the earliest religion?

[mewtwo]

So um yeah basicaly i was thinking of having a discution on religion and what could possibly be the oldest religion? Also How many hard concrete facts do we have? like take the tocharians for example they may have spread buddhism to china and such. instead of bodhidharma.

 

Thanks

 

Ps I may edit this if i think of any more questions.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lataif-e-sitta

Edited August 11, 2011 by mewtwo

[Aetherous]

Probably a form of shamanism, where any mysteries within the natural world are venerated, which could include: animals, death, weather, the movement of the stars and planets, women and the birth process, dreaming and altered states of consciousness, energy and healing, etc.

 

Animal veneration can be seen at Gobleki Tepe and Yonaguni...both of which are said to be over 10 thousand years old, some of the most ancient structures on earth.

 

7500 - 5700 BC

The settlements of Catalhoyuk develop as a likely spiritual center of Anatolia. Possibly practicing worship in communal shrines, its inhabitants leave behind numerous clay figurines and impressions of phallic, feminine, and hunting scenes.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_religion#100th_to_34th_century_BC

 

Otherwise, maybe Sumerian is the oldest, at around 3000 BC...but this belief system was just occuring in one location around the world.

 

There must be a decent book dedicated to this subject somewhere...

[mewtwo]

well if i am not mistaken the earliest religion acording the lavaiyan satanists was sun worship.

[Aetherous]

At least personally, I don't trust Leveyan Satanists for much of anything.

[Vajrahridaya]

Supposedly the Vedas are the earliest with a very deep oral history.

[mewtwo]

but we dont have nay concrete fatcs do we?

[Vajrahridaya]

but we dont have nay concrete fatcs do we?

 

We do in architecture and descriptions of things that are dated and are spoken about in the written Vedas. We know that sanskrit had a long, long oral history long before it was codified.

 

Specifics? It's been a long time since I cared, lol... forgive me.

[paulno]

I'd second Shamanism. I'd say its also the earliest precursor to what we know as science as well.

[Pu-erh]

Without going into details or citing sources, shamanism, but only if you count it as a religion. When I was a Religious Studies major we had a long argument in our shamanism course about whether it was in fact a religion, owing to the fact that even RS scholars can't agree on a definition of religion.

 

If not shamanism, then probably Hinduism. The Vedas are pretty old, and there seem to be elements of Hinduism that predate the Vedas, so...

[mewtwo]

But what i am getting at is do we really i mean really have any concrete proof on religion as a history like way back in the day? Like the with the buddha and the tocharians and such. i speculate dont have any facts but could the buddha have been nordic and not indian? also with the buddha we just have stories to go on we dont have any facts to prove there really was a guy 500 years before christ that thought this way and such. feel free to prove me wrong i am open to new ideas.

Edited August 11, 2011 by mewtwo

[Vajrahridaya]

But what i am getting at is do we really i mean really have any concrete proof on religion as a history like way back in the day? Like the with the buddha and the tocharians and such. i speculate dont have any facts but could the buddha have been nordic and not indian? also with the buddha we just have stories to go on we dont have any facts to prove there really was a guy 500 years before christ that thought this way and such. feel free to prove me wrong i am open to new ideas.

 

Well... there are lots and lots of texts, and I mean lots and lots, as well as all the pillars erected by Ashoka in around 250's B.C. that have the sutras written on them. We supposedly have parts of his body too as relics. The disciples were also very meticulous about recording the Buddhas actions, like eating habits, where he went... there are so many documents.

 

Anyway... there is much more evidence concerning Buddhas existence than Jesus.

[mYTHmAKER]

My guess would be some form of sun worship

[doc benway]

There is no way of ever knowing anything about the earliest anything as there is no documentation. Perhaps our best clues are to local at indigenous cultures that were relatively recently destroyed (North American)or those few that still exist relatively intact(South American, Central Asian, New Guinea, Australia).

[寒月 Hanyue]

"Shamanism" is a fairly modern Western academic construct used to simplify the study of indigenous beliefs and practices.

 

What is actually lumped in under the term is still hotly debated. None of the belief systems woudl be classified as 'Religion' as that term is used to understand the institutions usually referred to with that term.

 

It is arguably preferable to understand animist (see the recovered definition used by Hallowell, Harvey, Bird-David rather than the 'colonialist' Tylor one) belief systems on their own terms rather than impose an external structure on them. For example, shamans would be animist, but not all animists are shamans. Even in those countries where "shamanism" is actually a viably used term it is still only one part of the system of beliefs and the practices and not the whole picture. So referring to it as the religion of those people is incorrect on too many levels.

 

As for concrete proof of ancient religion, good luck

 

Best,

[Pu-erh]

But what i am getting at is do we really i mean really have any concrete proof on religion as a history like way back in the day? Like the with the buddha and the tocharians and such. i speculate dont have any facts but could the buddha have been nordic and not indian? also with the buddha we just have stories to go on we dont have any facts to prove there really was a guy 500 years before christ that thought this way and such. feel free to prove me wrong i am open to new ideas.

 

Well, you could just as easily ask if there is any proof that Julius Caesar or Genghis Khan really existed and said and did the things they are supposed to have done. All we have are oral histories, written histories, various textual and archaeological evidence... in short, there is a ton of historical evidence that Caesar, Buddha, and Genghis Khan existed and generally did what they did, and I don't think anyone is really disputing that in the fields of history or religious studies. 500 BC isn't all that long ago, really. It's when you get into pre-history that things get murkier. Whatever the "earliest religion" is, it would have originated so far back in time that no, there would by definition be no historical evidence about it. Once you get past 2600 BC there are no texts, so we have to rely on interpreting artifacts and old carvings on buildings and things like that.

 

"Shamanism" is a fairly modern Western academic construct used to simplify the study of indigenous beliefs and practices.

 

What is actually lumped in under the term is still hotly debated. None of the belief systems woudl be classified as 'Religion' as that term is used to understand the institutions usually referred to with that term.

 

It is arguably preferable to understand animist (see the recovered definition used by Hallowell, Harvey, Bird-David rather than the 'colonialist' Tylor one) belief systems on their own terms rather than impose an external structure on them. For example, shamans would be animist, but not all animists are shamans. Even in those countries where "shamanism" is actually a viably used term it is still only one part of the system of beliefs and the practices and not the whole picture. So referring to it as the religion of those people is incorrect on too many levels.

 

As for concrete proof of ancient religion, good luck

 

Best,

 

I agree with all of the above except for "None of the belief systems woudl be classified as 'Religion' as that term is used to understand the institutions usually referred to with that term." That is implying a fairly narrow definition of religion. Religion doesn't necessarily refer to institutions. See, for example, Clifford Geertz's definition of religion as a "cultural system"

 

Maybe a better question to ask than "what was the earliest religion" would be "What were the earliest religions like?" And that's where you start looking at things like animism.