The Roots of Religion: Genevieve Von Petzinger at TEDxVictoria

Transcriber: Robert Tucker Reviewer: Krystian Aparta We live in a world absolutely steeped in

religion

and spirituality, sometimes even to the point that we may not recognize it. It affects everything from something as simple as the holidays we celebrate, to the names we give our children, to something much sadder and somewhat disheartening, which is encountering a conflict somewhere on the other side of the world. I mean, on any given day, somewhere someone is fighting over spirituality and

religion

. So let's take a look at how this all plays out on a global scale. Depending on who you talk to, there are about 20 major religions in the world, that is, those that are found in more than one country, on more than one continent.

Add to that hundreds of belief systems, and of the 7 billion people living on this planet right now, just under 6 billion profess to follow some form of faith. Now I want you to try to imagine a world without religion. How would it be? Because that's the reality, if we go back far enough in our own deep history, there was a time, maybe not with Homo sapiens, maybe further back, when we didn't have any religion. So, as you can see in the slide behind me, it's a very simplified evolutionary picture, but it's a question that people in my field, paleoanthropology, have asked: How far does the religious impulse go?

And how would you get to that? It's incredibly subjective, right? So obviously Homo sapiens is at the top. We know that Homo sapiens has religion, that's us. But what about Heidelbergensis before us, and erectus, and all the way up to Homo hail? You know, Homo habilis 2.5 million years ago, they are considered a good candidate for original tool makers. And you might be wondering: tools, religion, what do they potentially have in common? But, if you really think about what the tools are to make a cognitive leap, there are some things in common. For example, when you are making a tool, you have a piece of stone and another to shape it, you have to have a mental template in your head of what the finished product will look like. as.

And also what we found with these early tool makers is that they were actually showing forethought and pre-planning. They potentially carried a good chunk of flint with them, across the landscape, so that when their current tool wore out or they ran out of material, they could make a new one. So there are some researchers in my field, especially a fellow named Thomas Wynn, who has teamed up with a neuropsychologist, named Frederick Coolidge, and the two of them have talked about something called working memory. And so it's not so much a point in the brain as it is several functions working together, allowing for things like mental templates and things like pre-planning.

Now, they have argued that even at a very basic level chimpanzees probably also have some working memory. Of course, they can also use tools, but they are not very good. Basically, they take their stick, tear off the leaves, use it to wet some termites, but then tend to throw it away. That's it, you're done with that tool. So there aren't many examples of chimpanzees reusing tools or behaving in exactly the same way we see with Homo habilis. But with that as a base and that idea of ​​working memory, then they extrapolated it and said, let's talk about something they call enhanced working memory.

And so, improved working memory; Basically, it has several components. This is like taking that and then basically putting it on steroids. So not just that basic mental template and pre-planning, but now let's add to that the ability to visualize and work with abstract concepts. Let's talk about mental time travel. Now, what I mean when I say mental time travel is the ability to think about the past and the future. They are actually very unusual things. We take them for granted, but they are not something that other species can necessarily conceive of. I mean, obviously your dog seems to remember going to the vet, which is kind of interesting, but you know he doesn't have a strong sense of clear episodic memories of being at the vet, since this is a bad idea.

When I walk into this building, he smells a certain way and, you know, this is basically a flash of danger. Then the clear ability to also say, with mental time travel: "When I tried to make a tool using this material before, it didn't work very well, so this time I'm going to do it differently." Or: "I saw this person from the next group of hunter-gatherers do something. It worked really well, I want to do it." All that kind of stuff, plus being able to think ahead: I mean, pre-planning, but even to a greater degree. Imagination, because again the ability to conceive of something, like a mental template when you're making a tool, depends on us being able to visualize something that doesn't actually exist at that moment in time;

It's more, again, that we are looking forward to it. And then, of course, the ability to understand and manipulate symbols. And this is where we get to things like language and art. So, you probably saw that I said "God's point," what we're talking about is that, certainly starting probably, I think, in the 1990s, once we, especially neuropsychologists, once they had their fancy MRIs and other brain scans, they really started looking to see if there was a place in the brain that might be associated with God. And they even did a study where they had people in the MRI and said, okay, we want you to think about your view of God or your faith or spirituality while you're here, while we see if we can map the areas of the brain that are They illuminate while we do that.

And they kept having a dot that lit up, and it was this big, like, we did it, aha, we found the God dot. It turns out that it is the point that lights up when people concentrate. (Laughs) So we definitely know where they're focused, but of course everyone was focused on thinking about God, so that was the problem. But I think really what neuropsychologists and people who work in evolution are looking for is the idea that there probably isn't just one place. Similar to enhanced working memory, there are actually multiple parts of the brain that work together to create that space and those types of skills.

So is it all in the lobes? Behind me on the slide, what you'll see is that on the left side we have a Homo erectus, that was 1.65 million years ago. And then on the right side, we have a Homo sapiens skull from about 20,000 years ago in Germany. 20,000 years ago in Germany, their skulls were identical to ours; I thought it would be cooler to use a kind of fossil skull for Homo sapiens. Now, what I want you to see is that when you look at the profile, the erectus has that big ridge on the forehead that we think of, but you'll notice behind that, that it actually leans at a pretty sharp angle backwards.

Now look at that beautiful, big, old forehead on the skull of Homo sapiens. Those are the frontal lobes. This is where all of our higher reasoning comes from, those points over there. You know, thinking about it, what's so interesting is that as we're sitting here, in this room, having this conversation, you're using those front parts of your lobes, aren't you? But the question that arises is: physically it may be there, but is it perhaps more about wiring? Not just about the size, but also about how it's connected, how the neural pathways move. So this is where the scholars I mentioned, Wynn and Coolidge working together, have argued that they believe that truly modern thinking, that capacity for imagination, mental time travel, they believe began with modern humans.

So what do I mean when I talk about modern humans? About 200,000 years ago, we were able to find the first skeletons that we currently have of what we would call completely modern humans. That means 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 the skills that we had, and this is something that's a particular area of ​​mine that I also find really fascinating, trying to figure out: When did they become us? Because we are more than just brain and body size, it's also about how we use that brain.

And what's so fascinating about early humans in Africa is that, probably for the first 80,000 years or so, they didn't really behave much differently than the ancestral species that preceded them. They're making really good tools, surviving pretty well, making good use of their landscape, all those kinds of things are in place. But what we don't see is those types of behaviors that make us go: it's us. And then suddenly, about 120,000 years ago, what started happening is that we started to find what we call symbolic behavior. And what we mean when we say that are things that we would consider non-utilitarian.

So it's not something that's useful on a 1:1 survival level, something to keep you warm at night, something to eat, something to protect you. We started finding burials. 120,000 years ago are the oldest burials we know of in the world, and not just burials but burials with grave goods. So in this case, we're talking about the 120,000 mark: they were finding some seashells that had holes in them, and some of the holes appear to have occurred naturally, some may have been made with tools, but the interesting thing is that those Small holes in the shells have scuff marks, meaning they were being used in some way.

Now, there's nothing about doing that that's even remotely helpful in getting back to warmth, shelter, and food. So what is going on? What happened? What has changed? And this is history in the future, and this is again where Wynn and Coolidge have made this argument, and other scholars as well, that modern humans are where that big change takes place. They have potentially even argued that the change started here, but that some kind of genetic mutation or something else occurred around 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, and that that was when truly modern behavior, the full set of behaviors that we associate with being modern, music and mathematics and the ability to imagine things that don't exist, and all these things that have a lot to do with us and, of course, whole language, communication, all those kinds of things.

They believe this occurred about 40-50,000 years ago, which coincides with the time when modern humans left Africa. Maybe it could have been as early as 60,000, so somewhere in that 40-60,000 range, is when modern humans left Africa and basically went out and populated the Old World. Now, I'm personally going to talk to you tonight about the Ice Age in Europe, and it's not that modern humans who went to other parts of the Old World weren't doing interesting things. There are many fascinating things in Asia and Australia, but I study the Ice Age, so that's what I know best.

So that's where we'll stay, looking at the Ice Age, today. When it comes to Europe, let's set the stage a bit. Obviously, we are in an Ice Age, and an Ice Age is not static in any way. We certainly have movement of the glacial layers, but overall it is definitely colder, a frozen environment, but also very rich in animals. Huge herds of bison and mammoths and all that other stuff in the landscape. So there were a lot of things to eat, which was kind of a pull factor that probably kept modern humans there. About 40,000, even 45,000, in some places, appear in Europe and spread out there, and this again coincides with what we sometimes call the creative explosion.

It's not that they weren't doing interesting things before, but this is where it starts to get really interesting. This is when we start to find a lot of symbolic materials, like wearable art pieces and a lot of jewelry and other interesting things, in the archaeological record along with 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 it, basically, we're working with stone tools. So there's really not much to address, so how do we start to try to go beyond that and actually look for these indirect clues?

Well, there are three main things that people in my field tend to use when looking at that. The first are burials with elaborate grave goods. So the necklace itself at the 120,000 mark, it's very interesting, very good, but we can go a little further and say: What if they put a lot of elaborate items in that burial? Impossible entities are represented. So when I use the term impossible entities, we mean things that don't appear anywhere in nature. So, we're not referring to anything in the real world. Something that is, say, half animal, half human, would be an impossible entity.

And then of course tryidentify magical and spiritual themes in the art itself. And this is in portable pieces and, of course, in my particular area of ​​study, the walls of the cave. So let's quickly go over a couple of these and I'll give you some ideas of what we're looking at. For an elaborate burial, this is a very famous and absolutely fascinating burial. This is actually one of three burials at this site. This particular one is the adult male, he is about 28,000 years old, he is from Russia and you can see that there are little white things all over his skeleton.

They are ivory beads. There are approximately 3,500 ivory beads in this burial. An archaeologist in our field, his name Randy White, actually made the effort to try to do what we call experimental archaeology. And in fact he took the mammoth ivory and practiced until he could get pretty good at doing the beads, and even when he was good at it, it took him an hour each bead. Do the math on that. On top of that, we have the fact that the other two burials at that particular site are actually two children. A boy and a girl, and they are buried in a double burial.

The boy has 4,500 beads, that is, 1,000 more than the adult male, and the girl has more than 5,000. So what we're looking at here is potentially the fact that they see death as a state that is different from life and yet it's worth acknowledging, paying attention to, acknowledging and, frankly, worth it. of effort to make all those accounts only to bury them in the ground and cover them up. So something is definitely happening in that sense. Then, of course, we get to impossible entities. And this is a wonderful, classic example. This is a figurine carved from ivory, it is probably about this height.

Head of a lion, body of a human. Coming back to that, that doesn't exist anywhere in nature. So what is going on? Why do they represent this? This is not a self-representation. And there are people in my field who have proposed that, perhaps, this could be some kind of mythology, something to do with origin stories and things like that. There are interesting examples that exist throughout the archaeological record. That particular one is about 32,000 years old. What's up with magic hunting? When I say hunting magic, I mean this, this is from the cave called Niaux, in France, and you have a bison that is painted on the wall of a cave, and if you notice, it looks like there is almost some kind of spear sticking out. on your side.

So in this case what people have proposed is that what we might be seeing is that they are almost trying to ritually kill the animal in the cave first, to ensure success when they go out hunting for real. And we have some examples where there are not only the spears, but also punctuation marks, which almost looks like someone is hitting a real spear or something against the image on the wall. So, again, that suggests some kind of tapping into some invisible world: something is happening. And this is another great example of an impossible entity that has also been potentially identified as a shaman.

Now, the reason they say that is the idea that: What if they were wearing a mask? What if this, instead of being an impossible entity, was a real representation of a human being partially dressed as an animal? You see, the legs are much more human looking, they don't look much like a bison, but the head has that same bison look and the arms are also very human. So, this is where they started talking about the idea of ​​shamanic practices, because shamans, of course; The term itself comes from Russia, but it applies 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 influencing the weather, or hunting, or health, and with sick people and trying to make them better again, there are people who do that. And what's so interesting about some modern examples, for example, is that there's a fellow called David Lewis-Williams, who is a rock art researcher working in South Africa, and he had the wonderful opportunity to talk to the San people, which is a group of hunter-gatherers that lives in northern southern Africa. They live in the desert and still practice the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. And guess what? They still make rock art. So here I had the opportunity to ask them: "So why do you guys make art?" Now, it doesn't explain all of the art, but certainly shamanic practices played an important role in it.

Things like handprints. They talked about the idea that caves were almost like a transition place between worlds. That once you enter a cave, we enter with headlamps and a lot of light, and we know what a cave is geologically. But imagine if you didn't know that. It almost has the feeling of being a portal to another reality. And they have talked about the idea that the walls of those caves were almost membranes that they could touch, and through those membranes touch the invisible. So now we specifically come to a research project that I've been working on, where I said, okay, well, let's try this, because of course modern people in Africa do this, at least 10,000 years apart. . between what is happening in Europe, could we get there?

It's possible? Are we seeing on the walls, potentially, some of the trance images that they've said that's why they're doing it? Because you see, the real human mind. Obviously, trance is when we enter an altered state of consciousness. There are many things that will be culturally specific to where you live, like the animals you see in images, but geometric images actually turn out to be almost universal. And the reason is that our eyes are only programmed to be able to produce certain shapes when we are in a trance state. And this is where, what I have observed, we can find them in the caves of Europe.

And the study is still ongoing, but I thought I would share a little bit with you today, which was that with points, lines, grids, yes, absolutely, we are finding them. But some of the others, not so much. Zigzags, there are only about 15 examples in 300 sites that have zigzags. Therefore, they are not behaving entirely like people do in, say, South Africa. When it comes to spirals, there are only two. So in that sense, spirals are even less common and not something we're seeing throughout the archaeological record. So what does that mean? Basically what it suggests to me: I can't give you a definitive answer and say, "Yes, absolutely, there were spiritual people living back then." But the signs are definitely there to suggest that this was something that was developing, something that existed.

And he left them with the thought that it's us. In every sense of the word, those people who lived between 10,000 and 40,000 years ago were modern humans. So if we are capable of doing it, why wouldn't they have been? Thank you. (Applause)