Essay on How Religion Changed When Humans Moved From Hunting and Gathering to Agriculture

For a long period stretching thousands of years before the advent of agriculture, human beings lived in small communities of hunters and gatherers. During this period, looking for food dominated human lives as each day was a struggle to get sufficient amounts to feed community members. A transition from these societies was made possible by knowledge of farming. Agriculture had a significant impact on their lifestyles since it enabled people to concentrate on other aspects of their lives apart from the search for food. They could now settle down and think of what was happening around them. Since there was no science at the time, people began asking questions about their world which was full of mysteries. The development of religion seemed to provide some answers to these queries. This essay looks at how religion changed when humans moved from hunting and gathering to practicing agriculture.

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The religious beliefs of hunters and gatherers are not well understood since they often did not differentiate between the supernatural and natural realms. While most religions of these societies are perceived to mirror the animistic and animalistic beliefs, modern studies have revealed that there could have been more complexities in some communities. According to Peoples, Duda & Marlowe (963), theories on the religious practices of ancient hunters/gatherers are analyzed on a basis of ethnographic comparison with modern-day communities. Generally, it is believed that these practices were not that complex, and that numerous early human societies took part in animatism. This term is the perception that all objects, irrespective of whether they are living or non-living, possess a form of supernatural power. Hence, this type of religion focuses on controlling this power or getting protection from it.

Animism was another religious belief commonly held by ancient hunters/gatherers. The difference between this belief and animatism is that various objects get controlled by animate and personal supernatural powers. Instead of natural objects being in possession of impersonal supernatural powers, they are possessed by intellectual supernatural beings sometimes referred to as spirits. Such spirits are capable of interacting with human beings in beneficial or malicious ways. The manner in which ancient hunters/gatherers interacted with the natural world was linked to all aspects of their subsistence and culture. Thus, it can be quite difficult to distinguish the beliefs to do with the supernatural from commonly accepted beliefs about the natural world (Peoples, Duda & Marlowe, 965).

There may be a perception that sophisticated religion characterized by monumental architecture and construction of temples has its origins from agricultural societies. All in all, there is proof from modern studies on several sites that hunter/ gatherer communities could also have taken part in such activities. A good example is the Gobekli Tepe site located in south of Turkey. It is believed to date way back from more than 11,000 years ago, a period when local societies practiced hunting and gathering. The historic site is made up of several huge stone pillars having a height of as high as 18 feet, formed in concentric circular shapes and carved in motifs of various animals. It happens to be the worlds oldest monumental architecture known to man. According to Baumard (12), there is a perception that animalistic and animistic hunter/gatherer communities did not have the knowledge nor the organization needed to build large elaborate temples. Such construction would have required highly organized labor made up of a large number of individuals. The Gobekli Tepe site implies that a certain hunter/gatherer religion whose followers lived somewhere in southern Turkey, is likely to have more complex practices than previously thought.

Religion among agricultural communities may have been influenced by the need to have some kind of control on the various elements necessary for farming. Farmers depended more on the weather when compared to hunters/gatherers that could migrate from drought-stricken areas to those with more animals and wild foodstuffs. Reliance on crops among agricultural societies made life quite insecure. Cultivated plants were prone to ravages by insects; something that was not the case with wild plants. Archaeologists have discovered bones of children from ancient agriculture-based societies that showed more signs of malnutrition than those of hunting/gathering individuals. The average height of people from early farming societies has been found out to be less than that of hunters/gatherers. Additionally, more populous societies resulting from farming lived under rather unsanitary conditions. They did not care much about refuse and sewage disposal or water sanitation. Consequently, they suffered from epidemics and diseases that were not common among hunters/gatherers. Probably less than half of the children from agriculture-based societies managed to live past the age of ten years. This phenomenon made them attribute their misfortunes to supernatural powers such as evil spirits (Bettinger, Garvey & Tushingham, 141).

The transition from hunting/gathering to agriculture involved change from small group societies to large tribal organizations. To unite a certain tribe together, there had to be some form of ancestor worship. This was a belief in a power yielded by dead ancestors and a supernatural connection between them and the living. According to Kelly (131), dead individuals were accorded objects that it was believed they needed. For instance, it was customary to pour wine to a grave in order to quench the thirst of the individual buried there. Horses and sometimes slaves were buried together with prominent dead people in order to serve them in their afterlife. A community members duty was to his or her ancestors; something that formed a bond between distant relatives. There has been intense debate as to whether tribal organization resulted from religious beliefs or if these practices to do with religion were set up in response to tribes formations. It would not be wrong to state that it worked in both ways (Boyer & Baumard, 79).

When people in farming communities required rainfall for their crops, they tried conjuring magic through imitation. A good example has to do with the way frogs come out whenever it rains. Witchdoctors from these societies would imitate the croaking of frogs to give hints to their gods that they should make it rain. Agriculture was also associated with gods of fertility. It seems farmers were aware of the link to sexual intercourse with fertility. They were of the opinion that their gods reproduced sexually whereby parent gods would create offspring goddesses. This belief prompted males and females to engage in sexual intercourse in their farms as a religious ritual to hint to their gods that they needed their crops to grow (Geertz & Jensen, 256).

Once a growing season came to an end, people from agricultural communities believed that their fertility gods had died. When the season began again, they perceived the god as having returned. An example of such a god was Adonis, who was worshipped by the Greeks. It was believed that this god spend his yearly death in an invisible place with a goddess called Persephone. Spirits known as Hades that had vanished dwelled in this place. When the growing season resumed every year, it was believed that Adonis had come back to a blissful life in the company of Aphrodite, the fertility goddess of love.

In order to achieve bumper harvests, ancient farmers went to great lengths to please their gods by offering them whatever gifts they could. They believed that offering a sacrifice of an animal or even a person sent it to the invisible world of god in the form of spirits. These communities perceived the sacrificial of one or several of their own people to the gods as a good bargain since it facilitated the survival of the whole society. Other individuals who could be sacrificed included strangers kidnapped while on some road. People held captives from a war could also be offered to the gods in some kind of a purification ceremony, in the process providing a solution of what to do with them.

Human and animal sacrifices were not that prevalent in ancient hunter/gatherer societies, such as those from Australia and the North American plains. Sacrificing of people was practiced among agriculture-based tribes of the Americas like the Olmecs. It was also a common occurrence in India, and among Middle Eastern and European farmers. Farmers in ancient China, Egypt and some parts of Africa also offered sacrifices. This practice seems to have been part of Hebrew herders culture. According to the Bibles Old Testament, the god Yahweh tests Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac as a burn offering.

Works Cited Baumard, Nicolas, et al. "Increased affluence explains the emergence of ascetic wisdoms and moralizing religions." Current Biology 25.1 (2015): 10-15.

Bettinger, Robert L., Raven Garvey, and Shannon Tushingham. Hunter-gatherers: archaeological and evolutionary theory. Springer, 2015. Print.

Boyer, Pascal, and Nicolas Baumard. "Projecting WEIRD features on ancient religions." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39 (2016).

Geertz, Armin W., and Jeppe Sinding Jensen. Religious Narrative, Cognition and Culture: Image and word in the mind of narrative. Routledge, 2014. Print.

Kelly, Robert L. The lifeways of hunter-gatherers: the foraging spectrum. Cambridge University Press, 2013. Print.

Peoples, Hervey C., Pavel Duda, and Frank W. Marlowe. "Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion." Human Nature 27.3 (2016): 261-282.