The Tool Maker and the Shaman
Roots of Religion
The parallel developmental processes of creating and using tools and creating and using religion.
The Roots of Religion: Genevieve Von Petzinger at TEDxVictoria
Imagine no Religion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zgwz_m7sRs&t=58
What was it like without any religion? We know that it was not there if we go far enough back archeologically. It had to have begun in small steps at some point and little by little developed into more sophisticated systems. There are an estimated 20 world religions that span more than one country and hundreds of belief systems. At this point in time, out of the 7 billion people on earth, 6 billion people follow some religion. That is significant. The history of religion is critical to understand if we want to understand humans and human development sociologically, psychologically, politically, and spiritually.
“How far back does the religious impulse go? And how would you get at that? It’s incredibly subjective, right? So, obviously Homo sapiens at the top. We know that Homo sapiens have religion, that’s us. But, what about heidelbergensis before us, and erectus, and all the way back to Homo hails. You know, Homo habilis 25 million years ago, they’re considered to be a good candidate for the original toolmakers.
“And you might wonder – tools, religion, what do these potentially have in common? But, if you actually think about what a cognitive leap making tools is, there are some things in common.”
Parallels Between Tools and Religion
Mental Templates: The tool maker that is shaping one stone with another stone has to hold a mental template in his head of what it is that he is making. We need imagination and ingenuity if we want to visualize the tool that stone must become.
Working Memory: Then there is forethought and planning. What is it that the human hands can’t do but that a tool could do, or do more efficiently. When the tool wears out or the tribe moves on, they must remember how they made their tools and what materials they used so that they can be prepared to make other tools. Otherwise they would have to start over again and again each time they move or each time one wears out.
Enhanced Working Memory: Being able to envision and work with abstract concepts is unique to humans. This is also the beginning of art and language. In order to do art, we must be able to create an image in our minds of something that is important to us. And we must desire to not only remember individually, but it is also helping us to develop collective memory that is passed down from generation to generation. Language is really just an extension of art. Art is a form of written language that is meant to communicate significant ideas to significant others. Written language began as signs and symbols left behind for those to come. But then it became more sophisticated in order to do more complex tasks like filling in between a story of symbols to give more details and context. Then there is spoken language which is a miracle in itself. Thought takes our memories and and creates images and words in the mind. Then words are used to try to express those images to others. But we are also unconsciously filtering them through our grid of preconceived ideas, beliefs, opinions, which all make up our worldview. We try to create an image with words so that another person can also see the image we have in our minds. Then the other person takes your words and unconsciously filters through their worldview to create in their mind an approximation of the images in your head. The miracle is that we are able to make this work!
Mental Time Travel: The ability to imagine and think about the past and future. This is how we learn from mistakes and successes.
Imagination: conceive a mental template of that which does not exist.
God-Spot: This is what paleoanthropologists and other scientists call the god spot. It is the ability to understand and manipulate symbols, i.e. language and art. This is more advanced than any other creature on the planet is able to do. Scientists believe that this begins with modern humans. Archaeologically we see that frontal lobes got bigger allowing for higher reasoning. The next critical question is: How is it wired beyond just the size? 20,000 years ago is when symbolic behavior developed beyond just utilitarian behavior including burials, then burials that would include artifacts of significance. Usually this means that they are thinking of some sort of afterlife where these things might be needed.
40,000 to 50,000 years ago, humans left Africa, and consistently started showing modern behavior. After migrating, there was a creative explosion. So 10,000 to 40,000 years ago we begin to see modern humans with the “God-Spot” in various developmental states.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zgwz_m7sRs&t=1089
Creative Explosion
“Now look at that beautiful, big, old forehead on the Homo sapiens skull. Those are the frontal lobes. This is pretty much where all of our higher reasoning comes from, from those spots right there. You know, thinking about it, what’s so interesting is that while we sit here, in this room, having this conversation, you’re using those frontal parts of your lobes, aren’t you? But the question that’s come up is: It can physically be there, but is it maybe more about wiring? Not just about size, but then also about how is it wired, how are the neural pathways moving.
“So, this is where the scholars I mentioned, Wynn and Coolidge working together, have made the argument that they believe that the truly modern thought, that ability which includes imagination, mental time travel, they believe it started with modern humans. So, what do I mean when I say modern humans? About 200,000 years ago, we’ve been able to find the earliest skeletons, that we currently have of what we would call fully modern humans.
“That means that their skeletons were identical to ours, and their brain size was exactly the same. Now, that doesn’t mean though, that they were actually using all of the abilities we had, and this is something that is a particular area of mine that I find really fascinating, as well, trying to figure out: When did they become us? Because we’re more than just the brain size and the body, it’s also about how we use that brain. And what’s so fascinating about the early humans in Africa, is that, for probably about the first 80,000 years or so, they’re not really doing much different than the ancestor species that came before them. They’re making really nice tools, surviving quite well, making good use of their landscape, all of those types of things are in place. But what we’re not seeing is those kinds of behaviours that make us go: They’re us.
“And then, suddenly, around 120,000 years ago, what starts happening is we suddenly start finding what we call symbolic behaviour. And what we mean when we say that are things that we would consider to be non-utilitarian. So, not something that’s useful at a very 1:1 ratio level of survival, something to keep you warm at night, something to eat, something to shelter you. We start finding burials 120,000 years ago is the oldest burials we know of in the world, and not just burials but burials with grave goods in them.
“So, in this case, what we’re talking about at the 120,000 mark – they were finding a few marine shells that have perforations, and some of the perforations look like they probably occurred naturally, some may have been made by tools, but the kicker is that those little holes in the shells have wear marks on them, which means that they were being worn in some fashion.
“Now, there’s nothing about doing that that is remotely useful for again heat, shelter, food. So, what’s going on? What’s happened? What’s changed? And this is kind of the story going forward, and this is again where Wynn and Coolidge have made this argument, and other scholars have as well, that modern humans is where that big change takes place. They’ve made the argument potentially even that the change started here, but that some sort of genetic mutation or something else happened around 40-50,000 years ago, and that that was when truly modern behaviour, the full suite of behaviours that we associate with being modern, music and mathematics and the ability to envision things that aren’t there, and all of these things which are very much about us, and, of course, full language, communication, all that kind of thing. They see it as happening around 40-50,00 years ago, which coincides with when modern humans left Africa.
“It’s not that they weren’t doing interesting things before, but this is when it starts getting really interesting. This is when we start finding a lot of symbolic materials, like portable art pieces and lots of jewellery and other interesting things, in the archaeological record alongside the stone tools. So, what would we look for? Let’s go back to this idea of religion and spirituality, and how you get that in the archaeological record. Because, if you think about that far back, basically, we’re working with stone tools. So, there’s not really much to go at, and so how do we start trying to move beyond that, and actually look for these indirect clues? Well, there’s three main things that people in my field tend to use looking at that.
“The first is burials with elaborate grave goods. So, the necklace itself at the 120,000 mark, very interesting, very cool, but we can take that a bit farther, and say: What about if they’re putting lots of elaborate items into that burial? Impossible entities being depicted. So, when I use the term impossible entities, we’re referring to things that do not appear anywhere in nature. So, we’re not referring to anything in the real world. Something that’s, say, half-animal, half-human, would be an impossible entity.
“And then, of course, trying to identify magic and spiritual themes in the art itself. And this is on portable pieces and, of course, my particular area of study, the cave walls. So, to quickly go over a couple of these and I’ll give you some ideas of what we’re seeing. For an elaborate burial, this one is a very famous burial and it’s an absolutely fascinating one. This is actually one of three burials from this site.
“This particular one is the adult male, and it’s about 28,000 years old, it’s from Russia, and you notice there’s little white things all over his skeleton there. Those are ivory beads. There are approximately 3,500 ivory beads in this burial. An archaeologist in our field, his name’s Randy White, actually went to the effort of trying to do what we call experimental archaeology. And he actually took the mammoth ivory and practiced until he could get quite good at making the beads, and even when he was good at it, it took an hour per bead.
“Do the math on that. Then on top of that, we actually have the fact that the two other burials at that particular site are actually of two children. A little boy and a little girl, and they’re buried in a double burial. The little boy has 4,500 beads, so 1,000 more than the adult male, and the little girl has over 5,000. So, what we’re seeing here then is potentially the fact that they’re seeing death as being a state that’s different than life, and yet worth recognizing and worth paying attention to, and worth acknowledging, and, frankly, worth the sheer amount of effort of making all those beads only to bury them in the ground and cover them up.
“So, something is definitely going on in that sense. Then, of course, we come to impossible entities. And this one is a wonderful, classic example. This is an ivory carved figurine, it’s probably about this tall. Head of a lion, body of a human.
“Again coming back to that, that doesn’t exist anywhere in nature. So, what’s going on? Why are they depicting this? This is not a self-representation. And there’s people in my field who have made the proposal that, maybe, this could be some sort of mythology, something to do with origin stories and things like that. So, there’s these interesting examples that exist throughout the archaeological record. That particular one is about 32,000 years old.
“What about hunting magic? When I say hunting magic, I mean this, this is from the cave called Niaux, in France, and you’ve got a bison that’s painted on a cave wall, and if you notice it looks like there’s almost some sort of spear sticking out of its side. So, in this case what people have proposed is that what we could be seeing is them almost trying to kill the animal ritually in the cave first, in order to ensure success when they go out on the real hunt. And we do have some examples where there’s not just the spears, but there’s also punctuation marks, which almost looks like maybe somebody was banging a real spear or something at the image on the wall. So, again, that suggests some sort of harnessing of some unseen world – there’s something going on.”
Shamanistic Practices
As humans further developed art and language, rituals and burials (with burial goods),
shamanistic practices played a larger and larger role in it.
“And then this is another great example here of an impossible entity which has also been potentially identified as being a shaman. Now, the reason why they say that is the idea that: What if they were wearing a mask? What if this, rather than being an impossible entity, is an actual depiction of a human partially dressed up like an animal? You see the legs have a much more human look, they’re not very bison-like, yet the head has that very bison look, and the arms are also very human, So, this is where they started to talk about the idea of shamanistic practices, because shamans, of course – the term itself comes from Russia, but it’s applied a lot to basically spiritual practices where there are specific members of your tribe who intercede on your behalf with an unseen world.
“Whether it’s to influence weather, to influence the hunt, or to do with health, and with people being sick and trying to make them better again, there’s these people that do that.”
“Things like handprints. They talked about the idea that caves were almost like a transitional place between worlds. That once you go into a cave – we go in with headlamps and lots of light, and we know what a cave is, geologically.”
“But imagine if you didn’t know it almost has a feel of maybe being a portal to another reality. And they’ve talked about the idea of those cave walls as almost being maybe membranes that they could touch, and through those membranes touch the unseen.”
“These things seem to be the roots of religion. They were projecting themselves into another world that is unseen but in some way felt through art and rituals. Humans have always sought to have power and control over their environment. This is mostly for survival. But it makes sense that these developing religions were felt to make their lives better and give them greater understanding of the world around them, whether or not they are real.”
Transcript of the talk: The Roots of Religion: Genevieve Von Petzinger at TEDxVictoria (Transcript) – The Singju Post
“Shamanism has been termed “humanity’s oldest and universal expression of religiosity,” and its cross-cultural presence among hunter/gatherer societies suggest a connection to the evolution of the brain. In fact, we can safely state that all modern world religions have their origins in long-forgotten shamanic practices.
“Scholars have documented shamanism throughout Asia, Tibet, Oceania, Hungary, Sweden, North and South America, central Europe and Africa. Shamanic practices have varied extensively around the globe, but the role of the shaman as a healer and spiritual guide is widely shared. They were the first healers, teachers, and scholars.”
https://thefourwinds.com/blog/shamanism/the-origins-of-shamanism/
The shaman…
.
Is a person of knowledge and power.
Uses power and knowledge in service.
Knows that love is the organizing principle of the universe.
Knows that creation is not complete – we help dream the world into being.
Is one who has not left the Garden, is not separate from nature.
Knows everything is infused with spirit, with life.
Sees the organizing principle of the universe, the archetypes.
Is in service for the good of all beings and the Earth.
Has a high sense of ethics – works through intent.
Knows and faces the shadow, both personal and collective.
Holds and creates sacred space.
Even with intent, does not fix the outcome – no attachment to result.
Knows that power can heal and also destroy, and uses it wisely.
Knows to work at source – the energetic.
Knows that we are here not only to grow corn but to grow gods.
Knows that everything is light bound into matter.
Knows that being present with intent can shift the world.
Lives in synchronicity.
Lives with impeccability.
Knows that if you don’t learn it you marry it (wedded to it) or it comes to you as fate.
Knows that thought directs energy – energy directs matter.
Knows that will is control and that intent is surrender.
Understands the universe to be benign – not predatory.
The universe conspires on your behalf.
Knows that “Reality are those myths that we can’t quite see through yet”.
Looks for confirmation in nature and synchronistic events (signs, omens).
Knows that when you call spirit, spirit answers and that when spirit calls, you must answer.
Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D.
The shaman…
For more information about Alberto Villoldo, his books, healing retreats and
the Light Body School, contact The Four Winds Society at 888-437-4077 or
online, www.thefourwinds.com.
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