Ancient Origins of Religion

Why Blue States Voting Blue Isn’t News — And Why It Doesn’t Change a Thing

By Alan Marley • November 6, 2025
Calm Down — The Usual Suspects Did What They Always Do

When Ideology Takes the Cockpit: The Hidden Dangers of DEI, Social Justice, and CRT

By Alan Marley • November 2, 2025
When identity becomes the priority, competence takes the back seat — and that’s deadly in aviation, medicine, and beyond. 

Why China’s Bid for Global Supremacy Keeps Falling Short

By Alan Marley • November 2, 2025
America’s greatest rival has ambition, but not the structure, trust, or experience to lead the world.

Until The Bill Arrives: Why Socialist & Marxist Ideas from AOC, Bernie Sanders, and Zohran Mamdani Deserve the Cold Hard Invoice

By Alan Marley • October 29, 2025
The Cost of Utopia: When Socialist Dreams Meet Economic Reality

Until You Can Measure Magic, Science Remains King

By Alan Marley • October 29, 2025
Why Evidence Still Rules the Universe — Even When We Don’t Have All the Answers

The $6 Hamburger, the Yelp Elite Court, and the Two-Hour Digital Assassination

By Alan Marley • October 29, 2025
A Satire of Social Media’s Most Dangerous Weapon: The Slightly Annoyed Customer

Science Doesn’t Prove God: Why Claims of “Scientific Support” Collapse Under Scrutiny

By Alan Marley • October 28, 2025
Scientists who personally believe in God still owe evidence

Why Denver Killed the Broncos Bus: When “Equity” Becomes an Excuse

By Alan Marley • October 28, 2025
How “equity” became the excuse to take away a service that worked

When the Expert Asks AI: Why Skilled Hands and Skilled Prompts Matter

By Alan Marley • October 24, 2025
How true professionals question AI to sharpen their craft while newcomers let it do the thinking for them

Are Undergraduates Really Learning—Or Just Sounding Smart?

By Alan Marley • October 24, 2025
The Polished Paper Problem Each term, instructors across the country are noticing the same thing: undergraduates are writing like graduate students. Their grammar is flawless, their transitions seamless, their tone eerily professional. In many ways, this should be a success story. Students are communicating better, organizing their arguments well, and producing work that would have stunned their professors just five years ago. But beneath the surface lies a harder truth—many aren’t learning the nuts and bolts of their professions. They’re becoming fluent in the appearance of mastery without building the muscle of mastery itself. In business, that might mean a marketing student who can write a strategic plan but can’t calculate return on ad spend. In the trades, it could be a construction student who can summarize OSHA standards but has never properly braced a truss. In healthcare, it’s a nursing student fluent in APA formatting but unfamiliar with patient charting protocols. Artificial intelligence, auto-editing, and academic templates have blurred the line between competence and convenience. The result is a growing class of undergraduates who can produce perfect essays but can’t explain—or apply—what they’ve written. Fluency Without Depth Writing clearly and persuasively used to signal understanding. Now, it often signals software. Tools like Grammarly, QuillBot, and ChatGPT can transform a barely legible draft into professional prose in seconds. The student appears articulate, thoughtful, and confident—but that fluency is often skin-deep. This “fluency without depth” is becoming the new epidemic in higher education. It’s not plagiarism in the old sense—it’s outsourced cognition. The work is “original” in words, but not in understanding. True learning comes from struggle. The act of wrestling with a concept—drafting, failing, revising, rebuilding—cements comprehension. When that friction disappears, students may get faster results but shallower knowledge. They haven’t built the neural connections that turn information into usable skill. The Deconstruction of Apprenticeship Historically, higher education and trade training relied on apprenticeship models—students learning by doing. Apprentices watched masters, failed under supervision, and slowly internalized their craft. The modern university has replaced much of that tactile experience with screens, templates, and simulations. In business programs, case studies have replaced internships. In technology programs, coding exercises are auto-graded by platforms. Even nursing and engineering simulations, while useful, remove the human error that builds judgment. AI has accelerated this detachment from real-world practice. A student can now ask an algorithm for a marketing plan, a cost analysis, or a safety procedure—and get a passable answer instantly. The student submits it, checks the box, and moves on—without ever wrestling with the real-world complexity those exercises were meant to teach. The result? A generation of graduates with impeccable documents and limited instincts. It’s One Thing for Professionals—Another for Students Here’s an important distinction: AI as a tool is invaluable for professionals who already know what they’re doing. A seasoned contractor, teacher, or engineer uses AI the way they’d use a calculator, spreadsheet, or search engine—an accelerator of efficiency, not a replacement for expertise. Professionals have already earned the right to use AI because they possess the judgment to evaluate its output. They know when something “looks off,” and they can correct it based on experience. A teacher who uses AI to draft lesson plans still understands pedagogy. A nurse who uses AI to summarize chart data still knows what vital signs mean. But for students who haven’t yet learned the basics, it’s a different story. They don’t have the internal compass to tell right from wrong, relevant from irrelevant, or accurate from nonsense. When someone without foundational knowledge copies, pastes, and submits AI-generated work, they aren’t learning—they’re borrowing authority they haven’t earned. And yes, I think that’s true. Many undergraduates today lack not only the technical competence but also the cognitive scaffolding to recognize what’s missing. They don’t yet have the “rudimentary skills” that come from doing the work by hand, making mistakes, and self-correcting. Until they develop that muscle, AI becomes not a learning tool but a crutch—one that atrophies rather than strengthens skill. This is why AI in professional hands enhances productivity, but in student hands can sabotage learning. It’s the same tool, but a completely different context of use. The Erosion of Struggle Struggle isn’t a flaw in learning—it’s the essence of it. Every trade and profession is built on problem-solving under pressure. Removing that friction creates intellectual fragility. Ask an apprentice carpenter to explain why a miter joint won’t close, and you’ll learn how much they understand about angles, wood movement, and tool precision. Ask an undergraduate business student to explain why their pro forma doesn’t balance, and you’ll discover whether they grasp the difference between revenue and cash flow. When AI eliminates the friction, we lose the feedback loop that exposes misunderstanding. Struggle teaches not just the what, but the why. A student who never struggles may perform well on paper but falter in the field. As psychologist Robert Bjork described it, “desirable difficulty”—the discomfort that comes with effort—is precisely what strengthens learning. Education that removes difficulty risks producing graduates who are quick but brittle. False Mastery in the Credential Economy Modern universities have become credential mills—pressuring faculty to retain students, keep satisfaction scores high, and graduate on schedule. Combined with AI tools, this has created what could be called false mastery: the illusion of competence that exists only in print. Traditional grading rubrics assume that well-structured writing equals understanding. That assumption no longer holds. Instructors can’t rely solely on essays and projects; they need performance-based verification. A student may produce a flawless funding pitch for a startup but have no concept of risk modeling or capital structure. Another may write a masterful nursing ethics paper yet freeze during a live simulation. These gaps expose how grading by polish alone inflates credentials while hollowing out competence. The Workforce Consequence Employers already see the cracks. New hires often possess communication polish but lack real-world readiness. They can write reports but can’t handle ambiguity, troubleshoot under stress, or lead teams through conflict. A survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (2025) found that while 89% of hiring managers valued written communication, only 42% believed graduates could apply that communication in problem-solving contexts. Meanwhile, industries dependent on precision—construction, healthcare, aviation—report widening skill gaps despite record enrollment in professional programs. The irony is stark: the digital tools that make students appear more prepared are, in some cases, making them less capable. The Role of the Trades: A Reality Check In the trades, this disconnect is easier to see because mistakes are immediate. A bad weld fails. A mis-wired circuit sparks. A poorly measured joist won’t fit. You can’t fake competence with pretty words. Ironically, that makes the trades the most truthful form of education in the AI era. You can’t “generate” a roof repair. You have to know it. Higher education could learn something from apprenticeship models: every written plan should correspond to a tangible, verifiable action. The electrician doesn’t just describe voltage drop; they measure it. The contractor doesn’t just define “load path”; they build one. The doctor doesn’t just summarize patient safety; they ensure it. If universities want to preserve relevance, they must restore doing to the same level of importance as describing. The Cognitive Cost of Outsourcing Thinking Cognitive off-loading—outsourcing thought processes to machines—can reduce working-memory engagement and critical-thinking development. Studies from Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence (Chiu et al., 2023) confirm that over-reliance on AI tools correlates with lower creative and analytical engagement. What this means practically is simple: every time a student skips the mental grind of structuring an argument or debugging their own solution, their brain misses a learning rep. Over time, those missing reps add up—like a musician who skips scales or an athlete who never trains under fatigue. The Professional Divide Ahead Within five years, the workforce will split into two camps: those who use AI to amplify their judgment, and those who rely on it to replace judgment. The first group will thrive; the second will stagnate. Employers won’t just test for knowledge—they’ll test for original thought under pressure. A generation of AI-polished graduates may find themselves outpaced by peers from apprenticeships, boot camps, and trades who can perform without digital training wheels. The university’s moral obligation is to prepare thinkers, not typists. That means returning to the core of education: curiosity, struggle, and ownership. The Path Forward: Reclaiming Ownership of Learning Transparency: Require students to disclose how they used AI or digital tools. Not as punishment, but as self-reflection. Active apprenticeship: Expand experiential learning—internships, labs, fieldwork, peer teaching. Critical questioning: Train students to interrogate both AI output and their own assumptions. Iterative design: Reward revision and experimentation, not perfection. Integrated ethics: Discuss the moral and professional implications of relying on automation. Education’s next frontier isn’t banning technology—it’s teaching accountability within it. Why This Matters If we continue down the path of equating eloquence with expertise, we’ll graduate a generation of professionals fluent in jargon but ill-equipped for reality. They’ll enter fields where mistakes cost money, lives, or trust—and discover that real-world performance doesn’t have an “undo” button. The goal of education should never be to eliminate struggle, but to make struggle meaningful. AI can be a partner in that process, but not a substitute for it. Ultimately, society doesn’t need more perfect papers. It needs competent builders, nurses, analysts, teachers, and leaders—people who can think, act, and adapt when the script runs out. The classroom of the future must return to that simple truth: writing beautifully isn’t the same as knowing what you’re talking about. References Bjork, R. A. (2011). Desirable difficulties in theory and practice. Learning and the Brain Conference. Chiu, T. K. F., Xia, Q., Zhou, X., Chai, C. S., & Cheng, M. (2023). Systematic literature review on opportunities, challenges, and future research recommendations of artificial intelligence in education. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 4, 100118. Illinois College of Education. (2024, Oct 24). AI in Schools: Pros and Cons. https://education.illinois.edu/about/news-events/news/article/2024/10/24/ai-in-schools--pros-and-cons P itts, G., Rani, N., Mildort, W., & Cook, E. M. (2025). Students’ Reliance on AI in Higher Education: Identifying Contributing Factors. arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.13845. U.S. National Association of Colleges and Employers. (2025). Job Outlook 2025: Skills Employers Want and Where Graduates Fall Short. United States Energy Information Administration (EIA). (2024). Electricity price trends and residential cost data. https://www.eia.gov University of San Diego. (2024). How AI Is Reshaping Higher Education. https://www.usa.edu/blog/ai-in-higher-education-how-ai-is-reshaping-higher-education/ Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post are opinions of the author for educational and commentary purposes only. They are not statements of fact about any individual or organization, and should not be construed as legal, medical, or financial advice. References to public figures and institutions are based on publicly available sources cited in the article. Any resemblance beyond these references is coincidental.
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The Deep Roots of Religion: From Tribal Rituals to Monotheism

By Alan Marley


Religion didn’t begin with grand temples or neatly bound sacred texts. Its roots reach deep into the shadowy caves and communal hearths of our earliest ancestors. Long before formal doctrines and hierarchies, humans stared into the darkness of the unknown — the weather, death, dreams — and began to tell stories to make sense of it all. What we call “religion” today is the product of that ancient impulse to explain, to connect, and to give order to life’s mysteries. This article traces the earliest layers of religion as visible through archaeology and anthropology, showing how belief systems that now seem fixed and timeless actually evolved through thousands of years of human trial, error, and imagination.


Animism: The Spirit in All Things (50,000–10,000 BCE)

The oldest spiritual systems were almost certainly animistic. Animism isn’t a single religion but a worldview — the sense that everything in nature possesses a spirit, consciousness, or life force. Trees, rivers, mountains, animals, and even the wind were alive with meaning. For Paleolithic hunters and gatherers, this wasn’t a fantasy but a framework for survival and community. A river spirit could explain why the water flooded one year but not the next. An animal spirit could be thanked for a successful hunt — or appeased after a failed one.


We see strong hints of these beliefs in the breathtaking cave art at sites like Lascaux and Chauvet in France or Altamira in Spain. These aren’t just paintings of animals to show off early artistic skill. Many anthropologists argue they represent attempts to connect with the spirit world, to ask for good fortune, or to honor the animals who gave their lives to feed the clan (Mithen, 1996). Hybrid figures — part human, part beast — suggest an early belief that humans and animals shared a sacred bond, a fluid spiritual boundary.

E.B. Tylor, one of anthropology’s founding figures, proposed that animism was the “minimum definition of religion” — a universal starting point for spiritual thought (Tylor, 1871). What’s striking is how enduring this worldview has been. Indigenous cultures worldwide — from the Shinto of Japan to Native American traditions and many African cosmologies — still live out variations of animistic belief. They remind us that seeing nature as alive is not some quaint superstition but a deep human way of relating to the world, one that helped our species build early moral codes about reciprocity, respect, and balance.


In a time when survival depended on forces beyond human control — wildfires, droughts, predators — animism offered meaning and, in some sense, hope. Modern people often think they’ve outgrown such beliefs, but echoes remain in our language and imagination. We still talk about “Mother Earth,” “angry storms,” or “the spirit of the forest.” Animism was never just about spirits — it was about seeing a world where everything was connected, and where every tree or stone might whisper a story if only you knew how to listen.


Burial Rites and the Afterlife (100,000 BCE and onward)

Long before humans built monuments to gods, they buried their dead with care. Burial is one of the clearest archaeological fingerprints of early spiritual awareness. Why? Because to bury a body — to position it purposefully, to include objects, to mark the place — is to say that death means something more than just the end.


One of the earliest examples comes from Shanidar Cave in modern Iraq. Here, Neanderthals — not even Homo sapiens — appear to have buried their dead with flowers, as indicated by pollen traces around the skeletons. Whether or not they placed them intentionally, the pattern suggests a symbolic gesture, not just disposal (Mithen, 1996). Among early modern humans, sites like Qafzeh Cave in Israel show burials with red ochre, tools, and ornaments. These offerings point to beliefs that the dead would need these items in some other realm or that marking the body in red signified a return to the earth, blood, or life force.


What drives this behavior? Anthropologist Walter Burkert (1996) argued that burial rites are the bridge between biological reality and symbolic thinking. They show that early humans felt grief, imagined life beyond death, and developed rituals to ease the trauma of loss. Funerary practices may also have strengthened social bonds. By gathering to mourn, communities affirmed their identity and reinforced the idea that individuals mattered, even in death.


Over time, these early burials evolved into complex necropolises, ancestor cults, and massive tomb structures like the pyramids of Egypt or the burial mounds of ancient Europe. But at their core was the same idea: the dead are not simply gone. They influence the living. They might help, haunt, or judge. So we bury them with care, speak their names, and keep their memory alive.


Modern funeral traditions — from gravestones to flowers, from wakes to prayers — are echoes of this impulse. They show how, even now, the mystery of death remains one of the deepest roots of why we create and cling to religion.


Totemism: Symbol and Identity (10,000 BCE and onward)

As human communities grew larger and more complex, their beliefs grew too. Animistic thinking gave way to new forms of symbolism, clan identity, and rules for living together. This is where totemism comes in — the practice of linking a group’s identity to an animal, plant, or natural object seen as a sacred ancestor or protector.


Totemism is one of the oldest forms of organized belief. In totemic cultures, the tribe or clan might be “Bear People,” “Wolf Clan,” or “Eagle Family.” These names weren’t just nicknames. The chosen totem shaped taboos, hunting practices, marriage customs, and moral codes. It told people who they were and how they fit into the larger order of nature.


Totem poles, animal carvings, and clan emblems have been found in cultures across the world — from the Pacific Northwest of North America to Aboriginal Australia and parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Anthropologists like Tylor (1871) saw totemism as one step beyond simple animism: a system that organized people’s social and spiritual world into meaningful categories.


Totems also served a practical purpose. They bound groups together through shared symbols. They governed who could marry whom (exogamy rules in many societies required marrying outside one’s totem). They explained natural cycles, as the rise and fall of animal populations could be woven into mythic stories that carried wisdom about living sustainably with the land.


Evidence of early totemic practices appears in rock art, burial goods, and clan markings carved into bones or painted on cave walls. As humans shifted from small hunter-gatherer bands to settled communities with agriculture, totems helped hold those larger groups together — a spiritual glue for early social order.


Modern echoes of totemism survive in countless cultural traditions today. Sports teams with animal mascots, national symbols like the American eagle or the Russian bear, or even family crests and coats of arms reflect the same ancient instinct to find identity through nature. At its heart, totemism shows how religion has always been more than abstract belief — it’s a framework that helps us belong, define who “we” are, and how we stand apart from “them.”


Shamanism: The First Religious Specialist (Paleolithic to Neolithic)

Somewhere between animistic belief and early organized religion stands the shaman — humanity’s first religious specialist. Shamans were the ones who could cross the boundary between ordinary life and the unseen spirit world. They didn’t just pray; they journeyed into trance, dreams, and visions to heal the sick, foretell the future, or guide souls to the afterlife.


Mircea Eliade (1964), whose pioneering work on shamanism is still foundational, argued that the shamanic role emerged deep in the Paleolithic, when humans first developed complex symbolic thought. Archaeological evidence supports this: rock art in Europe, Africa, and Asia shows human figures transforming into animals or dancing in what appear to be ritual trance states. Some figures wear antlers or animal skins, suggesting they embodied the spirit of an animal guide during ceremonies.


What made shamans different from ordinary hunters or clan leaders was their perceived ability to control powerful, unseen forces. They were mediators between worlds. Using drumming, chanting, fasting, hallucinogenic plants, or sensory deprivation, shamans would enter altered states of consciousness. In these states, they believed they could speak with spirits, rescue lost souls, or negotiate with forces that brought disease, drought, or good fortune.


Shamanic practices are not relics of the past — they’re living traditions in Siberia, the Arctic, parts of the Amazon, Mongolia, and beyond. Even today, many communities seek out shamans for healing, guidance, and spiritual connection. What’s striking is how remarkably similar shamanic techniques are across cultures separated by vast distances. This suggests they tap into something deeply rooted in human psychology: the drive to find patterns, enter trance, and seek meaning through ecstatic states.


The shaman’s role foreshadows the priest, prophet, or mystic in later religions. But while priests often belong to hierarchical institutions with fixed rituals, shamans tend to operate on the margins — outsiders who gain respect because they stand between the ordinary and the extraordinary. They remind us that the roots of religion are not just about belief but about direct experience: the human longing to connect with realms beyond what the eye can see.


Polytheism: The Rise of the Gods (8,000–2,000 BCE)

With the Neolithic Revolution — the shift from foraging to farming — human societies changed forever. Permanent settlements grew into villages, then cities. Surplus food led to social hierarchies, labor specialization, and larger populations. And as communities grew, so did the complexity of their belief systems. Animistic spirits and clan totems evolved into vast pantheons of gods, each with specialized powers and responsibilities. This was the birth of polytheism.

In the earliest city-states of Sumer, people worshipped dozens of deities. Enlil, the god of air; Inanna, goddess of love and war; Utu, the sun god — each controlled different parts of nature and human life. The gods needed to be placated with offerings and rituals to ensure good harvests, victory in war, and the fertility of people and animals alike.


The same pattern played out across ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, Greece, and Rome. Burkert (1996) explains how polytheistic religions did more than explain natural forces — they gave divine legitimacy to kings and empires. Pharaohs were “sons of Ra.” Mesopotamian rulers justified their authority by claiming the gods had appointed them. Religious festivals reinforced social order, creating shared myths that held diverse populations together.

Polytheism also brought early priesthoods — religious specialists who managed temples, performed sacrifices, and kept the calendar of sacred days. Temples became centers of wealth, culture, and even early science. The ancient Egyptian priesthood, for example, recorded astronomical observations to align festivals with the solar cycle, helping develop early mathematics and writing.

Unlike later monotheism, polytheism is flexible and pluralistic. New gods could be adopted or merged. Conquered peoples’ deities were absorbed into larger pantheons. In this way, polytheism helped empires expand by providing a shared spiritual language that didn’t erase local identities outright.

Even now, polytheistic systems survive and thrive. Hinduism remains a vibrant, complex network of deities, rituals, and local traditions. Folk religions around the world still honor multiple spirits, ancestors, and divine beings. They remind us that belief in many gods is not primitive superstition but a deeply human way of mapping life’s unpredictability onto a world of meaning and relationships.


The Evolution of Monotheism: Israel and the Influence of Empire (1200–500 BCE)

Modern monotheism — the idea that one all-powerful, universal God rules everything — didn’t appear overnight. It evolved gradually, shaped by centuries of cultural exchange, political upheaval, and theological debate. Nowhere is this clearer than in ancient Israel.

Early Israelite religion was not pure monotheism. Archaeological and textual evidence shows it began as henotheistic — meaning Yahweh was worshipped as the chief god of Israel, but other gods were acknowledged to exist. The name “El,” an older Canaanite high god, is woven into Hebrew place names and personal names like Isra-el or Beth-el (Smith, 2002). Over time, the attributes of El were absorbed by Yahweh as Israelite religion moved toward a single, supreme deity.

What drove this evolution? Some scholars, like Finkelstein and Silberman (2001), argue that Israel’s transition to true monotheism was shaped by trauma and empire. The Babylonian exile (586–539 BCE) was pivotal. When Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and deported its elites, the old ways — local shrines, sacrifices at a single temple — were shattered. Far from home, Israelite scribes and prophets wrestled with big questions: If Yahweh was the one true god, how could his people be conquered? Why did he let his temple fall?

This period likely saw the final redaction of the Torah — Israel’s foundational texts — as exiled priests and scholars rewrote and reinterpreted older myths. They borrowed ideas from Babylonian epics like Enuma Elish and Gilgamesh, recasting them to emphasize moral laws, covenant, and a universal creator. This was a radical shift: instead of multiple gods bickering over the cosmos, one just God ruled all, demanded moral behavior, and rejected idols.

Monotheism spread through the influence of these texts and ideas long after the exile. Over centuries, Jewish belief shaped Christianity and Islam, two of the world’s major monotheistic faiths. Ironically, the very empires that tried to crush the Israelites ended up spreading their vision of a single, righteous God.

This doesn’t diminish the faith modern believers hold. If anything, it shows how resilient and adaptive belief can be — born in the chaos of conquest, refined through storytelling, and carried forward by communities determined to find meaning in suffering.


Conclusion: Religion as Human Inheritance

Looking back across tens of thousands of years, it becomes clear that religion was never handed down fully formed from the sky. It grew out of the same human urges that shape all our culture: fear of death, awe at nature’s power, gratitude for life, and the need for community. From animism to polytheism to monotheism, belief systems evolved to meet the challenges of each age.

Seeing religion this way doesn’t make it less meaningful. It reminds us that faith is a bridge — connecting generations, giving us tools to understand suffering and joy, helping us live with questions that may never be fully answered.

When we study these roots, we don’t strip away the sacred; we find its deepest layers. Religion, at its best, still calls us to ask the same timeless questions: Who are we? Where did we come from? And what larger story do we want to belong to next?



References

Burkert, W. (1996). Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions. Harvard University Press.

Eliade, M. (1964). Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton University Press.

Finkelstein, I., & Silberman, N. A. (2001). The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. Free Press.

Mithen, S. (1996). The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science. Thames and Hudson.

Smith, M. S. (2002). The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (2nd ed.). Eerdmans.

Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive Culture. London: John Murray.

Walton, J. H. (2009). The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate. IVP Academic.









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