprises me to see someone else who understands Indology even to this point.

Dravidianism, as far as we know, did not contribute to Hinduism as we know it, but may have integrated certain aspects of it and may be evident today in South India. It was probably a form of animism as shown by a Horned God also seen in Europe, leading some historians to formulate theories linking the migration of people or ideas from South India to Europe or vice versa. It's unlikely as we know it.

The Aryans and the Indus Valley people created the Vedas (the scriptures at the basis of Hinduism), but the religion spread by integrating beliefs from the natives while asserting Vedic ideals.

 

[Blindinglight]

It is speculated that animism was the original.

 

[Sunstone]

If we define religion as a set of beliefs and practices generally held by a community, involving adherence to codified beliefs and rituals - 'Oxford Dictionary'
The first communities were in Egypt and Sumer therefore the religions that were developed there would be the first.

Humans have always lived in communities. Hunting/gathering groups are communities. Tribes are communities. You don't need the complex societies of Sumer and Egypt to have a community. The first religions would pre-date Sumer and Egypt by tens of thousands of years.

Just as humans have always lived in communities -- i.e. we've always been a social animal -- humans have probably always been a religious animal.

 

[Druidus]

The earliest religion? Well, strip all religion away. Start there.

Early humans with no conception of forces above or beyond their own. But wait! Humans, even, presumably, early humans, had brains designed to deal with entities. Entities with motives, designs, schemes, and secrets. We needed to, indeed, for otherwise we would never have been able to live in any sized tribe, let alone ones with more than ~120 members. I would suggest that our need to solve problems and deal with other self-entities led to us accepting that the wind was a self-entity. And so was the sun. The moon. Trees, rocks, mountains, caves, everything.

Eventually, we invented higher self-entities that controlled lower self-entities. In many cases, the higher self-entities replaced the lower self-entities.

We thought that by dealing directly with the self-entities of the world we could help our chances of survival. After all, if you think that the sky is a being, than you would indeed ask it to rain for you, to provide you with sustenance. If it did not, perhaps it just hasn't gotten what it needs from you. Thus, proto-sacrifice, proto-prayer, and other such concepts.

 

[Papersock]

As others have said already, I think Animism is the most likely candidate for earliest religion.

 

[painted wolf]

There are more basic religous views than Animism. Many indigenus peoples don't have wind spirits and so on, they simply have the spirits of thier dead. These spirits can act for the bennfit of or against the living. It is the spiritual leaders jobs to keep these ancestor spirits happy.

This is more likely to be closest to the "first" religion, but who knows. Ideas evolve and no people living today or a thousand years ago would have religious/faith ideas that haven't changed over time.

wa:do

 

[Druidus]

Good point, PW. I think that it would be logical for the first extension of self-entity to a non-self-entity would be the extension from a living being to a dead one (seeing as how only just before it died it was alive and conscious). It may very well have snowballed from there, or, in some cases, stayed there.

 

[Sonic247]

It's all a mute point. I don't see how anyone can argue against the priority of Pancakism now that we have the Dead Sea Skillets.

lol. that was good.

 

[EtuMalku]

The first 'religion' not the first belief system or first beliefs of man. By defining the word 'religion' this inquiry can be answered correctly.

 

[djackson]

Well, biologically homo sapiens started in the Mesopotamic Valley, so I would have to point towards the polytheism/animism of ancient Sumeria. The question then becomes, did homo erectus or evolutionary forms of man have religious inclinations?

 

[painted wolf]

um, no biologically H. sapiens started near Ethiopia.

The definition of religion is often used to discount and discredit native spiritual practices. I don't think a discussion on the origins of religion and religious thought can be complete without looking at the majority of humanities historical spiritual experience.

as for the biology of religion. There is good evidence that spiritual thought predates humanity.
H. neanderthalis has all the preservable halmarks of spiritual thinking and it isn't much of a stretch to say they practiced some sort of spirituality.
H. erectus also shows some signs of sprititual thinking, though not as much as either us or Neanderthals.
This makes sence as both H.sapien and H.neanderthalis practice a more complex form of spirituality it points to our having inherited this tendancy from our last shared common ancestor.

wa:do

 

[djackson]

Thank you, my thoughts were on the origins of man and not my science. I believe I meant to say historically man began in Mesopatamia, at least the beginnings of civilization. I haven't done much reading on Anthropology, so it is interesting to see agreement. Looks like something to add to my research list.

PS, I would frubal your post but am not sure how and you look like you have a lot anyway.