There is no known first religion on Earth. Archaeologists can date some objects and reconstruct activities long before writing. Historians can sometimes identify a god, a sanctuary and a patron from an inscription. The oldest surviving evidence in either category gives us a date for a particular practice or object. The beginning of religion is a broader question.
What would count as evidence of religion?
Different definitions lead researchers to look for different things. In Primitive Culture, first published in 1871, Edward Burnett Tylor proposed belief in spiritual beings as a minimal definition of religion and used animism in that sense. A definition that starts from belief directs attention to what people thought. An investigation that starts with ritual asks what they did and how often or in what setting they did it. Tylor himself acknowledged how much uncertainty remained when investigators had only archaeological remains to go on. Edward Burnett Tylor, Primitive Culture, volume I, chapter XI.
Calling animism the first religion would require evidence about the beliefs of the earliest people who practised religion. A later scholar’s category helps organize questions about spiritual beings. It cannot by itself give those beliefs an archaeological date.
Shell beads show choices about materials
The Smithsonian Human Origins Program catalogues shell beads from Grotte des Pigeons at Taforalt, Morocco, dated to about 82,000 years ago. The shells originated on the Mediterranean coast, more than 40 kilometers away. The find places material from the coast at an inland site and gives researchers evidence of its use as ornament. The distance helps establish something about how people obtained or moved the shells. The meaning people attached to the beads is a separate question. Smithsonian Human Origins Program, Ancient Shell Beads.
A burial cave preserves traces of a shared event
At Hilazon Tachtit in western Galilee, excavators identified a Late Natufian burial ground dating to around 12,000 years ago. Natalie Munro and Leore Grosman describe concentrations of butchered tortoise and wild cattle remains in two structures associated with burial. They interpret the combination of the structures, the animal remains and the site’s use as evidence that people gathered to feast in connection with burying the dead. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Hilazon Tachtit excavation. Munro and Grosman, research abstract on burial feasting.
Here the arrangement of the finds supports an interpretation of an activity, because traces of food preparation and consumption occur in a burial setting. It is harder to know what participants thought happened to the dead. A gathering can be reconstructed in more detail than the words people might have spoken or the beliefs they brought to it.
Writing can give gods and temples names
A late third-millennium BCE statue of Gudea, ruler of Lagash in southern Mesopotamia, offers a different kind of evidence. Its Sumerian inscription names Ningirsu and Nanše in connection with buildings that Gudea says he constructed. It also names the ruler’s personal god, Ningišzida. The text ties named deities, places of worship and the role of a ruler to a particular object. It preserves a claim about royal patronage and a relationship with several gods. Metropolitan Museum of Art, statue of Gudea and inscription.
The statue gives historians names and relationships that a burial or ornament generally cannot supply. It also has a point of view. A dedication commissioned by a ruler tells us how his work was presented in that setting. The beliefs of everyone who lived under his rule remain a wider question.
Religious change can move in several directions
The terms polytheism and monotheism concern the place of many gods or one God. They help describe some traditions and disputes. Their use as a fixed sequence of stages can obscure what happened in particular places. In Egypt, Akhenaten promoted worship of the Aten and founded a new center for it at Amarna. The Metropolitan Museum links a later sculpted head of Amun to Tutankhamun’s restoration of monuments of that god at Karnak. The two episodes show a royal religious change followed by a return of support for a cult that had lost it. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Akhenaten and the Aten. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Head of the God Amun.
Conclusion
A shell bead can show what people moved and used as ornament. A burial deposit can support an account of a gathering. An inscription can name a god and state what a ruler claimed to do. Each kind of evidence lets us ask more precise questions about early religion. Taken together, the finds tell histories of particular practices in particular places, without yielding a single date or name for the beginning of religion.
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