Earliest Surviving Writing Reveals Original Religious Notions

Crude writing preserved in dried clay gives us a window into life about 3,500 BCE. Of course, humans had existed for 200,000 some years by that time so many ways of thinking might have come and gone. But, the crude logic revealed in the dried clay is so similar to the way many humans in our time reason it is easy to conclude humans thought this way long before it was written down.

People in the 3,500 BCE period had separate gods for everything they could not control. There were separate gods for rain, sun, moon, health, crop yields and so on. Not surprisingly, each god behaved in the same way humans behaved. That is, gods got angry, were pleased, were mischievous, had families of their own and collected food and money from humans. The gods mirrored real people who had families with fathers, mothers and children. It's no surprise gods, who came from the minds of these humans, would have the same family structures. The god was the "father" to humans. 

Humans studied the weather, stars, moon and sun and tried to establish cause and effect. They determined the various things that happened were caused by the behavior of humans. Humans caused the gods to be pleased or angry. Humans thought of themselves as beings living in someone else's world, the world owned by gods. 

Humans in 3,500 BCE wondered, like we modern humans, why are we here? The answer was they were there to serve the gods. It's remarkable how similar their thinking was the Rick Warren's famous book, "The Purpose Driven Life." The purpose driven life is one lived for the god. The only thing that has changed is 5,000 years is the god.

One difference in ancient thinking was back then the god of storms was the storm itself, not a god causing storms. The same with all the other gods. The desire to please the gods put a different emphasis on the purpose driven life. Ancients placed a lot of their bets on the present life, not the afterlife.  

While I have not seen this written about, the short life span over most of human history must have influenced people states of mind. Time must have seemed to move faster. Death of children was very common and the lifespan of adults short. Maybe belief in gods was enhanced by this, along with the small amount of knowledge about science.

The study of humans from the ancient past helps us understand we humans who live today.

Reference: Weavers, Scribes and Kings; A New History of the Ancient Near East Amanda Podany, Oxford, 2022.

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