The roots of religion | Genvieve Von Petzinger | TEDxVictoria

Genevieve von Petzinger talks about the development of the conceptual ability of the human mind – the ability to make tools and to develop religion being thought to be somewhat concomitant.

We live in a world

that is absolutely infused
with religion and spirituality,

sometimes even to the point
where maybe we don't recognize it.

It affects everything from something
as simple as the holidays we celebrate,

to the names that we give our children,

to something much more really
saddening and sort of disheartening,

which is finding a conflict
on the other side of the world somewhere.

I mean, any given day,

somewhere somebody is fighting
about spirituality and religion.

So, let's take a look at how this all
plays out then on a global scale.

Depending on whom you talk to,
there's about 20 major world religions -

so, these are ones that are in more
than one country, more than one continent.

Add to that hundreds of belief systems,

and out of the 7 billion people who live
on this planet at this point in time,

just under 6 billion profess
to follow some sort of faith.

Now, I want you to try and imagine
a world with no religion.

What would it look like?

Because that is the reality,

is if we go far enough back
into our own deep history,

there was a time, maybe not
with Homo sapiens, maybe further back,

where we didn't have any religion.

So, as you can see in the slide behind me,

that's a very simplified
evolutionary chart,

but it's a question that people
in my field, palaeoanthropology,

have asked: How far back
does the religious impulse go?

And how would you get at that?
It's incredibly subjective, right?

So, obviously Homo sapiens at the top.

We know that Homo sapiens
have religion, that's us.

But, what about heidelbergensis
before us, and erectus,

and all the way back to Homo habilis.

You know, Homo habilis
2.5 million years ago,

they're considered to be a good candidate
for the original toolmakers.

And you might wonder - tools, religion,
what do these potentially have in common?

But, if you actually think about
what kind of leap making tools is,

there are some things in common.

For instance, when you're
actually making a tool -

so you've got one piece of stone
and you've got another to shape it -

you have to hold a mental template
in your head

of what that finished product
is going to look like.

And also what we find
with these early toolmakers,

is that they actually were exhibiting
forethought and pre-planning.

They were taking
a piece of flint with them,

along the landscape,
so that when their current tool ran out,

or got down to kind of a nub,
they could make themselves a new one.

So, there are some
researchers in my field,

especially a fellow
by the name of Thomas Wynn,

has teamed up with a neuropsychologist,
by the name of Frederick Coolidge,

and the two of them have talked
about something called working memory.

And so, it's not one spot in the brain

so much as sort of several functions
that kind of work together,

that allow things like mental templates
and allow things like pre-planning.

Now, they've made the argument
that even on a very basic level

chimps probably do have
some working memory as well.

Of course, they can also use tools,

they're just not very good at -

Basically, they'll take their stick,

they'll rip off the leaves,
they'll use it to dip some termites out,

but then they tend to dump it.

That's pretty much it,
they're done with that tool.

So, there's not a lot of examples
of chimps reusing tools

or sort of behaving
in exactly the same way

as what we see with Homo habilis.

But with that as sort of the base
and that idea of working memory,

they've then sort of extrapolated that

and said, let's talk about something
that they call enhanced working memory.

And so enhanced working memory -

basically there's
several components to it.

This is sort of taking that,
and then basically putting it on steroids.

So, not just that basic mental template
and pre-planning,

but now let's add to that
the ability to envision

and work with abstract concepts.

Let's talk about mental time travel.

Now, what I mean when I say
mental time travel,

is the ability to think about
past and future.

These are actually very unusual things.

We take them for granted,

but they're not something that necessarily
other species can conceive of.

I mean obviously your dog seems
to remember about going to the vet,

which is sort of an interesting thing,

but you know he doesn't have
a strong sense of clear episodic memories

of having been to the vet

so much as this is a bad thing
when I go into this building,

it smells a certain way - and, you know,
this is danger basically flashing.

So, the clear ability to also say,
with mental time travel,

"When I tried making a tool
using this material before,

this didn't work very well,

so, I'm going to do it
differently this time."

Or, "I saw this person in the next
hunter-gatherer group over do something.

That worked really nicely,
I want to do that."

All those kinds of things,
as well as being able to think forwards:

so, pre-planning,
but even at a greater degree.

Imagination, because again the ability
to sort of conceive of something,

like a mental template
when you're making a tool,

relies on us being able
to visualize something

that doesn't actually exist
at that moment in time -

it's more, again,
that we're looking forward.

And then, of course, the capacity
to understand and manipulate symbols.

And, so, this is where we get to things
like language and to art.

So, you probably saw
I said the "God spot,"

what we're talking about there is that,

certainly starting in probably about,
I think, in the 1990's,

once we, especially neuropsychologists,

once they had their fancy MRI's
and other brain scans,

they really started looking to see

if there was one spot in the brain
that could be associated with God.

And they even actually did some study

where they actually had
the people in the MRI,

and they were like, okay,
we want you to think about

your vision of God or faith
or spiritually while you're in here,

while we see if we can map
the areas of the brain

that light up while we're doing that.

And they kept getting one spot
that was lighting up,

and so it was this huge, like, we did it,
aha, we found the God spot.

Turns out it's the spot that lights up
when people are concentrating.

(Laughter)

So, we definitely know
where they concentrate,

but, of course, everybody concentrated
on thinking about God,

so, that was the problem.

But I think really what neuropsychologists
and what people working on evolution

are working towards, is the idea
there's probably not one spot.

Similar to enhanced working memory,

there's actually
several parts of the brain

that are all kind of working together

to create that space
and those types of abilities.

So, is it all in the lobes?

Behind me on the slide what you'll see

is that on the left-hand side
we have a Homo erectus,

so that's 1.65 million years ago.

And then on the right-hand side
we have a Homo sapiens skull

from about 20,000 years ago in Germany.

20,000 years ago in Germany,
their skulls were identical to ours -

I just thought it might be cooler

to use a sort of fossil skull
for Homo sapiens.

Now, what I want you to look at though,

is that when you see the profile,

erectus has that nice
big brow ridge we think of,

but you'll notice behind that,

it actually slopes at quite
a sharp angle backwards.

Now look at that beautiful,
big, old forehead

on the Homo sapiens skull.

Those are the frontal lobes.

This is pretty much where all
of our higher reasoning comes from,

from those spots right there.

You know, thinking about it,
what's so interesting

is that while we sit here, in this room,

having this conversation,

you're using those frontal parts
of your lobes, aren't you?

But the question that's come up is:

It can physically be there,
but is it maybe more about wiring?

Not just about size,
but then also about how is it wired,

how are the neural pathways moving.

So, this is where
the scholars I mentioned,

Wynn and Coolidge working together,

have made the argument that they believe
that the truly modern thought,

that ability [which includes]
imagination, mental time travel,

they believe it started
with modern humans.

So, what do I mean
when I say modern humans?

About 200,000 years ago,

we've been able to find
the earliest skeletons,

that we currently have of what
we would call fully modern humans.

That means that their skeletons
were identical to ours,

and their brain size was exactly the same.

Now, that doesn't mean though,

that they were actually using
all of the abilities we had,

and this is something
that is a particular area of mine

that I find really fascinating,
as well, trying to figure out:

When did they become us?

Because we're more
than just the brain size and the body,

it's also about how we use that brain.

And what's so fascinating
about the early humans in Africa,

is that, for probably about the first
80,000 years or so,

they're not really doing much different

than the ancestor species
that came before them.

They're making really nice tools,

surviving quite well,
making good use of their landscape,

all of those types of things are in place.

But what we're not seeing is those kinds
of behaviours that make us go: They're us.

And then, suddenly,
around 120,000 years ago,

what starts happening
is we suddenly start finding

what we call symbolic behaviour.

And what we mean when we say that

are things that we would consider
to be non-utilitarian.

So, not something that's useful
at a very 1:1 ratio level of survival,

something to keep you warm at night,

something to eat,
something to shelter you.

We start finding burials.

120,000 years ago is the oldest burials
we know of in the world,

and not just burials but burials
with grave goods in them.

So, in this case, what we're talking
about at the 120,000 mark -

they were finding a few marine shells
that have perforations,

and some of the perforations look
like they probably occurred naturally,

some may have been made by tools,

but the kicker is that those little holes
in the shells have wear marks on them,

which means that they were
being worn in some fashion.

Now, there's nothing about doing that
that is remotely useful

for again heat, shelter, food.

So, what's going on?
What's happened? What's changed?

And this is kind of
the story going forward,

and this is again where Wynn and Coolidge
have made this argument,

and other scholars have as well,

that modern humans is where
that big change takes place.

They've made the argument potentially even
that the change started here,

but that some sort of genetic mutation
or something else

happened around 40-50,000 years ago,

and that that was
when truly modern behaviour,

the full suite of behaviours
that we associate with being modern,

music and mathematics and the ability
to envision things that aren't there,

and all of these things
which are very much about us,

and, of course, full language,
communication, all that kind of thing.

They see it as happening
around 40-50,00 years ago,

which coincides with
when modern humans left Africa.

Maybe it might have been
as early as 60,000,

so somewhere in that 40-60,000 range,

is when modern humans left Africa

and basically went out
and populated the Old World.

Now, I'm personally going to talk to you
tonight about the Ice Age in Europe,

and it's not that there weren't
interesting things being done

by modern humans who went
to other parts of the Old World.

In Asia and Australia,
there's lots of fascinating stuff,

but I study the Ice Age,
so it's what I know best.

So, that's where we're going to stick
with, looking at the Ice Age, today.

When it comes to Europe,
let's set the scene a little bit.

Obviously, we've got an Ice Age going on,

and an Ice Age is not static by any means.

We certainly have movement
of the glacier sheets,

but overall definitely colder,
an icy environment,

but very rich in animals as well.

Huge herds of bison and mammoth

and all these other things
on the landscape.

So, lots of things to eat,
which was kind of a pull factor

that probably kept modern humans there.

They show up in Europe somewhere around
40,000, even 45,000, in some spots,

and they spread out around there,

and this again coincides with what
we call the creative explosion, sometimes.

It's not that they weren't doing
interesting things before,

but this is when it starts
getting really interesting.

This is when we start finding
a lot of symbolic materials,

like portable art pieces and lots
of jewellery and other interesting things,

in the archaeological record
alongside the stone tools.

So, what would we look for?

Let's go back to this idea
of religion and spirituality,

and how you get that
in the archaeological record.

Because, if you think about that far back,

basically, we're working with stone tools.

So, there's not really much to go at,

and so how do we start trying
to move beyond that,

and actually look for
these indirect clues?

Well, there's three main things
that people in my field tend to use

looking at that.

The first is burials
with elaborate grave goods.

So, the necklace itself
at the 120,000 mark,

very interesting, very cool,

but we can take that a bit farther,

and say: What about if they're putting
lots of elaborate items into that burial?

Impossible entities being depicted.

So, when I use the term
impossible entities,

we're referring to things
that do not appear anywhere in nature.

So, we're not referring
to anything in the real world.

Something that's, say,
half-animal, half-human,

would be an impossible entity.

And then, of course, trying to identify
magic and spiritual themes

in the art itself.

And this is on portable pieces
and, of course,

my particular area of study,
the cave walls.

So, to quickly go over a couple of these

and I'll give you some ideas
of what we're seeing.

For an elaborate burial,
this one is a very famous burial

and it's an absolutely fascinating one.

This is actually one
of three burials from this site.

This particular one is the adult male,

and it's about 28,000 years old,
it's from Russia,

and you notice there's little white things
all over his skeleton there.

Those are ivory beads.

There are approximately
3,500 ivory beads in this burial.

An archaeologist in our field,
his name's Randy White,

actually went to the effort
of trying to do

what we call experimental archaeology.

And he actually took
the mammoth ivory and practiced

until he could get quite good
at making the beads,

and even when he was good at it,
it took an hour per bead.

Do the math on that.

Then on top of that,
we actually have the fact

that the two other burials
at that particular site

are actually of two children.

A little boy and a little girl,

and they're buried in a double burial.

The little boy has 4,500 beads,

so 1,000 more than the adult male,

and the little girl has over 5,000.

So, what we're seeing here then
is potentially the fact

that they're seeing death as being a state
that's different than life,

and yet worth recognizing
and worth paying attention to,

and worth acknowledging, and, frankly,

worth the sheer amount of effort
of making all those beads

only to bury them in the ground
and cover them up.

So, something is definitely
going on in that sense.

Then, of course, we come
to impossible entities.

And this one is a wonderful,
classic example.

This is an ivory carved figurine,
it's probably about this tall.

Head of a lion, body of a human.

Again coming back to that,
that doesn't exist anywhere in nature.

So, what's going on?
Why are they depicting this?

This is not a self-representation.

And there's people in my field
who have made the proposal

that, maybe, this could be
some sort of mythology,

something to do with origin stories
and things like that.

So, there's these interesting examples

that exist throughout
the archaeological record.

That particular one
is about 32,000 years old.

What about hunting magic?

When I say hunting magic, I mean this,

this is from the cave
called Niaux, in France,

and you've got a bison
that's painted on a cave wall,

and if you notice it looks like
there's almost some sort of spear

sticking out of its side.

So, in this case what people have proposed

is that what we could be seeing is them
almost trying to kill the animal

ritually in the cave first,

in order to ensure success
when they go out on the real hunt.

And we do have some examples
where there's not just the spears,

but there's also punctuation marks,

which almost looks like maybe somebody
was banging a real spear or something

at the image on the wall.

So, again, that suggests
some sort of harnessing

of some unseen world -
there's something going on.

And then this is another great example
here of an impossible entity

which has also been potentially
identified as being a shaman.

Now, the reason why they say that
is the idea that:

What if they were wearing a mask?

What if this, rather than being
an impossible entity,

is an actual depiction of a human
partially dressed up like an animal?

You see the legs have
a much more human look,

they're not very bison-like,
yet the head has that very bison look,

and the arms are also very human.

So, this is where they started to talk
about the idea of shamanistic practices,

because shamans, of course -

the term itself comes from Russia,

but it's applied a lot
to basically spiritual practices

where there are
specific members of your tribe

who intercede on your behalf
with an unseen world.

Whether it's to influence weather,
to influence the hunt,

or to do with health,

and with people being sick
and trying to make them better again,

there's these people that do that.

And what's so interesting about
some modern examples, for instance,

is that there is a fellow
by the name of David Lewis-Williams,

who is a researcher in rock art
who works in South Africa,

and he had the wonderful opportunity
to actually speak with the San people,

who are a hunter-gatherer group
living in northern Southern Africa.

They live out in the desert,

and still practice
the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

And guess what? They still do rock art.

So, here had the opportunity to ask them,
"So, why do you guys do the art?"

Now, it doesn't explain all the art,

but certainly shamanistic practices
played a large role in it.

Things like handprints.

They talked about the idea that caves

were almost like a transitional place
between worlds.

That once you go into a cave -

we go in with headlamps and lots of light,

and we know what a cave is, geologically.

But imagine if you didn't know.

It almost has a feel of maybe being
a portal to another reality.

And they've talked about
the idea of those cave walls

as almost being maybe membranes
that they could touch,

and through those membranes
touch the unseen.

So, now, we get specifically

to a research project
that I've been working on,

where I said, okay,
well, let's try with this,

because, of course, modern people
in Africa doing this -

minimum of 10,000 years' difference
between what's happening in Europe,

could we get at that? Is it possible?

Are we seeing on the walls, potentially,
some of the trance-like imagery

which they have said
that that's why they're doing it.

Because you see, the actual human mind -

Obviously, trance is when we go
into an altered state of consciousness.

There's many things that will be
culturally specific to where you live,

like the animals you see in the imagery,

but geometric imagery
actually happens to be almost universal.

And the reason for that

is our eyes are only hard-wired
to be able to produce certain shapes

when we're in a state of trance.

And so this is where,
what I've looked at is,

can we find those in the caves in Europe.

And the study is still ongoing,

but I thought I'd share a little
with you today,

which was that with dots,
with lines, with grids,

yes, absolutely, we're finding those.

But, some of the other ones, not so much.

Zigzags, there's only
about 15 examples over 300 sites

that have zigzags in them.

So, they're not totally behaving the way
that the people in, say, South Africa are.

When it comes to spirals,
there's only two.

So, in that sense spirals
are even more uncommon,

and not something that we're seeing
throughout the archaeological record.

So, what does that mean?

Basically, what it suggests to me -

I can't give you a definitive answer,

and say, "Yes, absolutely, there were
spiritual people living back then."

But, the signs are
definitely there to suggest

this was something that was developing,

something that existed.

And I'll leave you
with the thought that they're us.

In every sense of the word,

those people who lived between 10,000
and 40,000 years ago were modern humans.

So, if we're capable of it,
why wouldn't they have been?

Thank you.

(Applause)