Humans Are Religious Before They Are Economic

Agriculture does not begin here as a clever economic adaptation. It begins from religious impulse. The previous lecture's claim returns as the starting point: people gathered, settled, and eventually farmed because they already had rituals and sacred places that organized them. This lecture pushes the argument farther back. The need for religion, the need to know why we are here and where we are going, has always been there. Religion is what makes humans fundamentally human. Source trail 0:00 Okay, to review, last class we discussed three pre -historical sites, right? Including Gobekli Tepe, Jericho, and Kanahoyak. And the argument I made to you last class, which is the general scholarly consensus, is that w...

The evidence is difficult because the people left no written doctrine. The right questions are simple and hard at the same time. How were the paintings made without modern tools? Why spend days in dark, cold, oxygen-poor caves? What did the animals, bodies, and signs mean? There is no clean consensus, so the lecture proceeds by reconstruction: imagine the world before modern memory Source trail 8:47 It's really about religion. It's expressing the religious beliefs of the people at that time, okay? So does this make sense, guys? All right. Yes. Okay. So I'm going to answer the question, what are the beliefs right no... , before science, before biology class, before the explanations that now protect us from awe.

The Ice Age background matters because scarcity and movement produce the human world in which the paintings appear. Humans spread across the planet in a cold age, met and interbred with other human species, and lived in small numbers. The cave paintings then appear as continuous work over time: animals layered together, not arranged as a museum composition. Lions, horses, rhinos, and other animals become one field of nature. The wall does not isolate objects; nature is one interconnected picture Source trail 4:57 And this started about 30,000 years ago. So these cave paintings were a continuous process where different people at different times went to the caves and painted different pictures. They might have added more things to... .

The technical question leads back to ritual. Red comes from ochre, black from charcoal, and light from animal fat burned inside the cave. But the decisive clue is not pigment. It is location. The paintings are found where sound works best, where music and flutes could turn the cave into a collective event. The cave is not a studio. It is a ritual chamber. These paintings are not about art. They are about religion. Source trail 7:298:47 And then, so another question is, why did they paint these pictures? And a lot of the clue is this. A lot of the clue is where we find them. We found these paintings. We found these paintings in a very special place in...It's really about religion. It's expressing the religious beliefs of the people at that time, okay? So does this make sense, guys? All right. Yes. Okay. So I'm going to answer the question, what are the beliefs right no...

Begin with the things no one can explain. A child is born and life comes out of nothing Source trail 10:0011:10 Meaning like we see these things and we're like, oh my God, God must exist because there's no way I can explain what happened. What are these things that we would see and we would be surprised by, marvel at, basically b...this life come out of nothing right okay and if you don't if you have a psychology you can't explain what happened so that's the first thing that amazes about amazes us about being human childbirth right what's the seco... . The stars glow without pollution and seem like souls, worlds, or powers beyond this one. Healing suggests that body and soul can fall out of alignment and be brought back together. Nature itself, in its vastness, forces the question why. Religion begins as an answer to wonder before it becomes doctrine.

Once birth is a passage, death needs a matching passage. The soul enters the world through the mother's womb, from darkness into life. Source trail 14:0315:57 animals the trees the vastness of nature now these are things that surprise us and they force us to ask the question why so now let's try to construct a theory of how to connect all these things okay all right so we kno...and then for us to return the soul back into the original world we bury this person in darkness and that carries that person back to the original world okay does that make sense okay so this is probably the simplest exp... Burial returns the soul through darkness back to its original world. The cave then becomes the natural image of the womb: a tunnel, a darkness, a passage from this world to another. That is why the cave can be sacred even though it is hard to breathe in and impossible to live in.

The animal ritual follows from the same structure. Humans kill animals because they need meat, but killing creates an obligation. If animals have souls, then eating them is not just consumption. It is a debt to the order of life. The ritual asks forgiveness and brings the animal back from the spirit world Source trail 18:09 go back into the spirit world right so now we have to summon them back from the spirit world into our world okay does that make sense so in other words what this religion what this belief is really saying is that we are... so that balance and harmony can continue. The mother goddess gives life to everything, so humans, trees, and animals are not separate owners and objects. They are children in a cycle. Source trail 19:23 everything that means that for us trees animals us are all equal we're all the children of mother nature we all have souls okay and so what gives us permission to kill other animals why are we allowed to kill other and...

The name for this religion is animism: every living thing has a soul, and all living things are interconnected. That can sound primitive only if nature is imagined as dead matter. Modern discoveries about trees reverse that arrogance. Roots and fungi let trees share nutrients, warn one another about pests, and recognize their own children. The forest begins to look like one big brain Source trail 21:52 this is in fact what they believed okay so a recent discovery that we made is that trees talk to each other you guys do you guys know this so what happens is that trees there are maybe thousands of trees in the forest a... , one living organism communicating with itself.

The cave images then become evidence of mediation. Birds belong to the sky, and the sky belongs to the mother goddess. If birds or bird-like figures appear near animals, the image can be read as the mother goddess channeling or herding animals from the spirit world Source trail 24:18 The bird. The bird flies around the sky. The sky is the mother goddess. Okay, so it's almost like the mother goddess is channeling or herding the animals from the spirit world back into her own world. What you also noti... back into this world. The shaman dresses like an animal or bird not as costume but as communication technology: a way to speak with animals, spirits, and the force that returns life.

The moral evidence is the burial of the disabled. A dwarf skeleton received the same food as others and an elaborate burial. In a harsh hunter-gatherer life, the simple utilitarian expectation would be abandonment. The evidence points the other way: care, food, honor, and burial. Difference is not treated as lesser value. It can become more value. Source trail 28:17 See what I mean? Okay, but what else can you do besides food? Why would they think he was a special person? What could he do that others couldn't do? Yeah? Thank you, okay. So maybe the religion back then is that everyo... If you see the world differently, maybe the mother goddess has given you a special power. Maybe the person who cannot hunt becomes the person who can communicate with the spirit world Source trail 28:1729:40 See what I mean? Okay, but what else can you do besides food? Why would they think he was a special person? What could he do that others couldn't do? Yeah? Thank you, okay. So maybe the religion back then is that everyo...And being a dwarf, it makes the most sense to be a shaman, not only because people think you're special, but because you can invest time into meditation, into religious practice, that enables you to communicate with the... .

The disability-burial evidence is not isolated. Paleolithic burials repeatedly show health-related disabilities and high levels of care. Those buried people are often the ones who seem most different. The best explanation offered here is not pity but value: they were shamans, people chosen because difference marked them as favored Source trail 30:48 Okay? We have many examples of this. When archaeologists undertake balanced appraisals of hunter -gathered burials from the Paleolithic, okay, meaning the Ice Age, they find high frequencies of health -related disabilit... , capable of reaching the spirit world.

The next evidence is symbols. Source trail 31:5433:4434:20 Any more, any questions before I move on? All right. Now, another amazing thing that we found about Ice Age cave paintings is that they have symbols. Okay? So we saw pictures, but a Canadian anthropologist named Genevie...Excuse me? To keep the content mysterious. Okay, that's interesting. Okay? To keep the content mysterious. And so where do these symbols come from? To keep the content mysterious, right? You have these symbols and there... Hands, spirals, quadrangles, circles, asterisks, and other recurring signs appear across Ice Age cave paintings. One possibility is writing, a shared language. Another is mystery: secret signs make the content sacred, divine, and difficult to access. A third is abstraction. You cannot draw love, energy, life force, balance, harmony, cycle, or repetition directly. You need symbols for forces that cannot appear as animals.

That changes what a picture is. The picture is not trying to show a picture. It is trying to tell a story about the world. Source trail 35:38 So you just have to use a symbol to represent it. Okay? Which means what? Which means that each picture is a mythology. It's a story. Okay? Do you understand? The pictures aren't trying to show you a picture. They're tr... Each image can be mythology: a visible animal joined to invisible relations. Symbols also may be the language of the spirit world Source trail 35:3836:44 So you just have to use a symbol to represent it. Okay? Which means what? Which means that each picture is a mythology. It's a story. Okay? Do you understand? The pictures aren't trying to show you a picture. They're tr...The geometric signs. So in other words, they went to the spirit world or they think they went into the spirit world and then they're just trying to express the language of the spirit world. Okay? Does that make sense? A... . If shamans used plants or psychedelics to enter altered states, the geometric signs could be what they saw there and brought back for the group.

Kant enters because the problem is no longer only archaeology. It is perception itself. Reality is not something simply experienced or seen. Reality is something imagined, something the mind creates. Time and space are examples: they do not sit out in nature as objects; they are structures through which the mind orders experience. The cave symbol is now part of a larger human power: reality is something we imagine every day Source trail 37:48 Reality is something that we imagine. That we create with our mind. The example he uses is time and space. Okay? Like one, two, three, four. It does not exist in nature. It's not, doesn't exist. Okay? It's something tha... .

Neuroscience sharpens the Kantian point: the brain imagines reality and projects reality Source trail 38:34 Neuroscience is the study of the brain. And what's really amazing, okay, and we will discuss this in future classes, is that neuroscience has confirmed Immanuel Kant. Meaning, like, we now know that the brain imagines r... . Drugs change the structure of the brain, and a changed brain sees a changed world. Mystery then becomes sacred. Source trail 38:34 Neuroscience is the study of the brain. And what's really amazing, okay, and we will discuss this in future classes, is that neuroscience has confirmed Immanuel Kant. Meaning, like, we now know that the brain imagines r... Childbirth is sacred because it cannot be understood in the old world; women become sacred because they give birth; the mother goddess is female because life itself is imagined through birth.

Now the cave paintings can be summarized. They visualize mythology, show how reality works, and create a common memory and imagination. Art is basically religion; there is no difference. Source trail 41:02 Okay? So art is basically religion. There's no difference. Second thing is that they're trying to show to themselves how reality works. Okay? They're trying to show that the underlying reality is a soul or god. Okay? Do... The wall is a shared language, a shared mythology, a shared reality. That shared reality is what society is.

Durkheim gives the sociological formula. Religion is a system of ideas through which people imagine the society of which they are members. Its first service is not accuracy but daring. It gives thought a first representation of kinship between things, teaches the mind not to be dominated by sense impressions, and lets humans imagine internal connections. From this, philosophy and science become possible. Science today is our religion Source trail 45:01 Furthermore it was less important to succeed than to dare. The fact that we try is what's important. What has what was essential was not to be to was not to let the mind be dominated by what appears to the senses. Okay?... because it is still an imaginative order of the world, now disciplined by evidence.

Collective thought is the hinge. One person alone does not create a whole world of ideals powerful enough to transform sense reality. Society intensifies imagination, and imagination gives society its shared world. Religion is collective consciousness. Lens point civilization-inner-order Religion makes society when art, ritual, symbol, memory, and shared imagination give people a common world before economics, biology, settlement, or state machinery can organize them. Source trail 46:11 It is because religion is a social thing that it could play this role. To make men take control of sense impressions and replace them with a new way of imagining the real a new kind of thought had to be created. Collect... Without religion there could be no society. Without society there could also be no religion. Lens point civilization-inner-order Religion makes society when art, ritual, symbol, memory, and shared imagination give people a common world before economics, biology, settlement, or state machinery can organize them. Source trail 46:11 It is because religion is a social thing that it could play this role. To make men take control of sense impressions and replace them with a new way of imagining the real a new kind of thought had to be created. Collect...

The implication is severe: if you are alone, you are not a human Source trail 47:20 If you are alone you are not a human. You are a human because you live in society. You are with other people. And because you are with other people you must have a collective consciousness or an idea you share together... . A human is a social being held inside collective consciousness. The historical chain can now be stated cleanly. Cave paintings express religion. When the Ice Age ends, people can settle down and create communities to celebrate that religion. Those communities give rise to agriculture. The sacred gathering comes before the farm. Lens point civilization-inner-order Religion makes society when art, ritual, symbol, memory, and shared imagination give people a common world before economics, biology, settlement, or state machinery can organize them. Source trail 47:20 If you are alone you are not a human. You are a human because you live in society. You are with other people. And because you are with other people you must have a collective consciousness or an idea you share together...

A student question about monotheism clarifies the difference between early religion and later hierarchy. Monotheism is recent, and it teaches people to think through rank: one God, one top, a pyramid of power. The earlier world is not a pyramid. It is a river. Source trail 50:06 There's people at the top. But back then they would think think like it's a river. Okay? We're all part of the river. It's a cycle. It just goes in circles. And there's no differentiation or there's no power power hiera... Everyone is part of the flow; the order is cyclic rather than vertical. Things go wrong when beings fail to do what the river requires.

That is why religion becomes ritual Source trail 50:06 There's people at the top. But back then they would think think like it's a river. Okay? We're all part of the river. It's a cycle. It just goes in circles. And there's no differentiation or there's no power power hiera... . The problem is not mainly wrong belief in the abstract. It is wrong action: incest, killing without sacrifice, taking from animals without praying for their return. Religion is habits, practices, and actions that maintain the flow. Caves are one portal, but they cannot be homes. Mountaintops and rivers can also connect worlds Source trail 51:49 But you can't live in a cave though. Right? You can't live in a cave. You can only go there now and then. There's no oxygen in the cave. It's too dark. It's too cold. You can't live there. Right? So you're right in that... , and they are places where settlement can gather. Sacred geography moves from cave ritual to agricultural community.

The final student exchange returns to settlement. Source trail 51:4953:11 But you can't live in a cave though. Right? You can't live in a cave. You can only go there now and then. There's no oxygen in the cave. It's too dark. It's too cold. You can't live there. Right? So you're right in that...And we find that when they settle down and build agriculture they did so on mountaintops and they did so around rivers. Okay? Does that make sense? But not caves because you couldn't actually live in caves. Does that an... People did not live in caves because caves are dark, cold, wet, oxygen-poor, and foodless. They lived outside, in tents, and later settled around places that could be both sacred and livable: mountaintops and rivers. The argument is not that religion floats above material life. Religion has to find geography, food, bodies, and practice.

Modernity often says humans are economic animals or biological animals. Source trail 53:1154:30 And we find that when they settle down and build agriculture they did so on mountaintops and they did so around rivers. Okay? Does that make sense? But not caves because you couldn't actually live in caves. Does that an...And that's what we believe today. Right? You're in school because you want to get good grades so you can go get into a good university and then you can go get a good job. Okay? Now there are other people who believe tha... The economic version is associated here with Marx: grades, universities, jobs, money, material advancement. The biological version is associated with evolutionary biology: reproductive strategy, gene spread, loyalty, childbearing, and child-rearing. Both models explain something real. They do not explain enough.

The answer is no: humans are first and foremost religious animals Lens point civilization-inner-order Religion makes society when art, ritual, symbol, memory, and shared imagination give people a common world before economics, biology, settlement, or state machinery can organize them. Source trail 55:3554:30 We are first and foremost a religious animal. We have the fundamental need to understand why we are here. We have a fundamental need to connect with everyone. Okay? To connect with other people. But that does not mean t...And that's what we believe today. Right? You're in school because you want to get good grades so you can go get into a good university and then you can go get a good job. Okay? Now there are other people who believe tha... . They need to understand why they are here. They need to connect with everyone, to belong to a shared world. Economics and biology still matter, and a religion that fails those needs can be abandoned or changed. But economic need alone is not enough. History is driven by the interplay of economics, biology, and religion Source trail 55:35 We are first and foremost a religious animal. We have the fundamental need to understand why we are here. We have a fundamental need to connect with everyone. Okay? To connect with other people. But that does not mean t... , and the lecture's wager is that religion is the first human need because it makes the other needs socially thinkable.