Linguists, using the comparative methods of historical linguistics, have been fairly successful at developing family trees for language, showing the relationships between related languages. In doing this, they have also recreated some of the elements of now extinct ancestral languages, known as protolanguages. Since drawing up a language tree uses a comparative method, can this same method be used in drawing up a religion tree? In his book The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures, Nicholas Wade writes:
“It should be possible, again in principle, to draw up a similar tree for all the world’s religions, because religions too emerge by slow degrees from their predecessors. A totally novel religion has little chance of success. The easiest way for a new religion to start is as a sect of an existing one.”
All religions change through time and new religions are born out of older religions, often incorporating elements which have diffused from different religions and different cultures. One example of this can be seen in ruins of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, the Hill of Solitary Wells, in the Sinai. From 820 BCE to 745 BCE this was an important stop for the camel caravans carrying spices, minerals, and precious metals between Arabia, the Red Sea, and the port of Gaza. The site had four imposing towers enclosing a courtyard 23 m (75 ft) above the Wadi Quraiy. In an article in Current World Archaeology, Sean Kingsley reports:
“Grateful merchants made offerings in a small sanctuary, and left behind a hoard of Hebrew inscriptions naming their gods—Baal, Asherah, El, and Yahweh. They also drew what appear to be representations of the face of God itself.”
There are about 50 inscriptions at the site, most written in Hebrew and five written in Phoenician. There are numerous images of animals and seated gods. The religion at this time and place was clearly polytheistic. Kingsley writes:
“In this fusion of old and new, the traditional Canaanite supreme deities Baal and El—who also feature inscriptions—walked the land alongside Yahweh and his consort Asherah.”
What does the archaeological site of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud tell us about religious change and the birth of new religions? First of all, this was 150 years after Solomon and it is clear that the people were still polytheistic. Sean Kingsley writes:
“Graven images were not taboo, contrary to the harsh threats of the Old Testament. Society had its idea of what god looked like and was not afraid to celebrate the view artistically.”
Kingsley also writes:
“Contrary to the Old Testament, Yahweh would remain very much the new god in town in biblical Israel.”
In looking at the evolution of the Abrahamic religions, Robert Wright, in his book The Evolution of God, writes:
“Early Israelite religion grew out of earlier religions, ‘pagan’ religions, just as they had done. And out of it, eventually, grew the more modern god of late Israelite religion: a single, transcendent, all-powerful, all-knowing god—the god of Jews, Christians, and Muslims.”
The earlier religions of urban, agricultural Mesopotamia had been polytheistic with each of the various city-states having its own god and temple: Enlil in Nippur, Enki in Eridu. Some scholars have suggested that the god which would later emerge as the single god of the Abrahamic religions probably evolved from Enlil and/or Enki.
New religions, whether indigenous to an area or imposed upon indigenous peoples, continue to incorporate the old religions. One of the classic examples of this can be seen in Mexico. Here the Virgin of Guadalupe is an ancient indigenous figure which has been incorporated into the Catholic Church. Frank Waters, in his book Masked Gods: Navaho and Pueblo Ceremonialism, describes her this way:
“The dark-faced Madonna, la Virgen Morena, the ancient Tonantzin or Tinonantazin, mother of the Aztec gods. Goddess of earth and corn, related to Tlaloc, the god of rain. Clad in her mantle of sky-blue, dotted with stars like toasted maize grains. Reappearing on the site of her ancient temple. On the twelfth of December, the season just before the rains, when she was immemorially feted.”
Waters goes on to say:
“Tonantzin’s new Spanish name of Guadalupe did not deceive them. It only lent official and ecclesiastical sanctity to their forbidden pagan worship.”
What features would be expected in a proto-religion? For more than a century, scholars who have pondered this question have concluded that the proto-religion might be animism. In his textbook Social Anthropology, Paul Bohannan writes:
“Animism, to put it into its simplest terms, is the attribution of soul or spirit comparable to the soul or spirit of man, to nonhuman animals, to plants, and even to things and abstract concepts.”
Robert Wright writes:
“ ‘Animism’ is sometimes defined as the attribution of life to the inanimate—considering rivers and clouds and stars alive.”
Another element which may be present in a proto-religion is the idea of ancestor worship. With regard to ancestor worship, A.R. Radcliff-Brown, in his book Structure and Function in Primitive Society, writes:
“What is called ancestor-worship consists of rites carried out by members of a larger or smaller lineage (i.e. one consisting of more or fewer generations) with reference to the deceased members of the lineage. Such rites include the making of offerings, usually of food and drink, and such offerings are sometimes interpreted as the sharing of a meal by the dead and the living.”
A.R. Radcliffe-Brown also writes:
“For the individual, his primary duties are those to his lineage. These include duties to the members now living, but also to those who have died and to those who are not yet born.”
In exploring the idea of a proto-religion, science writer Nicholas Wade suggests that music and dance would have been important elements:
“In the ancestral religion of hunter gatherers people bound their communities together in emotionally compelling dramas of music, chant and dusk-to-dawn dances. The marathon rituals ended for some in exhaustion, for others in a state of trance that opened doors for them and their community, between this world and that of the supernatural.”
Since music and dance need not involve language, this leads to the question as to whether religion may have evolved before language. Wade writes:
“In seems possible, therefore, that there could have been a proto-religion that developed before language, or at least before language had assumed its present degree of articulacy. This proto-religion, even though based on dance, music, and wordless chants, could have been effective enough at securing group cohesion and coordination and therefore, to the extent it promoted the group’s survival, would have been favored by group selection.”
So, what would be some of the elements which we might expect to find in a proto-religion? These would probably include animism, ancestor worship, and shamans. A proto-religion would have ceremonies which might involve singing, dancing, trance states.
An early proto-religion would probably not have an emphasis on belief or dogma, a concept of a god-king or god-creator, or a set of firm moral rules. All of these things seem to have emerged after agriculture became the primary source of food.