It seems you have found most common arguments on formation of religion as its present form. The believes associated with the cultural behaviours of  humans in primitive societies have later on turned in to  those attributes. That is how the worships of sun moon or large trees etc have emerged. Meantime, the next step of social norms and values constructed by the human societies also need to be  considered. 

Thank you for the invitation to the project, but at the moment I have a job planned in a completely different direction. Victor Ivanov

Dear Alan,

The answer depends on how you define religion. Some scholars consider only Abrahamic 'traditions' as religions and classify other practices/ beliefs as 'religious traditions'.

Another issue in answering the question deals with the empirical context. What is meant by the foragers? And where? I do not know if we can say that the foragers all over the globe were the same. Some articles mention the worship of elements of nature, like Village Hinduism in India (see attachment). But it is hard to say whether this practice/ religion fits in a 'timeline' involving shamanism due to the contextual differences.

I hope this answer helps.

Kirtie

The more I read about the pre-historic origins of religion, the more I'm convinced that trying to uncover them is really a speculative endeavor.  There are quite a few major conceptual problems. Three spring to mind:  

(1) You're right to question these categories, and in fact, I think your question reveals a fundamental problem with the issue - that evolutionist assumptions normally characterize this area of study. Obviously in any given individual society, one kind of religious belief or practice will have preceded another; but to extend this to some pan-human "evolution of religion" (as opposed to individual religions) is something of a 19th century fantasy. None of the usual what, where, how, when, and why questions can be answered with evolutionist approaches, unless we fall back on outmoded and unproven grand diffusionist theories.

(2) Drawing conclusions from analogies between the physical remains of non-literate ancient peoples and indigenous small-scale societies known through ethnography is itself problematic. I'm not at all convinced that people with similar social scales, food production techniques, levels of industrialization, literacy or whatever will necessarily have similar religions and religious practices (including whatever definition of 'shamanistic' you might use). There is no more inherent similarity between traditional African and Native American religions (which are widely diverse, anyway) per se than between them and Judaism and Hinduism or any other religion. Again, this is related to the problem of evolutionism - the ethnocentric notion that there was some progression from "low" to "high" religions.

(3) We can never sure if material culture from the distant past is evidence for what we'd "religion," and arguments to that effect often seems conjectural and imaginative. Grave goods, for example, are not always evidence of belief in an afterlife. They may simply be tributes or memorials to the deceased, or have some other non-supernatural symbolic meaning (e.g., the Ibn of Borneo place knives in graves to symbolize the dead individual being severed from the living). There is a joke in archaeology that anything that can't be immediately identified is deemed a "cultic installation."  

This is not to suggest we shouldn't continue to try to come up with new theories and interpretations based on the limited evidence we do have, but it may be more of an inward academic exercise than a genuine way understanding past societies. It's more a matter of levels of plausibility than getting to a provable theory.

Nice responses all!  It seems my colleagues are just as puzzled as I am as to the merit of the reconstruction of the prehistoric religion and how one might hypothesize the cosmology and form of their beliefs and rituals.

I suggest that the modern concept of 'religion,' like 'art,' is not really applicable to premodern, non-Western societies. Other Western concepts that limit our understanding are 'natural' and 'supernatural,' which I strongly suspect are not universal. To get beyond these somewhat artificial categories, it is necessary to study essential aspects of human cognition and they way people have interacted with their environments and with each other, then look at evidence from groups of people in particular spatial and temporal settings.

Jane Goodall goes further, noting that some chimpanzees may "dance" at the onset of heavy rain or when they come across a waterfall. She speculates that "their "elemental" displays are precursors of religious ritual."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_faith

Early humans transmitted important knowledge through all kind means: song, stories(myths) , sculpture such as totem poles, rituals, etc.  They next generation has to learn it in childhood and it has to be facilated by all kind of fantastic stories where mountains, stars, type of trees, type of plants all take the form of human-like characters having relations with each other.  Here the west coast salish native people have all kind of stories where all the main mountains of all the west coast of North America are characters in these stories.  Through these stories, a kid learn all about where are the important lakes , hunting ground and at what particular time a certain animal or fish resource is available.  It is all embodied into a lively mythology that children will learn and know all their life and tell to their children and grand children.  Every children learn the myths and song, dance, etc of the tribes and become a Salish and the kind of cosmos he/she inhabit and how to live with each other in such cosmos.  This is what religion is.  Since all humans are social, and become so through enculturation and learn to live together and what kind of cosmos they live and what is most sacred.  This is what religion is.  It began with humanity and nobody can say he/she is not religious (according to this definition).  

Point 1. My research area is palaeoanthropology and the evolution of religion, art and associated symbolism over the last two million years. I have published a Trans-species definition of religion and The Case for Chimpanzee Religion.  I did the primatology study to make available a novel method for triangulating between chimpanzee religious/spiritual behavior and Homo sapiens sapiens religious/spiritual behavior to provide guidance and  constraints for reconstructing the evolution of religious behaviors during the Oldowan, Acheulian, Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic, precursors to the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze/Iron Age religions that are currently practiced on planet Earth.

Point 2. Was there pre-shamanic religion? The answer is absolutely there was. See Michael Witzel, The Origins of the World's Mythologies.. See also my papers posted on researchgate.net and academia.edu. on the four memes in the two million year evolution of religion and art, and my publications on the evolution of languages and mythologies over the 200,000 year history of Homo sapiens sapiens. Looking at present day tribes and anthropology shamanism belongs to later Eurasian language and myth family, especially macro-Altaic and Amerind language and myth families. Other language and myth families had distinctively different forms of religious 'seers' and 'healers'. Even Eliade in his book on Shamanism makes the same observation noting that Australians, Africans, SE Asians often have an 'inner heat' religious healing tradition, which in for example South Asia gets admixed with shamanic elements.  The well-known Bushman religion is clearly not shamanic. It's primary ceremonialism focuses on puberty rites and trance healing (inner heat), and the latter is raised to extract the poison darts shot by spirits of the dead. In this light so-called 'shamanic extraction' employed in Eurasian and Amerind religions is a survival from this pre-shamanic level.

More could be said.  For now, Happy New Year one and all!

James Harrod

There are some excellent comments above! But the answer to Alan's question also depends heavily upon the view one takes of the history of humankind, as Gregory pointed out. If as the physicalists posit, humans developed by Darwinian evolution (blind chance) from one-celled organisms, then religion must be a human construct. If, on the other hand, this viewpoint is a recent academic fantasy, and at least the primal basis of at least some religion(s) is true, then the question cannot really be answered. If we take the really long view, most thinkers throughout the ages seem to have believed that there was a creation in consciousness before material manifestation of humans or anything else, and that the first humans retained something of an awareness of this consciousness-reality, which itself arguably constituted the first religion, depending upon how one defines religion, (Thanks, Kirtie and David!) Of course physicalists will have nothing to do with such thought. You may be interested in reading my blog dated April 6, 2010: http://spiritisthelife.blogspot.com/2010/04/intro-to-discussion-of-spirit-and.html , and some of the subsequent blogs.

Once, J. Clottes and Lewis Williams compared the motifs and themes of Upper Paleolithic Rock Art with the stages of hallucinogenic experiences. Then, they suggested such art pointed to ritual practices analogue to ethnographic shamanism, based on the assumption of a shared neurological structure behind the similitudes among both kinds of records. Of course, it is quite speculative.

Also, there is some recent research applying cladistic methods to widely distributed myths, aimed to trace their origins and reconstruct their primitive (even paleolithic) structure.

For refutation of David Lewis Williams application of parallels from South American Tukanoan shamanism to Bushman religion, see for example,

Solomon, Anne. 2008. Myths, Making, and Consciousness: Differences and Dynamics in San Rock Arts. Current Anthropology 49(1).

Solomon, Anne. 1999. Meanings, models and minds: a reply to Lewis-Williams. South African Archaeological Bulletin, June 1999.

Helvenston, Patricia A. & Paul G. Bahn. 2006. Archaeology or mythology? The ‘three stages of trance’ model and South African rock art. Cahiers de l’AARS - N° 10 - Février 2006.

Helvenston, Patricia A. & Paul G. Bahn. 2008. Testing the ‘Three Stages of Trance’.

Cambridge Archaeological Journal 13:2, 213–24.

And the rejection of the parallel by the co-author of the model itself:

Dowson, Thomas A. 2009. Re-animating Hunter-gatherer Rock-art Research

Cambridge Archaeological Journal 19:3, 378–87.

Thank you for the references, i'll look up for them. It has been a long time since I've read Clottes and Lewis Williams. 

All preceded by Genesis 1-11 if you believe it accurately represents the beginnings of civilization. At any rate, Judaism likely precedes Hinduism and Animism, anyway. Within Genesis is seen the earliest form of covenantal observance through the Edenic sacrifice to create skins for clothing in response to the origin of sin.

Civilization began at least two million years ago with Oldowan tool-makers and art-makers and since primates can make tools and religious rituals, civilization began at least 6 million years ago, if not earlier.

Dear James,

When did civiliszation begin?  The answer depends on the definition of ''civilisation'' that one take.  According to Gordon Childe (1892-1957), a civilisation is a special type of human societal organisation which has:

Large urban centers

Full-time specialist occupations

Primary producers of food paying surpluses to deity or ruler

Monumental architecture

Ruling class exempt from manual labor

System for recording information

Development of exact, practical sciences

Monumental art

Regular importation of raw materials

Interdependence of classes (peasants, craftspeople, rulers)

State religion/ideology

Persistent state structures

Yes, that is the Childe definition. The contents of the classification are an excellent description of a particular stage of human history, namely the Bronze Age and thereafter.

Its the name of that category that is terribly problematic.  It implies every society that has not reached that stage is 'uncivilized' or at best 'not yet civilized' or at worst 'savages'. This is simply British colonialism masquerading as a theory of history.  Conversely Childe in the list you have given doesn't mention extreme collective war and violence, destruction of neighbors in building those city-states, and the destruction of any religious beliefs that don't coincide with 'state religion'.

In direct response against this usage I recommend the archaeologist and Indo-European linguist Marija Gimbutas, Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe. Gimbutas specifically mentions Childe's definition of so-called 'civilization'.

Dear James,

We should reject the old colonial concept of  ''civilisation'' which was ranking societies along a scale starting with a natural state of humans living in Nature, which were called savages to primitive civilisation up to  a climax of European colonizing civilisation whose burden was to civilize the world out ouf its primitiveness.  This kind of view was a very convenient way to justify colonization, genocide, war, in other words: barbarism.

Yes we should reject this concept of ranking human societies and to assume that all societies should be ''civilized''.  But if we want to understand history, we cannot avoid to see a difference between societies based on small tribe of 100 people living a traditional life and having an oral culture but not written culture and those societies that have these caracteristic:

Large urban centers

Full-time specialist occupations

Primary producers of food paying surpluses to deity or ruler

Monumental architecture

Ruling class exempt from manual labor

System for recording information

Development of exact, practical sciences

Monumental art

Regular importation of raw materials

Interdependence of classes (peasants, craftspeople, rulers)

State religion/ideology

Persistent state structures

We need a word that characterise these type of large scale urban societies with written tradition and very differentiated social roles and classes.  Maybe the word should not be ''civilisation'' because of its colonial dubious usage but a word is needed to point out this societal distinction.  Maybe ''large scale society'' versus '' small scale traditional tribal society''.  

Current research on cultural evolution tends to avoid civilization, as focus is on the development of different kinds political organization (middle-rank, heterarchies, primary states, etc.). However, I should point that Childe was a classical marxist, and thus an outbranch of Enlightenment evolutionism. His idea of progress involved both class-struggle, competition and warfare, as well as technological innovation, commerce and demographic growth, revolution as well as stagnation due to internal contradictions. It could be interpreted as a colonial idea now, but many Latin american archaeologists followed Childe and marxism as an alternative to other paradigms emanated from American universities, and as form of political activism.

The Neolithic social system on Orkney would seem to meet Gordon Childe's criteria, outlined by Louis, depending on how you define each criterion. The scarcity of wood on these islands, and the resulting use of stone in architecture, makes this more evident than in other regions of Europe, since remains are well-preserved. Recent archaeological studies show a suprising degree of social complexity here, from around 3500 to 2500 BC.

By the way, Childe excavated the site of Scara Brae, on the west coast of Orkney's Mainland, in the early second quarter of the 20th century, although he had a blurry idea of how this site fit into the big picture, as a lot of the pieces of the puzzle had yet to be discovered.

For general information about Orkney, see the website Orkneyjar:

http://www.orkneyjar.com/

For a great archive of images and maps of Scotland, see:

https://canmore.org.uk/

https://canmore.org.uk/site/search/result?SITECOUNTRY=0&view=map

This video gives a nice overview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ys-JGCPvD1E&t=6s

The ritual activity at Neolithic Orkney, hinted at by material remains, can be understood in biological terms, as the 'structural coupling' of human organisms with their environment, as Maturana and Varela put it, with an important sociocultural component which facilitated some extraordinary 'coupling.'

The people at Orkney were responding to their environment, symbolically interpreting it, and projecting their culturally structured symbolic patterns back onto the landscape. Whether or not this is 'religion' depends on how you define this concept.

The earliest religion emerged by default 5,777 years ago when Adam and Eve created a template for perceiving God as judgmental and condemning. Before giving Creator a chance to react to their choice of eating the proverbial Forbidden Fruit, they already made presumptions about God's reaction by being afraid and hiding. All Creator wanted to do was ask them a compassionate question like "Where are you at, man?" But they responded as if they'd heard a condemning "What have you done?!" And so, from that moment on, humanity has perceived God as an exacting one-eyed purple people eater who is easily slighted and is appeased only by sacrifice, bribery, devotion, and specific rituals, sort of like a soda machine demanding exact change. And we call this dynamic: "Religion."  Abraham Joshua Heschel said it well when he remarked: "The prophets were those who in the name of God stood up against that which we to this very day call religion."

https://www.walkingstick.org

You must be kidding..

James, no not kidding at all.  Just asking those who are more immersed in comparative religion and those who have deeply studied and read on this subject.  I am trying to wrap my mind around whether Esther Jacobsen Tepfer is off center or has a basis in her assertions concerning rock art and the reconstruction of prehistoric religion.

Then, I can't respond unless I know what is the Tepfer hypothesis.

Dear Gershon:

Thank you for sharing your faith with us here. As for me, like John Lennon once sang, "Everybody's got something to hide except me and my monkey." (:o  )

Peace,

David

Giambattista Vico hypothised that the first human language was a kind of poetic language.  And William Blake tought that the divinity or God is our imagination.   The evolution of the first humans might have been triggered by a new form of primate group activity which promote the emergence of the type of imagination we have and this group activity might have been at the same time a new type of social control.  So the first human religion might have been a kind of communal dancing signing where a tribe could enter an ecstatic communal state, which allow the primate imagination to enter a living dream. I take this communal ecstatic singing dancing ritual to be the first religion, the first language, the first art. 

maybe the mask was - the mask acts as representation of "the Other" - the oldest religion must have had something to do with "otherness"

- Language, the first symbols, murals. Once representation becomes possible the signs themselves can start to speak. Signs become myth and religion - the representation of the Other and the symbolic "interface".

As animals cannot speak they can become gods (prehistory - untill early Egypian gods) - people speak so they only can become profets - speaking through a mask 

Der WLJ Van Buggenhout,

Chimpanzees have proto-religious behaviors, and do not have language. They do express aspects of these behaviors with vocalization modulations, so primatologists and others can get at least a minimal sense of what these behaviors mean. 

They don't have masks.  They do modify everyday vocalizations and their meaning in context of display behaviors. If you as a human believe the frisson (chill) experienced before natural beauty and magnificence of nature and great art and music, and that this frisson results in a 'mask'-like facial expression (perhaps like the masks of iconic tragedy/comedy) that would be a great project for a psychologist to prove.

I generally feel that the concept 'Other' (with capital letters) invented by Post-Modernism and Deconstruction as well as Levinas has become a tedious cliché that in most of academia simply substitutes what for the last two hundreds years was termed the 'Thou' (2nd person singular or plural) or 'Person' or you name it.

Good heavens! I've never read this much crap in one discussion -- with humble apologies to those colleagues who did not, actually, emit crap.

Why don't you start with a famous article by a universally respected sociologist of religion, Robert Bellah. I attended seminars at Emory University with his co-author of "Habits of the Heart," Dr. Steven Tipton. Here's the APA citation for the article:

Bellah, Robert N. "Religious Evolution." American Sociological Review 29, no. 3 (1964): 358-74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2091480.

I attach the article for your convenience. I suggest you read it before digesting "facts" about that fateful Tuesday in September a few years back when the earth was created and Adam had the emotional meltdown.

Tepfer proposes that in Siberia, Mongolia and the Altai, there existed a basal layering of pre-shamanistic expression.  A religious tableau preoccupied by feminine and maternal beings.  These are depicted as bird women and birthing women and female animals.  The overarching theme is generative, and renewing.

I suspect that Alan Garfinkel is onto the best way to approach this, probably better than the very abstract sociological reasoning -- as valuable as I think that is. What about the pollen that was found at some prehistoric burial site? Evidence, maybe, of flowers being put on a grave? And then, in conjunction wit the chimpanzee behavior, there are anecdotes, perhaps studies, of elephants touching and even moving the bones of their ancestors in a reverent way.

Louis Brassard,

Yes I totally agree.  I like Vico and love Blake.  I write about the chimpanzee rain dance in my paper The Case for Chimpanzee Religion. The rain dance is a ritualization (in ethological sense) of the first moment of chimpanzee threat display (the frisson, chill, hair standing on end). To my mind this physiological response in both humans and chimpanzees can be designated by the term 'ecstasy'.

I see my work on Chimpanzees and 2 million years of Art in Human Evolution as a logic triangulation.  I would not say chimpanzee religion is 'first'.  They are siblings of us and I would assign the term 'first' to our common ancestor.  When in the last 6 million years (chimpanzee/human split date) 'performance art' and 'graphic art' production or 'paleoart' first emerged is an open question. Only evidence to date is for humans from 1.8 million years ago, and for chimpanzees, only what they do now in their ritual performances (or in art-making encouraged by humans, a hybrid form of art). As Jane Goodall so wisely stated, let's not forget that chimpanzees are also in their process of evolution just as we are.

Not to offend anyone, but William Blake is like unto a god.

Alan,

I would sort of agree with that. My points so far in this dialogue has been to point out hypothesis for earliest religion and art beginning 1.8 million years ago.  So now I will comment on Tepfer.  I begin from archeogenetic-linguistic hypothesis I present in my Mother Tongue Journal paper 2014, 'The 200,000-Year Evolution of Homo sapiens sapiens Language and Myth Families'. Tungusic-Mongolian is a language cluster deriving from the Altaic language macrofamily around 50,000 years ago, that date hypothesized by precise correlation of these languages to emergence time of M8-mtDNA. Around the same time emerges  Pre-Japonic-Korean-Ainu (M7-mtDNA) and Pre-Chukotko-Kamchatkan (M12'G-mtDNA) and Pre-Tibeto-Burman (M13-46'61-mtDNA. All these derive from what I call Early Borean (language)-M, which in current linguistic reconstruction is usually termed Eurasiatic. So I would want to ask for all the four language families and associated tribes or societies, do all of them have some sort of 'pre-shamanic' feminine and maternal beings 'preoccupations'? I don't know an answer to this question, I suppose by 'shamanism' we take a view that it emerged as early as the Upper Paleolithic/Mesolithic/Neolithic or as late as Bronze/Iron Age of these four groups. So what came before these time periods, in a 'pre-shamanic' time period? I have not read any publication providing detailed evidence for all four groups what religious culture prevailed before shamanism?  I do not accept a general assertion, which I have read in a number of Russian anthropology studies that a pre-shamanic, pre-patrilineal matrilineal system with female predominant mythology existed. May be such kinship and language and myth reconstructions, but I have not read them.  I think Michael Witzel, Origins of the World's Mythology, would argue that prior to a Bronze shamanism was an earlier similar kind of mythological stratum, which he terms 'Laurasian', and Yuri Berezkin, the Russian global mythologist, 'Eurasian'. To review all four language cluster tribes I note above to reconstruct their ancestral mythological system would, I am guessing, be a major advance in our understanding of the evolution of Homo sapiens sapiens religion in that Borean-M/Eurasian/Laurasian stratum, circa 70,000 years ago.

On the other hand, to make the question more challenging, out of Africa in the Levant, circa 70,000 years ago R-mtDNA emerged and its distinctive language families, which by around 50,000 years ago branched off a Pre-Draviidian (U2-mtDNA), which is associated with Classic Aurignacian tool industry. as well as U8, U3, U6 and U4'9. By 25,000 years ago, U4-mtDNA emerges and U5. U4 is associated with Kartvelian more than any other language family.

the Ket on the Yenisei/Tunguska are highly admixed today; they are 29%U4 and 5%U5a, 19%C'Z, 11%H, 8%A, 3%D and 3%N2. Recently Ket has been argued a member of the Dene-Caucasian language macrofamily, associated with N-mtDNA out-of-Africa diverging in the Levant. All that is left of their archaeogenetic and language correlation is the 3%N2. Evenk on the Tunguska, speaking Northern Tungusic genetic sample is 80% C and D, small amount of A and B (now associated with Sino-Tibetan, Han Chinese are centrally D-mtDNA, Tibetans C-mtDNA). Evenk mythology, I only have a small note in my file on it, is typical shamanic, 3 world mythology. Evenk of Lena River, Indigirka and Kolyma (also Northern Tungusic speakers) sample is 86% C and D, 2%A 9%Y.  They do have a female figure, Old Woman, a psychopomp and mistress of the land of the dead. I do not have a note on what their creation myth is. The Yukaghir mostly are Yakut-Turkic speakers, 70%C-mtDNA, in one note perhaps originally Mongolian speakers) have shamanism and a gender power division, with male clan elder in charge of hunt and war, and community internal life under control of an elder woman.  I don't know their creation myth. Buryat (Mongolian speakers) have a tiny amount of U, and are predominantly D and C,Z (53%), and they have a Sky Father with 2 sons who designed creation and the trans-Eurasia earth-diver myth. What aspects of these cultures would be used to reconstruct a prior matrilineal system and corresponding mythology? Are not all these Siberian tribes patrilineal, although perhaps with strong female role in tribal decisions?  I know there are matrilineal tribes in North America. Are these from Siberia homeland?  or only evolved in Beringia? or only evolved once in North America?

U5 is clearly associated with the Uralic (aka Finno-Ugric +) language macrofamily. There are excellent, in my opinion, reconstructions of the Uralic mythology, and this mythology is definitely predominantly female in nature, with two contrasting female creatrix figures, one in the north, giver-of-life, and one in the south, giver of death. U5 has been found in Gravettian burials at Dolni Vestonice, with its powerful female religious symbolism. U5 is also in Magdalenian Cantabrian burials,. U5 does not occur in mtDNA samples of current populations east of European Russia, so it is not likely a contributor to or even a small admixture in Siberian-Mongolian populations, and as far as I know not reported ever in the Americas (which as you know is mtDNA A, B, C, D, X and in one report possibly and M for one current tribe in California).

Yet on the other hand (how many hands to we have?) root-R mtDNA was found in the Ust--Ishim burial on the Irtysh River around 45,000 years ago.  May be that that individual carried the Uralic mythology to Siberia, U-mtDNA is rare or non-existent the further one goes in East and NE Asia, and in case of the Ust-Ishim burial, the U displaced by the Altaic-Tungusic lineage with completely different languages and archeogenetics.

Yes, Alan, Tepfer has asked a BIG question.  It is difficult to find a convincing way to answer it.  There are to my mind lots of projects ahead to work out some semblance of an answer.  Right now I would say no one has a strong answer.

Dear James,

The transition to the mammalian-primate imagination into a the human imagination is a small biological transition but change everything.  All mammal play and dream which are two primary feathure of the mammalian imagination.  It allows their sensory-motor system to learn.  Their imagination is tightly coupled to environmental and societal circumstances and they have almost not control on their attention, it is circumstance driven.  Human can control their attention and through languages/expressions share a self-enact dream in parallel with the normal life in the here and now. All the mammalian action narrative are accessible to us through expression, the action narrative that half a billion year of animal evolution have accumulated into the mammalian sensory-motor system.  It is through a communal singing dancing ritual that the first hominin have managed to enter a common dream and have gradually through biological evolution speed up the modification to the mammalian attention system which allow later single individual to self-enact it through expression without the whole force of the tribe.

Dear James B. Harrod ,

What is language?

It could be called "code"?

- A form of communication in general, -  symbolization -

Indeed our idea of animals as "instinct driving beings" is not very accurate as recent research points out (Frans De Waal).

Why the "mask"?

- A mask is a role play -( taking the role of a danger for example: a tiger) something that is not really present (not real danger) but a representation of  - so that an experience (ecstasy?) can be experienced through the representation of the danger and not by being exposed to the danger itself. (like 3D games do)

Once a chimpansee - or an other being - starts to "represent" - the form of this representation itself becomes an experienced sensation.

Vocalization can become a form of representation - a child starts with vocalization - what can become language by culture. (we forget the possibilities of our voice in the language that we have learned to speak - as we know the taste even of wood and metal, because as a child we did experienced the world by mouth)

(so culture directs the "frisson"Chill in a certain way - music art etc. A chimpanzee forms a culture of his of her own. So how could we translate "god" in chimpanzees? - or how to translate *** in human?-

So "earliest form of religion" translated in Chimpanzee is a more general problem...

Do we hereby "humanize the Chimp" or "chimpanzise the human"?

 Understanding has always been a communication problem. (language-sign-code)

greetings

Willy

In my paper The Case for Chimpanzee Religion, there is no chimpanzee 'god'. There are the ritualized objective behaviors and the subjective meanings primatologists attribute to their vocalizations and display behaviors based on context, a term they ironically use.

For fun and all creative people need some nowadays:  to read about the Chimpanzee and God, see the paper published several months before my paper. http://www.theonion.com/article/biologists-confirm-god-evolved-from-chimpanzee-dei-35755.  The Onion, Vol 50 Issue 14 NEWS April 10, 2014. Biologists Confirm God Evolved From Chimpanzee. Deity Researchers say today’s Lord Almighty shares many traits in common with the chimp deity, including color vision and omniscience.

Dear Willy,

I do not like to use the terribly ambiguous cliché 'representation'.  I thought academia gave up on this term back in the era of post-modernism.  In my work on evolution of art I don't know how to use it without adding confusion upon confusion.  Every academic field defines it differently, so, speaking of communication, and liking to communicate, I try to avoid it. I have only read a few chapters of Davis' A General Theory of Visual Culture. I think of all Art Historians his theories deal with some areas of my own research.

Here's an example of the problem using the term 'representation' in human evolution research, or chimpanzee. The hypothesis of Robert Bednarik on rock art, that non-iconic markings precede representational pictographic markings over last million years is supported by archaeological evidence. Take one of his favorite examples, a cupule abraded into stone, at some sites such as Daraki-Chattan in central India, many hundreds in a narrow high-ceiling cave. Is this 'representational'? or a 'sign'? or a 'symbol' (I use the Peircean term 'sign' as the binary opposite of the Jungian and poet term 'symbol').

I say we don't need to try any of these terms. We just try to experience, or better make one as an artist or cupule experimenters have done. Or observe contemporary indigenous peoples who have continued the million-year-old tradition make a cupule. Anthropologists in Australia have asked cupule makers what cupules mean. I haven't read that any have said they are 'representations'.  They do signify though, sometimes as signals, at least those I've seen, and their signification, when I've asked an elder (or an anthropologist or rock art specialist has asked) have multiple levels of meaning and which is signified in a given instance depends on the purpose and context for making that particular cupule.

With respect to chimpanzee art (or at least human requested with art supplies provided chimpanzee art) wonderful collaborative efforts have been performed, and you probably know them already. My favorite now is John Matthews, Starting from Scratch (2011), the author of The Art of Childhood and Adolescence (1999). For me what I found most useful for my project in Matthews is the developmental stages of primordial-play-gesture forms used in dance and fine arts. I didn't know any of that field when I published my papers on decoding the European Upper Paleolithic geometric 'signs'. When I gave a presentation on it decades ago at an academic conference, a professor stood up and said, 'Oh, I see what you are doing; that is like Laban notation'. In a wild sense we might hypothesize that language emerged first as a kind of Laban notation, a hypothesis I think more delightful than the older and still current hypotheses for the gestural-theory of language origins.