Prehistoric religion
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Prehistoric religion is the religious practice of prehistoric cultures. Prehistory, the period before written records, accounts for the bulk of human experience; over 99% of it occurred during the Paleolithic period alone. Prehistoric cultures spanned the globe and existed for over two and a half million years; their religious practices were many and varied, and studying them is difficult due to the lack of written records detailing the details of their faiths.
The cognitive capacity for religion likely first emerged in Homo sapiens sapiens, or anatomically modern humans, although some scholars posit the existence of Neanderthal religion, and sparse evidence exists for earlier ritual practice. Excluding sparse and controversial evidence in the Middle Paleolithic (300,000–50,000 years ago), religion emerged with certainty in the Upper Paleolithic around 50,000 years ago. Upper Paleolithic religion was possibly shamanic, centered on the phenomenon of special spiritual leaders entering trance states to receive esoteric knowledge. These practices are extrapolated from the rich and complex body of art left by Paleolithic artists, particularly the elaborate cave art and enigmatic Venus figurines they produced.
The Neolithic Revolution, which established agriculture as the dominant way of life, occurred around 12,000 BC and ushered in the Neolithic. Neolithic society grew hierarchical and inegalitarian compared to its Paleolithic forebears, and their religious practices likely changed to suit. Neolithic religion may have become more structural and centralised than in the Paleolithic, and possibly engaged in ancestor worship both of one's individual ancestors and of the ancestors of entire groups, tribes, and settlements. A well-known feature of Neolithic religion is the stone circles in the British Isles and Brittany, of which the most prominent today is Stonehenge. A particularly notable feature of late-Neolithic through Chalcolithic religion is Proto-Indo-European mythology, the religion of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The Proto-Indo-Europeans spoke the Proto-Indo-European language, which has been partially reconstructed through shared religious elements between early Indo-European language speakers.
Bronze Age and Iron Age religions are understood in part through archaeological records, but also, more so than in the Paleolithic and Neolithic, through written records; some societies had writing in these ages and were able to describe those that did not. These eras of prehistoric religion are the focus of modern reconstructionists, with many variants of modern pagan religions based on the pre-Christian practices of protohistoric Bronze and Iron Age societies.