What we are today is the result of ancient thought and ideas. History is the only document that helps us to trace our evolution. A large part of history is dominated by the stone age, also called prehistory. Pre History is the phase of history for which we do not have any written records and our entire knowledge about this period is from sources like Pottery, burials, ornaments, remains of individuals, and most important of all cave painting.
In today’s episode of history, we will discuss the idea of life and death during the stone age. Life and death both are an important part of religion, in fact, it would not be wrong to say that religion is all about the goal of life and the idea of death. As we have already discussed that we do not have any written documents from prehistory our entire knowledge about the religion of the stone age comes from burial practices, Sculpture, cave painting, and other materials. Cave paintings are of special attraction because these are the only sources that tell us about the imagination of people from the stone age.
In the 15 million years long history of humans, the real development came when humans started walking upright. This upright motion brought a lot of changes in human life. First, it allowed the motion of humans in all direction quickly and easily, and second was the availability of free hands that can be used for holding tools and carrying things easily. History tells us Homo Habilis were the first humans who could walk uprights and this is also the period in which tools were used for the first time. The use of tool is of special interest to us because this is the point from where humans started developing their imagination. Though it can be argued that the invention of tools was an accident, but their evolution and use at a later stage was the result of imagination power of humans during stone age. We know that even during the stone age a lot of changes took place in tool making techniques and new tools were invented this shows the continuous growth in the complexity of imagination in stone age people.
Before the invention of tools hunting of big animals was a difficult task and the survival of humans was dependent on small animals, humans have to go for hunting frequently. But the introduction of tools allowed the hunting of big animals and sufficient food for all, this provided extra time to answer questions related to life, the earth, the sun, the moon and other creatures around. The use of tools during this period was limited only to hunting, this tells that humans during this period respected nature and did not want to go against nature, they wanted to remain loyal to the law of nature, killing of animals was limited only to the survival of humans, there was no or minimum interference of humans in animals life and this system was very different from modern societies where modern humans are a serious challenge to the nature itself. There has been found cave painting that shows the death of humans due to accidents during hunting. It is probably during this time that people started worshipping unknown powers for protection of people. A lot of other cave painting shows many animals like lions pierced by deep holes, this shows belief of stone age humans in some form of power that helps them in hunting. Along with this many humans has been shown wearing skin of animals and performing rituals. These rituals might be related to the prayers offered before going for hunting. Also it is possible that the animals shown in the cave paintings were respected and prayed, these paintings were drawn to seek permission to kill these animals, so that the nature or gods should not become angry with the killing of these animals. Though both the conclusions drawn are contrary to each other, but in both the cases survival was the main objective of the people during the stone age.
If we talk about the sculptures found the complexity of substance increases towards the upper Paleolithic age. Important figures include small statue of a pregnant women, figures of animals and figures that are partly human and partly animal. All these sculptures shows that pregnant women were respected and were seen as representative of fertility goddess, along with this some animals were also worshipped. It is clear that the complexity of idea of life increased in the upper Paleolithic, it is also possible that some people with special knowledge to connect to god would have emerged during this period and this would have led to increase in the complexity of rituals.
Burial practices during Stone Age gives a lot of information about the afterlife belief of stone age people. Shift from open cremation to burial practices could have been due to two reasons. First, they did not wanted their ancestors to return as ghosts, second is they started worshipping their ancestors and wanted their blessings for hunting and healing. Extraction of tools and bones along with dead from the burial sites shows that people of stone age started believing in the afterlife at a later stage and it was believed that these tools and animals will help them in their journey in the other world. Sculptures made of human bones were also used for some rituals specially for healing the wounds, this is the clear indication that ancestors were worshipped during the stone age. Also in most of the cases dead were buried near to the colonies or within the colonies this also shows that they worshipped their ancestors, if they would be afraid of their ancestors dead would have been buried at some far locations.
From the above discussion it is clear that though the complexity of religion increased in the later stage of stone age but still the goal of life were confined to the birth, hunting and healing. They were not involved in very complex rituals to make their afterlife easy, most of the rituals were related to birth, death and healing. From the cave painting we can also say that stone age people were nature worshiper, they worshipped everything around them, though a number of cave paintings shows hunting of animals but animals and forests were seen as a separate world and they were equally respected and prayed. Hunting was the most important activity for which regular prayers were conducted specially in the caves. Death was not seen as an end, it is believed that even death was celebrated with feast, a lot of bones has been found near the burial sites that indicates rituals feast after the burial practice, death was actually considered beginning of a new journey. During Neolithic period importance of hunting declined and humans started living a settled life, this lead to the increase in the complexity of society and evolution of new religious ideas, impact of these ideas can be clearly seen at the end of Neolithic period and rise of complex cities.