Agriculturalists became theists, de-animizing nature, subordinating other species and believing themselves to be a special creation of the gods or of God.
Moderns know that they are descended from other species and are less inclined to believe in God.
However, all stages of evolution and successive world-views coexist. Poul Anderson shows religious traditions surviving into a technological future and interacting with extraterrestrial world-views. A Christian confronts the Ythrian New Faith. Later, some human Avalonians call themselves Ythrians, join choths and practice the Old Faith. Humanity is indeed adaptable. I welcome the current diversity that enables us to buy the scriptures of all Terrestrial religions in city center bookshops. We are no longer automatically "Christian" if born in Europe, "Hindu" if born in India etc.
Forward into a multi-species future.
1 comment:
It's important not to sentimentalize hunter-gatherers' attitudes to the natural environment. They had no sense of an "ecology" in our use of the term, and human hunter-gatherers were probably responsible for numerous mass extinctions -- we know for a fact that they wiped out the avian megafauna of New Zealand and Madagascar in historic times.
When the buffalo had been hunted out of the American West, the tribes who'd lived off them (and had been gradually wiping them out, albeit more slowly than the government-subsidized hide hunters unleashed there in the 1870's), despite the clear fact that overhunting had wiped them out, were convinced that the -real- reason they'd vanished was neglect of various magical ceremonies honoring their spirit guardians.
There's usually not a clear gap between animists and theists, either, not until the Abrahamic religions arose. Eg., Shintoists and Classical pagans both believe/believed in a hierarchy of spirits, ranging from the dryads who inhabited trees up to Zeus Father of Gods and Men.
Amaterasu, the patron-Goddess of Japan, is addressed as Amaterasu "Omikami" -- that is, "Great Spirit". The word "kami" also applied to garden sprites and tree-spirits and mischievous fox-women.
Likewise, hunter-gatherers usually had a hierarchy that ranged up to vast Powers in charge of major natural phenomenon like the weather. How closely they personalized them depended on local circumstances.
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