Emergence and Time of Early Animism in Africa (Eastern and Southern Africa), as well as South African-speaking groups

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Emergence and Time of Early Animism in Africa, as well as South African-speaking groups (VIDEO)

Burial evidence of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens sharing culture between 120,000 and 100,000 years ag0 (blog post)

Did Neanderthals teach us “Primal Religion” (Pre-Animism or Animism) 120,000 to 100,000 Years Ago (VIDEO)

“Graves are the clearest signs of spiritual behavior, as they mark the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Most often, archaeologists seek to identify grave goods, pigment use, or other forms of symbolic behavior to differentiate burials motivated by other reasons, such as hygiene.” ref

Above-world or Under-world?

Investigating what could have come first: heaven or underworld beliefs. I realized that beliefs about souls going into the sky (such as seen in Milky Way mythology, souls to the stars or sun) are older than beliefs about souls going to the underworld (as seen in three-level world beliefs like heaven, Earth, and underworld mythology). However, what may and likely did come either before or at a similar time to Milky Way mythology (100,000 to 70,000 years ago) was the belief that either souls stayed on the earth, reincarnated back into a new human life or animal life, or merged with a group/universal spirit somewhere in the earthly environment (such as a forest or sacred area of land like a body of water “river, lake, swamp, bog” or “hill/mountain, cave, valley/gorge”).

I think it is probable that if the Neandertals (in the Middle East 120,000 to 100,000 years ago or before in Croatia 130,000 years ago) had animistic mythology that related to their burials, it more likely could have involved the thinking that spirits or souls of the dead stayed in the Earthly Environment (not go to some above-world or under-world), this would seem to then relate to a potential reason they buried their dead and transmitted this myth thinking to modern humans in the Middle East. This northerly animism mythology I am relating with the neandertals, I surmise was different than the seeming animism mythology over 100,000 years ago in Southern Africa, which I speculate probably related to “Milky Way” above-world animism mythology beliefs expressed in red ocher with marking and a lack of burials (as would be similar to Hadza indigenous African hunter-gatherers, who traditionally did not bury their dead, nor have much regard for the body after death and had beliefs that the spirits of their people go to the above-world at death but yet lack an afterworld, “spirits leave and then end existing”). The burials stated in South Africa with the southern migration of the “Back-to-Africa” people leaving the Middle East moving south in Africa. Likewise, animistic mythology related to the “Milky Way” above-world moved north and did not leave “Out of Africa” until about 60,000 to 50,000 years ago, connected with the main “Out of Africa” migration, then spread these two sets of animistic mythology thinking: one that spirits or souls of the dead stayed in the earthly environment, and the other that spirits or souls of the dead go to some above-world.

Here are two African cultures with religious beliefs about death: one that could relate to northern animism and another that could relate to southern animism. 

Possible Northern Animism Analog Thinking Culture (spirits stay in the earthly realm)

“The Tikar people are a Central African ethnic group in Cameroon. The Tikar refer to God the Creator as Nyuy, and the Bamileke refer to Nyuy as Si. Both groups, along with the other peoples of the Grasslands, believe God requires them to revere their lineage ancestors. This is pivotal to their spirituality, as they traditionally believed ancestral spirits were embodied in the skulls of the deceased and remained present. The eldest living male in each lineage possesses the skulls, and all members of an extended family recognize the same skulls as belonging to their group. When a family decides to relocate, a dwelling, which must first be purified by a diviner, is built to house the skulls in the new location. Although not all ancestral skulls are in a family’s possession, they are not forgotten. These spirits have nowhere to reside, though, and may as a result cause trouble for the family. To compensate when a man’s skull is not preserved, a family member must undergo a ceremony involving pouring libations into the ground. Earth gathered from the site of that offering then represents the skull of the deceased. Respect is also paid to female skulls, although detail about such practices is largely unrecorded.” ref

Possible Southern Animism Analog Thinking Culture (spirits go to the above/sky realm)

“The Hadza do not follow a formal religion, and it has been claimed that they do not believe in an afterlife. They offer prayers to Ishoko (the Sun) or to Haine (the moon) during hunts and believe they go to Ishoko (the Sun) when they die. Sometimes the Hadza leave the dead without burying them, instead moving them to another place. The Hadza are among those who ignore the dead or do little for the dead. The Hadza treat death with very little fuss, and when someone is laid to rest, no permanent markers, monuments, or gravestones are erected. After placing the body, community members might simply toss a few dry twigs over the site and walk away without prolonged or dramatic goodbyes. A generation or two ago, the Hadza did not bury their dead. They traditionally wrapped the body and left it on the ground or in the deep bush for wild animals and scavengers (such as hyenas or lions) to consume. They viewed this as a practical way to give back to the ecosystem and complete the natural circle of life. However, in modern times, they may instead choose to bury the corpse, typically wrapping the deceased and placing them inside a quickly dug, shallow hole or grave in the forest. They often pack or harden the soil and place rocks or brush on top to discourage scavengers. The Hadza do hold rituals such as the monthly epeme dance for men at the new moon. Ishoko and Haine (Ishoko is a solar figure, and Haine, her husband, is a lunar figure) are mythological figures who are believed to have arranged the world by rolling the sky and the earth like two sheets of leather and swapping their order to put the sky above us.” ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Heaven and Earth: the First Two Parts?

“In traditional African mythologies, the separation of heaven and earth describes a time when the divine realm and the human world were physically close or connected but grew apart due to a human action or an accidental offense. Common themes in African mythology include the Heaven and Earth connection and its later separation. Heaven (the sky, or the domain of the creator god) was originally low or linked directly to the earth by a rope, chain, or ladder (likely related to the “Milky Way”). Humans could easily climb up to speak with the creator god. A human mistake—frequently a woman striking the sky or the rope with a pestle while pounding grain (agriculture related shows a younger origin time for this potencual mythology change: Near East domestic cereals were in Northern Sudan under 7,000 years ago), or disobedience regarding food and rules (totemism related, thus it could predate agriculture related) —offended the creator (a god makes the origin date younger as well, likely after between 9,000 to 7,000 years ago, as I speculate gods did not come from the Middle East until then. The supreme being/creator god retreated far into the sky, severed the physical connector (likely having a relation to/or relating to the older beliefs of spirits traveling the “Milky Way”). For the Dinka (in Southern Sudan) a rope used to hang down from heaven, allowing people to climb up and converse with the creator Nhialic, until a woman struck the sky with a garden pole (likely having a relation to the “Milky Way”) and severed the connection forever.  For the Efik (in Nigeria) the creator Abassi and his wife Atai initially kept humanity close, but human disobedience—tilling the soil (agriculture related)—led to a permanent earthly separation. For the Dogon (in Mali), creation involves a cosmic descent from the celestial realm via an ark down a bridge or chain, symbolizing an original unity and subsequent ordering of the earthly world separate from the pure source of heaven. For the Akan in West Africa, the sky once pressed so close that a woman pounding grain (agriculture-related) could reach up and touch the sky god Nyame with the tip of her pestle. Then came the blow. A pestle swung upward by a woman preparing food struck the sky. Some versions say it happened once. Others say it happened again and again, as neighbors joined in, as children reached up for curiosity, as the divine ceiling grew bruised from human carelessness. Nyame, offended, withdrew. He lifted himself high and far, to the place where the sky now lives, and the distance between the human world and the sacred never fully closed again.” ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

“One recurring theme across various mythologies is the descent from heaven to earth, facilitated by a divine or supernatural means such as a rope, chain, web, or similar object. These myths not only explain the connection between the divine and mortal realms but also emphasize significant transitions in human history, such as the establishment of civilization, the beginning of human autonomy, or the creation of land. For the Surma in southern Ethiopia, they once resided in the heavens with their creator god Tuma. One day, Tuma decided to send the Surma people to earth by opening a large hole in the clouds and providing them with ropes (likely related to the “Milky Way”) to descend safely to earth. The place where they arrived is known as the Kibbish River, a location that remains significant to their cultural heritage. But while grinding grain, a woman accidentally broke the rope. One version suggests that while grinding, she either stumbled or the grinding process itself somehow interfered with the rope, causing it to snap. Another version implies that the grinding tools or the force used in the process caused the rope to break. For the Yoruba in Nigeria, the narrative also involves a descent from the heavens: the Supreme God Olodumare sent Oduduwa to earth to create land. Oduduwa descended on a chain carrying essential items to perform his task, such as a calabash of sand, a chicken, and a palm nut. After successfully creating land at Ile Ife, which became the cradle of Yoruba civilization, the chain (likely having a relation to the “Milky Way”) linking heaven and earth was withdrawn by Olodumare, severing the direct connection between the divine and human realms.” ref

“Mythical bonds, akin to ropes or cables, played the role of cohesively holding the entire world and all its layers of heaven and Earth together. These are sometimes called the “bonds of heaven and earth”. They can be referred to with terminology like durmāhu (typically referring to a strong rope made of reeds), markaṣu (referring to a rope or cable of a boat, for example), or ṣerretu (lead-rope passed through an animal’s nose). Heaven and Earth connected mythology is also seen the cosmology of the ancient Near East beliefs about where the universe, an area that corresponds with the Middle East today (including Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, the Levant, Anatolia/Turkey, and the Arabian Peninsula) were existence starts with only a primordial state of “Heaven and Earth,” which are connected as one dual gendered being with two parts “bond of heaven and earth” but no seeming underworld, and only later were they split and into three plane of existence (or more parts) with heaven, Earth, and then also a defined lowest plane of existence the underworld. “Heaven and earth” was a common phrase for the entire cosmos, describing it by its two main parts. Sometimes, a third region was added to refer to the entire cosmos in addition to these two, usually the netherworld or the region between heaven and earth. The cosmic union, or marriage, of heaven and earth is spoken of in ancient Near Eastern texts stretching back to the 3rd millennium BCE. The first source that mentions their separation is from the late 3rd millennium BCE, known as the Song of the hoe. During the 2nd millennium BCE, these texts shift their focus from union to the separation of heaven and earth, as shown in Sumerian, Akkadian, Phoenician, Egyptian, and Greek mythologies. The separation of heaven and earth is a cross-cultural creation myth event. The separation serves the role of differentiating the chaotic, undifferentiated cosmos (sometimes interpreted as a universal cosmic ocean) into coherent and organized parts. The mechanics and causes differ from one story to another, but usually involve either a spontaneous process or the agency of a deity. In the Sumerian sources, heaven and earth are separated over the course of “long days and nights” (similar to the six-day timeline in the Genesis creation narrative), by two gods: Anu, the King of Heaven, and Enlil, the King of Earth. Or the cause of the separation involves either the agency of Enlil or takes place as a spontaneous act. One recovered Hittite text states that there was a time when they “severed the heaven from the earth with a cleaver”, and an Egyptian text refers to “when the sky was separated from the earth.” Sumerian texts say Enlil separated Earth from Sky and separated Sky from Earth. The introduction of Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld says that heaven is carried off from the earth by the supreme sky god Anu (the divine personification of the “Sky”/”Heaven”, king of the gods, and ancestor of many of the deities in ancient Mesopotamian religion ref) to become the possession of the wind god Enlil. Several other sources also present this idea. In “many” ancient Near Eastern cultures, the underworld had a prominent place in descriptions of the sun journey, where the sun would carry out various roles including judgment related to the dead. During the day, when the moon was not visible, it was thought that the moon descended beneath the flat disk of the earth and, like the sun, underwent a voyage through the underworld. Both Babylonian and Israelite texts describe one of the divisions of the cosmos as the underworldly ocean. In Babylonian texts, this is coincided with the region/god Abzu. In Sumerian mythology, this realm was created by Enki, the god of fresh subterranean waters. It was also where Enki lived and ruled over.” ref, ref

“Proto-Indo-European primordial state of “Heaven and Earth” mythology thinking is similar as well. The main Proto-Indo-European mythologies to reconstruct a potential original thinking are Indo-Iranian/Indian-Vedic, Baltic, Roman, Norse, Celtic, Germans, Greek, Slavic, Hittite, Armenian, and Albanian. In Indo-European mythology, the separation of heaven and earth stems from the primordial coupling of the Sky Father (*Dyēus Ph₂tēr) and Mother Earth (*Dʰéǵʰōm), whose union or splitting gave shape to the ordered cosmos.  In Indo-European traditions, Earth Mother and Sky Father are generally worshipped as the two of the primary deities. However, many of these same mythologies, as well as others across the world, tell of a primordial separation between earth and sky, potentially effected by some third god or hero figure, albeit the details are somewhat hazy or disconsonant.” ref, ref, ref

“In Chinese mythology and in Taoism, heaven and earth are separated. In earlier sources, this is a process that happens spontaneously. Later sources, after a primordial being named Pangu (P’an Ku) had been transformed into a great deity and the creator of heaven and earth, relate the separation of the two to Pangu. In earlier sources, Pangu is originally inside of heaven and earth. The three of them grow over the course of 18,000 years, eventually separating. In the Wuyan Linianji, the growth and separation of heaven and earth occurs naturally, and only later does Pangu begin to grow. In later texts, once Pangu had become transformed into the creator of heaven and earth, the growing body of Pangu is the cause of the separation of heaven and earth. Other late sources have heaven and earth being created out of distinct parts of the corpse of Pangu.” ref

“The separation myth occurs among indigenous natives of both the North and South Americas. As well as in Oceania (especially Polynesia), as well as in Indonesia, a myth appears that begins with a primordial sexual union between Heaven (Rangi) and Earth (Papa), and then describes their separation. In the creation according to the Māori, Rangi and Papa, or Heaven and Earth, were the source from which, in the beginning, all things originated. Darkness then rested upon the heaven and upon the earth, and they still both stuck together, for they had not yet been cleaved apart.” ref

To me, Neanderthals were related with “primordial religion” (pre-animism) at least by 130,000 years ago as seen by both evolved symbolism and the earliest primary burials and secondary “double funeral” re-burial or other mortuary practices/ritual burial actions in Krapina, Croatia. Some of these Neanderthals then went to the Middle east/Israel and started burying by 120,000 years ago. “Secondary burial was used by Homo Neanderthals and by anatomically modern Homo sapiens.” ref, ref And between 120,000 and 100,000 years ago, small migrations of modern Homo sapiens exited “out-of-Africa” into the Middle east/Israel meeting and blending culture with the Neanderthals, and also started burying by 120,000 years ago for the first time. Likely influenced by Neanderthals, but we had evolved it by 100,000 years ago, adding grave goods such as animal bones or horns in the graves with the bodies, demonstrating human evolution of the religious/ritual ideas transferred.

Religion is a cultural product and moved in cultural migrations.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

From a scientific perspective, belief in spirits is classified as a form of magical thinking or superstition rather than a physically measurable reality.

“Magical thinking—the need to believe that one’s hopes and desires can have an effect on how the world turns—is everywhere. Spirits, ghosts, patterns, and signs seem to be everywhere, especially if you look for them. People tend to connect mystical thinking with real-life events, even when it’s not rational. Of course, some of this is animistic thinking, with the belief that the supernatural is everywhere and has some power over what happens in people’s lives. There is some comfort in thinking that someone or something is pulling all the cosmic strings. It gives us permission to relax a little. Magical Thinking starts at a young age. Children are primary make-believe enthusiasts; they embrace fantasies like imaginary friends with passion. This is normal in child development. Researchers believe that fantastical play and magical thinking do indeed promote creative divergent thinking. One study has found that when children watched a film with magical undertones, their performance on creative tasks increased significantly when compared with children who watched a film with no references to magic. Children start to believe when they are toddlers. As children grow older, around age 10, they move away from fantastical play and question how feasible magical thinking is. Sometimes people look for meaning in strange places; that’s because the brain is designed to pick up on patterns. Making such connections helped our ancestors survive what they didn’t fully understand—for instance, they learned not to eat a certain kind of berry, or they would die. Seeing patterns also creates an illusion of control, offering comfort by eliminating unwanted surprises. Humans look for superstitions, lucky numbers, coincidences, synchronicities, among other forms of thinking. Superstitions come in many forms, and they appear across cultures.” ref

I don’t believe in the supernatural notion of a “soul,” especially with our natural only evolution. Undesigned natural processes of evolution made us “believing-machines.” I am not an animist, thus I don’t believe in souls or spirits. How can I? When in our natural only evolution was there added magical anything? I can’t buy anything but natural, thus, I can be labeled a “Metaphysical naturalist (also called ontological naturalist, philosophical naturalist, and anti-supernaturalist) which is a philosophical worldview that holds that there is nothing but natural elements, principles, and relations of the kind studied by the natural sciences.” ref

The belief in or proposal of spirits/souls is a common foundation in animistic thinking held by young children and supported by religious/supernatural beliefs. However, this spirit/soul theorizing is a magical-thinking superstition about nature, not a real feature of nature.

I fully enjoy the value (axiology) of archaeology (empirical evidence from facts or artifacts at a site) as knowledge (epistemology) of the past, adding to our anthropology (evidence from cultures both present and past) intellectual (rational) assumptions about the likely reality of actual events from time past.

Religion is Unwarranted Faith and Belief.  The problem with religion is unwarranted faith and belief. The problem of faith is that it is an invalid justification, and the belief problem is holding unjustified false belief and believing it is justified true belief. I use the Animism term as a definition of spirit-beliefs or a kind of Supernatural-Spiritism thinking, that to me, are in all spiritual or religious-type beliefs, not primitive but core. I see Animism as the original religion (religious non-naturalism/supernatural persuasion or spiritual/magical thinking) of all humanity and is still in all the religions of the world.

I am mainly a prehistorian, 1 million to around 5,000/4,000 years ago. So, while I may understand the past, most don’t; I don’t know a lot of history that many seem to commonly know. 

Nothing is a justified true belief without valid or reliable reason and evidence; just as everything believed must be open to question, leaving nothing above challenge.

I don’t see religious terms Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, or Paganism as primitive but as original or core elements that are different parts of worldviews and their supernatural/non-natural beliefs or thinking.

In the past or even lingering today, are beliefs often ripe with religious bigotry, seen in how religious/spiritual thinking not Abrahamic (Judaism, Christianity, or Islam) religious thinking are often believed to be primitive, unequal, or less than monotheism (preserved as the only real or not the correct religion beliefs if not monotheism).

I see all religions as having shared or similar features or core elements that relate to religious terms such as Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, or Paganism, including Abrahamic (Judaism, Christianity, or Islam) religious thinking.

I don’t classify any religious thinking as primitive, but in error to what I see as a natural-only world, religious thinking then makes up a myriad of non-natural/non-empirical themes/beings, stories, and myths that, when grouped together, are called religions.

To me, Animistic Somethingism: You just feel/think there has to be something supernatural/spirit-world or feel/think things are supernatural/spirit-filled. “Somethingism” is commonly an unspecified belief in an undetermined supernatural reality, stated sometimes as spiritual but not religious, but, to me, is basically unrealized animism. Vague Theism or god Somethingism: just say NO! May I remind you , vague theism, somethingism or “ietsism” is not some Philosophers Stone of Theism removed from strong critique.

So loudly, I will proclaim supernatural, and gods are willful mental illusions, confusions, and lies that are commonly inspired by a life of religious influences, religiously motivated fears, and or religious indoctrination. I laugh at questions like “what would convince you of god” as if I approach thinking differently dependent. As a rationalist I am always moved best by valid and reliable reason and evidence, you know the very stuff, all religions and any supernatural claim always lack in the end. Religion is big on claims but small of real reasoning, full of logical fallacies in thinking, and no evidence to quorate all their delusionary supernatural nonsense and superstitions.

“But Damien, Souls are real because energy does not die!”

My response: That is a logical fallacy, as it is not a reasoned jump in logic. Energy leaves all once-alive bodies by dissipating heat into the environment, and then is gone as the once-related energy in a now-dead body.

“It is almost an animist’s argument…that the idea that things possess some kind of energy. To me, the logical fallacy is equating energy with a soul. All matter in the universe consists of energy; that’s why you can’t get to absolute zero…by that I mean removing all heat from something. So if we agree scientifically that a soul is energy and that everything in the universe has energy, therefore a soul…it is an animist’s position that makes no meaningful argument…Ultimately, the person saying the soul is heat… By the way, the logical fallacy both of us were addressing is the false equivalency fallacy, meaning wrongly associating one thing with another.” – Marquis Amon

“The physical remains themselves hold the potential for more energy to be released. The body releases more energy as it decomposes or is incinerated. Well, that’s how it was explained to me, and it makes sense now.” – Susanna Sharp-Schwacke

Simply put, no accepted scientific evidence shows that souls or spirits exist. Modern neuroscience shows that human traits like memory, emotion, and personality come from physical activity in the brain. When the brain is hurt or changes, a person’s behavior and consciousness change with it. Injuries to specific parts of the brain change how a person thinks or acts.

Go religion-free and rise to your own self-mastery.

• Aterian Culture (North African 145,000–20,000 years ago)
• Sangoan Culture (sub-Saharan African 130,000-10,000 years ago)

A study suggests that the oldest Language began at least 135,000 years ago

“Rather than look at fossils and artifacts, they studied the movement of ancient populations via 15 genetic studies conducted over the past 18 years. Three featured Y chromosome analysis (tracing paternal lineage), three examined mitochondrial DNA (tracing maternal lineage), and nine were whole-genome studies. All indicated that early Homo sapiens began diverging around 135,000 years ago. The researchers believe all languages likely stem from a single original language. This would mean that ancient humans had the capacity for language before we spread across the planet. “All languages are related,” the lead researcher explained. The first major split among humans occurred around 135,000 years ago, so we can infer that language must have existed by then — or even earlier.” ref

“Moreover, an article in the journal Science proposed an African origin of modern human languages. It was suggested that human language predates the out-of-Africa migrations of 50,000 to 70,000 years ago and that language might have been the essential cultural and cognitive innovation that facilitated human colonization of the globe. Also, by tracing the number of distinct sounds, or phonemes — consonants, vowels, and tones — in 504 world languages, the finding provides compelling evidence that they can be traced back to a long-forgotten dialect spoken by our Stone Age ancestors.” ref, ref

“Likewise, scientists say they have traced the world’s 6,000 modern languages — from English to Mandarin — back to a single “mother tongue,” an ancestral language spoken in sub-Saharan Africa 50,000 to 70,000 years ago. This research suggests that this single ancient language gave rise to human civilization—a Diaspora—as well as advances in art and hunting tool technology, and laid the groundwork for all the world’s cultures.” ref

A shared language would help transmit a shared religious worldview, as well as mythological thinking.

A shared language is one of the most powerful ways to transmit a shared religious worldview and mythological thinking. When a group speaks the same language, they share more than vocabulary; they share a framework for conceptualizing natural reality or a proposed supernatural. Language maps out what a culture deems important. In many ancient worldviews, language does not just describe reality; it alters it. Many religious and mythological systems rely on specific words that carry deep, layered spiritual meanings. Mythologies and early religious worldviews were completely oral. Therefore, prehistoric language was the essential vehicle for transmitting shared religious worldviews and mythological thinking. Mythological thinking relies heavily on metaphor to explain the inexplicable.

• 120,000 to 75,000 years ago: Khoisanid migration from Southern Africa to East Africa.
• 82,000 years ago: small perforated seashell beads from Taforalt in Morocco are the earliest evidence of personal adornment found anywhere in the world.
• 75,000 years ago: Toba Volcano supereruption that almost made humanity extinct. Populations could have been lowered to about 3000-1000 people on the Earth.
• 70,000 years ago: earliest example of abstract art or symbolic art from Blombos Cave, South Africa—stones engraved with grid or cross-hatch patterns.
• 70,000 years ago: Recent African origin: separation of sub-Saharan Africans and non-Africans.” ref

The oldest trait of religion, present in the most recent common ancestor of present-day hunter-gatherers, was animism!

“The universality of religion across human society points to a deep evolutionary past. However, specific traits of nascent religiosity and the sequence in which they emerged have remained unknown. Religion is unique to humans. Belief in supernatural agents and the entailed religious practices occur in virtually all human cultures. The universality of religion across human societies suggests a deep evolutionary past. The human ability to create complex culture (“cultural capacity”) may be older than the first split in the modern human lineage, and some aspects of religion may have been present before the appearance of anatomically modern humans. Religion has generally been assumed to have emerged among anatomically modern humans in Africa during the Upper Paleolithic, and to have played a vital role in the subsequent out-of-Africa expansion. Whether early hominins held religious beliefs prior to the emergence of language is unknown. We should not dismiss the possible presence of non-linguistic religious thought and sentiment among early members of the genus Homo.” ref

“However, a case can be made that transmission of religious concepts from one individual to another requires complex mental imaging, and a capacity for symbolic thought and communication that might include ritual, dancing, singing, gestures, art and ornamentation, as well as language. Finds at Pinnacle Point in southern Africa demonstrate the use and processing of pigment among anatomically modern humans as early as 165,000 years ago. Ochre nodules bearing engraved abstract patterns and perforated shell beads found at Blombos Cave in South Africa, dating to 75,000–100,000 years ago, suggest symbolically mediated behavior. These and other similar finds lend substantial support to the theory of progressive development of symbolic behavior and complex imagery along with the evolution of modern human anatomy. Pleistocene hunter-gatherers would most likely have possessed both the cognitive and communicative skills to share religious beliefs and practices prior to dispersal out of Africa more than 60,000 years ago. Although present-day hunter-gatherers are not direct analogs of those early societies and may not be direct, unbroken descendants of ancestral hunter-gatherers, they can provide a window onto traits selected for in the Pleistocene, including traits of early religion.” ref

“In a hunter-gatherer ethnographic religiosity study, Researchers investigate the early evolution of religion by reconstructing ancestral states for seven characters describing religious beliefs and behaviors in a global sample of 33 hunter-gatherer societies; animistic thinking/beliefs were 100%. Researchers in a study were trying to reconstruct the evolution of religious beliefs and behaviors in early modern humans using a global sample of hunter-gatherers and seven traits describing hunter-gatherer religiosity: animism, belief in an afterlife, shamanism, ancestor worship, high gods, and worship of ancestors or high gods who are active in human affairs. We reconstruct ancestral character states using a time-calibrated supertree based on published phylogenetic trees and linguistic classification, then test for correlated evolution between the characters and the direction of cultural change. Results indicate that the oldest trait of religion, present in the most recent common ancestor of present-day hunter-gatherers, was animism, in agreement with long-standing beliefs about the fundamental role of this trait. Belief in an afterlife emerged, followed by shamanism and ancestor worship. Ancestor spirits or high gods who are active in human affairs were absent among early humans, suggesting a deep history for the egalitarian nature of hunter-gatherer societies.” ref 

“Hunter-gatherer religions are seldom religions of protest or evangelism. Instead, each society focuses on maintaining its unique beliefs and culture, along with a sense of self-worth and the general health and well-being of the group. Simple egalitarian hunter-gatherer groups generally hold fewer religious beliefs and participate in less ritual than more complex groups. But hunter-gatherers do have religion, embodied in sacred healing dances and rituals marking life events. Although there is considerable variation in specific religious traits among hunter-gatherer societies, a cross-cultural view reveals underlying similarities in cosmology, ritual, and belief. What were the specific traits of early religion? How did traits of nascent religiosity evolve and interact over time? Recently, phylogenetic comparative methods have been increasingly applied to the study of the evolution of material and non-material culture, including religion. Reconstructing ancestral character states on phylogenies based on genetic or linguistic data has proven valuable in revealing the history of various sociocultural phenomena. Although religious beliefs are regarded as one of those cultural traits that are historically labile and prone to cultural borrowing, cross-cultural research suggests that religion (and mythology) can be surprisingly stable across time and space, and shared religious beliefs can be indicative of deep ancestry.” ref 

Animism: 78,000 Years Old Deliberate Burial of a Human Child in Kenya, Africa

AI Overview: The 78,000-year-old child burial (“Mtoto”) at the Panga ya Saidi cave in Kenya did not itself contain formal grave goods. However, researchers noted that shell fragments—specifically from giant African land snails (Achatina)—were found near the skull, and shell beads were recovered from the broader site levels. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Around 74,000 years ago, Border Cave, South Africa, burial of a 4 to 6 month old child was found in a oval pit with a personal ornament, a perforated Conus shell. ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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How old do I think African Totemism could be?

To me, (my reasoned speculations) Totemism (around 50,000 to 45,000 years ago) emerged in Western Europe (France and Germany) with some of the first European early modern human groups (around 56,000 to 40,000 years ago) like the Aurignacian Culture (Proto-Aurignacian and the Early Aurignacian dating as early as 45,000 years ago; ref, ref), and possibly made it back to North Africa around 30,000 years ago (seen in the Khormusan and Iberomaurusian cultures, likely this European Totemism thinking was transferred to North Africa by the “back-to-Africa” migration of the mt-DNA U6 haplogroup that “originated outside Africa”, coming back “around 35 000 to 30 000 years ago” after the time related to the “out-of-Africa theory;” ref, ref, ref), which occurred after first getting back to the Middle East, as seen in the Levantine Aurignacian culture (around 35,000-29,000 years old). So, to me, totemism entered Africa around 30,000 years ago, and shamanism entered Africa around 15,000 to 12,000 years ago.

“According to André Leroi-Gourhan, the use of pigment is evidence of spiritual behavior, as its use serves no material purpose. A great number of pigments have been found in both Neanderthal and early modern human sites. Particularly interesting is a painted mammoth molar from Tata, Hungary, associated with Neanderthals. The main side of the mammoth molar was painted in red ochre, while the back side of it showed heavy traces of use. In Blombos Cave on the Southern Cape coastline of South Africa, researchers found two ochre fragments bearing engraved geometric patterns.” ref

A Seeming African Origin of the Milky Way Mythology and Its Relatedness to Other Mythology

From the YouTube video “The Milky Way: Source of some of our Oldest Myths ” by the Crecganford Channel, its producer, mythology expert John White, stated, “That it is likely Milky Way mythology originated in Africa before the recent Out of Africa theory migration: about 70,000–50,000 years ago.” 

AI Overview: Between 80,000 and 60,000 years ago, modern humans in Africa developed two major, highly sophisticated stone tool industries: Still Bay and Howieson’s Poort. Cultural and technological connections between South Africa and Eastern Africa 100,000 to 70,000 years ago involved a northward dispersal of modern humans that transmitted complex symbolic behaviors and advanced toolkits. [1, 2, 3]

• • Craftsmanship: Makers fashioned leaf-shaped, symmetrical bifacial points (flaked on both sides) that likely served as spear tips.
  • Associated Culture: Archaeologists often find these tools alongside shell jewelry and engraved ochre, showing early abstract thought. [1, 2, 3]

• • Craftsmanship: Makers produced small, crescent-shaped stone blades (backed blades) designed to be hafted (tied or fitted with adhesive) onto wooden shafts to create composite weapons like javelins or arrows. [1, 2]

• • Moisture windows: A brief climate period around 60,000 to 70,000 years ago provided enough moisture across the African continent to open a green corridor connecting southern and eastern regions. [1]
  • Inter-regional contact: Shifting environmental conditions allowed small groups of Homo sapiens to travel and link populations that were previously separated by arid zones. Genetic and archaeological studies published in Nature indicate a minor migration pulse or cultural transmission moving from southern to eastern Africa just prior to major out-of-Africa expansions. [1, 2, 3]

• • Symbolic behavior: Advanced traits like the use of ochre pigments for symbolism, first documented extensively in South African sites, began appearing in Eastern Africa around 65,000 years ago. [1]
  • Stone tool innovations: Sophisticated microlith and bladelet technologies mirrored developments previously established in the south, suggesting a cultural transmission from South Africa northward. Advanced stone tool traits, such as small bladelets and microliths that originated in South Africa around 71,000 to 65,000 years ago, later appeared in Eastern Africa. [1, 2, 3, 4]
  • Cognitive readiness: Eastern African populations were biologically modern and shared similar advanced neural structures, allowing them to readily adopt these new cultural and technological ideas. [1]
  • Inter-regional Networks: Long-term social and mating networks existed across diverse African ecozones, connecting the ancestors of southern populations (such as early Prehistoric Southern Africa groups) with eastern groups. [1, 2]

• • Pan-African networks: Recent archaeological and genetic findings show that early human evolution did not happen in just one isolated cradle, but relied on vast social and cultural networks spanning different African landscapes. [1]
  • Precursor to global migration: This internal African movement and cultural sharing immediately preceded the major “out-of-Africa” demographic expansions.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“Humans were processing wild sorghum grains at Ngalue Cave 100,000 years ago in Mozambique, not waiting for full agriculture to exist. Researchers found 555 artifacts at this site that differed from those at other sites in Africa at the time, and most of the stone tools were handheld, though some smaller tools were braced. Along with stone axes, they also found scrapers and awls. Three special grinding objects had an ochre pigment on them. Of all the grains recovered, 89% was sorghum. Evidence for starch was found related to the African false banana and the African potato.” ref, ref

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mt-DNA L3 basal lineages migrated back to Africa from West Asia around 70,000 years ago

“Study results are congruent with a model proposing an out-of-Africa migration into Asia, following a northern route, of early anatomically modern humans carrying pre-L3 mtDNA lineages around 125,000 years ago, subsequent diversification of pre-L3 into the basal lineages of L3, a return to Africa of Eurasian fully modern humans around 70,000 years ago carrying the basal L3 lineages and the subsequent diversification of Eurasian-remaining L3 lineages into the M and N lineages in the outside-of-Africa context, and a second Eurasian global expansion by 60,000 years ago, most probably, out of southeast Asia. Climatic conditions and the presence of Neanderthals and other hominins might have played significant roles in these human movements. Moreover, recent studies based on ancient DNA and whole-genome sequencing also support this hypothesis. Haplogroup L3 mt-DNA is strongly associated with the out-of-Africa migration of modern humans about 70,000–50,000 years ago. All modern non-African populations, as well as some populations in Africa, inherit L3 mt-DNA. The coastal route theory primarily describes the initial peopling of West Asia, India, Southeast Asia, New Guinea, Australia, Near Oceania, and East Asia beginning between roughly 70,000 and 50,000 years ago. It is linked to the presence and dispersal of mtDNA haplogroups M and N, as well as the specific distribution patterns of Y-DNA haplogroups C, D, and FT in these regions.” ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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6 Speculations on the origin area of Mitochondrial Eve (more technically known as the Mitochondrial Most Recent Common Ancestor, or mt-MRCA): mt-DNA Haplogroup L at 230,000 to 200,000 years old, with descendants L0 and L1 at 200,000 to 130,000 years old.

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“Ancestor L (“MRCA” Mitochondrial Eve, mt-DNA Eve, or “Mitochondrial-Most Recent Common Ancestor,” with a possible time of origin as far back as 230,000 years ago), ancient DNA analysis of a 2,330-year-old male forager’s skeleton in Southern Africa found that the specimen belonged to the L0d2c1c mt-DNA subclade. This mt-DNA maternal haplogroup is today most closely associated with the Ju (part of the broader !Kung people group, of northeastern Namibia and northwestern Botswana), a subgroup of the indigenous San people, which points to population continuity in the region. L0 (130,000 to 200,000 years old) is found most commonly in Sub-Saharan Africa. It reaches its highest frequency in the Khoisan people at 73% on average. Some of the highest frequencies are: Namibia (!Xun also called “!Kung or Ju”) 79%, South Africa (Khwe also called “Khoe”/!Xun) 83%, and Botswana (!Kung) 100%.” ref, ref, ref

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Haplogroups mt-DNA L0d and L0k are nearly exclusively in Khoisan populations

Ancient Substructure in Early mtDNA Lineages of Southern Africa

“Haplogroups L0d and L0k are present nearly exclusively in Khoisan populations and neighboring Bantu-speaking populations that have been in documented close contact with them; the only known exceptions are sporadic occurrences of haplogroup L0d in East Africa (e.g., in the Sandawe from Tanzania)⁷ and in an individual from Yemen⁶ as well as an individual from Kuwait⁶ who belongs to haplogroup L0k. Specialists recognize three independent language families among Khoisan, namely Tuu, Kx’a, and Khoe-Kwadi, which are spoken by a large number of different ethnolinguistic groups comprising both foragers and pastoralists.” ref

“The forager populations of the central Kalahari, who speak languages belonging to the Tuu and Kx’a families, are assumed to be the descendants of autochthonous Late Stone Age populations, whereas the Khoe-Kwadi languages may have been brought to the area by pastoralist populations around 2,000 years ago. The populations speaking Bantu languages, in contrast, are known for their expansion over almost half the African continent and are associated with the concomitant spread of the Bantu language family, an agricultural lifestyle, and iron technology.” ref

“Archeological data suggest that they may have reached southern Africa not earlier than 2,000–1,200 years ago, where they met populations who were probably ancestral to current Khoisan populations. the age and variability of the Khoisan-specific haplogroups L0d and L0k, with the aim of investigating the most likely model of origin and isolation of Khoisan populations. With their data they were able to suggest a time frame for the dispersal of the main lineages and the split of Khoisan and other modern humans, which they dated not later than 90,000 years ago; furthermore, they suggested that the early human settlement of Africa was matrilineally structured.” ref

“Several sites in eastern, central, and southern Africa contain artifacts consistent with a shift in technology and population expansion ~75,000–55,000 years ago, including hunting weapons, indications of increased plant utilization, signs of increased marine exploitation, and evidence of large-scale movement of red ochre (used for art/ritual?), stone, and shell ornaments. It is tempting to speculate that these developments are tied to improvements in human communication; however, the reconstruction of proto-languages does not extend back this far in time; therefore, there is no empirical way to establish when or where human language emerged. Interestingly, an analysis of mtDNA data estimates a population expansion in Africa 70,000 years ago, consistent with the archaeological evidence from the late Middle Stone Age.” ref

“The Khoesan language family, which includes languages that contain click consonants and is spoken by hunter–gatherer populations in eastern (Hadza and Sandawe) and southern Africa [the San, referred to here as “southern African Khoesan”], is the most contentious of the African language families because there is so much divergence among the Hadza, Sandawe, and southern African Khoesan languages. The southern African Khoesan speakers including the eastern Khoesan speakers, the Hadza and Sandawe, cluster closely with other eastern Africans, but the Khoesan language family is more divergent Sandawe and Hadza click language speakers.” ref

“The Khoesan language family is contentious given the high diversity within each subclade and extreme divergence among them, particularly for the Sandawe and Hadza. A common classification, therefore, groups the three languages spoken in South Africa into a separate branch (southern African Khoesan) from the more divergent Sandawe and Hadza. One interpretation of this extreme linguistic diversity is that the last common ancestor of the language family must be extremely ancient, and Ehret estimates the Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor to be at least 20,000 years ago (which approaches the limit in timescale to linguistic reconstruction). The Sandawe and southern African Khoesan are more similar to each other linguistically than either one is to the Hadza. Geographically, however, the Sandawe and Hadza are extremely close to each other (150 km apart in Tanzania), and both are geographically distant from the southern African Khoesan populations residing in southern Africa.” ref

“A recent study of mtDNA and NRY variation investigates the genetic relationship among the Hadza, Sandawe, and southern African Khoesan. The authors find that in general, the Hadza and Sandawe are more genetically similar to each other than either one is to the southern African Khoesan. However, the Sandawe and southern African Khoesan share ancient mtDNA lineages, which may suggest an ancient common ancestry. For example, mtDNA haplogroup L0d is present at high frequency in the southern African Khoesan and at low frequency in the Sandawe, but is not present in the Hadza samples, and the Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor estimate of the southern African Khoesan and Sandawe L0d lineages is ancient (~60,000 years ago). Similarly, the southern African Khoesan and Sandawe share NRY haplogroup A (M91), which is not present in the Hadza samples. On the other hand, haplogroup L4g is common in both the Sandawe and the Hadza and absent from the southern African Khoesan samples, and the Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor for the Sandawe and Hadza L4g is more recent (~25,000 years ago). And all three samples share NRY haplogroup B2b (M112). The authors discuss more than one interpretation of these results.” ref

“The absence of mtDNA haplogroup L0d and NRY haplogroup A (M91) from the Hadza could reflect loss due to genetic drift because there is evidence of a recent bottleneck in the Hadza. Alternatively, the pattern of haplogroup variation could reflect an ancient linguistic and genetic divergence of the Hadza from the southern African Khoesan. Moreover, the authors performed a likelihood analysis to estimate the time of divergence among the populations and found that the divergence between the Hadza and the Sandawe was >20,000 years ago and the divergence between the Hadza/Sandawe and the SAK was >40,000 years ago. Additional studies of mtDNA and NRY variation have identified ancient shared lineages among the southern African Khoesan and the Hadza as well as several other eastern African populations. Consistent with the mtDNA and NRY data, our MDS analysis shows that the Hadza and Sandawe cluster closely together with each other and with other eastern African populations. Additionally, the Hadza are slightly farther from the southern African Khoesan than the Sandawe along both dimensions.” ref

“Evidence for an ancient common ancestry of Khoesan and Pygmy populations, suggests the possibility of a proto-Khoesan hunter–gatherer population in eastern Africa that diverged >30,000 years ago. STRUCTURE analysis revealed that the pygmies cluster together with other hunter–gatherer samples, including the southern African Khoesan, Hadza, and Sandawe at low K values (K = 3), and then differentiate at higher K values (K = 5). The analysis also shows that the Mbuti pygmies cluster with the southern African Khoesan at higher K values (K = 7), which could be due to either common ancestry or more recent gene flow. In addition, recent work on mtDNA, NRY, and autosomal data estimated the Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor of the pygmy and agricultural populations to be approximately 70,000–60,000 years ago and the Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor of western and eastern pygmies to be approximately 20,000 years ago.” ref

“Research findings raise the possibility that the pygmy populations, who have lost their indigenous language, once spoke some form of proto-Khoesan with click consonants. Interestingly, linguistic analysis of the southern African Khoesan suggests that they originated in eastern Africa and possibly as far north as Ethiopia before migrating into southern Africa, consistent with the identification of rock art in the Sandawe homeland and in southern Africa that is thought to be related to Khoesan speakers. There is further evidence that, although there has not been recent gene flow among these populations, there has been recent admixture between the Sandawe and neighboring populations as well as between the pygmies and neighboring populations, and this recent admixture may be obscuring the more ancient relationships among the hunter–gatherer populations. Future analyses that incorporate data from across the genome together with full-likelihood or approximate Bayesian computation methods will be necessary to more fully understand these complex population histories.” ref

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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With art by Damien

“L0 mt-DNA dates back 200,000 years in Botswana, and that was its home for around 70,000 years, as the L0 mt-DNA lineage shows that prehistoric humans lived in the region for around 70,000 years before climatic events forced them to begin dispersing throughout the world roughly 130,000 years ago. We’ve known for a long time that modern humans originated in Africa roughly 200,000 years ago. But what we hadn’t known until the study was where exactly this homeland was.” The area identified in the study was called Makgadikgadi-Okavango, once home to a massive lake, roughly twice the area of modern-day Lake Victoria. But by the time 70,000 years had passed, the genetic split occurred when a subset of the population migrated northeast, and a different one migrated southwest. A third population remained in the homeland until today. Vocabulary transfer between languages from three families (Kx’a, Tuu, Khoe-Kwadi) comprising the linguistic unit Southern African Khoisan shows that 71% of roots are shared. The remaining 29% reflects ancient contact or shared ancestry between Kx’a and Tuu. More than half of the shared roots trace back to Khoe-Kwadi and were borrowed into the other families’ languages.” ref, ref, ref, ref

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“Africa has been identified as the place of origin of Homo sapiens, evident by the highest genetic diversity and deepest splits being found among people from this continent. The fact that the earliest fossil finds of early humans have been found in Africa, including northern (dating to about 300 000 years old), southern (a 260 000-year-old individual) and eastern Africa (about 195 000–160 000 years old) further points to Africa’s importance for early human development.  Africa is the continent with the greatest genetic diversity among humans and the level of diversity is further enhanced by incorporating non-majority groups, which are often understudied.” ref

“Many of today’s minority populations historically practiced foraging lifestyles, which were the only subsistence strategies prior to the rise of agriculture and pastoralism, but only a few groups practicing these strategies remain today. Genomic investigations of Holocene (beginning around 11,000 years ago) human remains excavated across the African continent show that the genetic landscape was vastly different compared to today’s genetic landscape and that many groups that today are population isolate inhabited larger regions in the past. It is becoming clear that there are periods of isolation among groups and geographic areas, but also genetic contact over large distances throughout human history in Africa.” ref  

Genomic information from minority populations and from prehistoric remains provide an invaluable source of information on the human past, in particular deep human population history, as Holocene large-scale population movements obscure past patterns of population structure. Hunting and gathering were the lifestyle of all humans prior to the Neolithic transition and emergence of agriculture and pastoralism. Most hunter-gatherer groups have been replaced or incorporated in expanding agriculturalist and pastoralist populations, only a few extant groups continue to practice this way of life and can be found scattered in various regions across the globe, including Africa.” ref  

“In Africa, hunter-gatherer groups can be found in the south and east and in the Congo Basin. In southern Africa, the San hunter-gatherers and the Khoekhoe herders, who adopted a pastoralist lifestyle after contact with east African pastoralists, inhabit arid regions unsuitable for agriculture. They are collectively named Khoe–San, in correspondence to speaking Khoisan languages, which comprise ‘click’-rich languages belonging to five linguistic families that are otherwise unrelated. In eastern Africa, there are various populations that practice, or have until recently, a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. East African hunter-gatherers (EAHG) have been shown to be more closely genetically related to each other than to other hunter-gatherer populations in Africa.” ref  

“Furthermore, several hunter-gatherer populations inhabit the rainforests of equatorial Africa, such as the Biaka, Baka, Bakola, Bedzan, Batwa, Twa and Mbuti. These rainforest hunter-gatherer (RHG) groups have adopted the languages of neighboring agricultural populations. The rapid expansion in the last 5000 years, as well as other recent migrations in Africa obscure patterns of deep population structure in sub-Saharan Africa and much of sub-equatorial Africa, is today populated by people of western African descent speaking Bantu languages.” ref  

“The genetic relationship between the various contemporary regional hunter-gatherer groups can be modeled with isolation-by-distance, revealing that hunter-gatherer populations were connected, potentially in overlapping areas and inhabited larger geographic areas. There are indications of gene-flow between Khoe–San and other African hunter-gatherer populations after they split from each other, suggesting that the genetic exchange persisted until the Holocene. For instance, there appear to have been a clinal link between southern African San groups and eastern African hunter-gatherers, where prehistoric individuals from e.g. current-day Malawi display affinities to both San groups and to eastern African hunter-gatherers, with some San-like ancestry, detected in ancient individuals excavated in eastern Africa. The contraction of once wide-spread, overlapping hunter-gatherer populations, which led to the scattered populations we know today, left a mark in their genomes.” ref  

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AI Overview: Y-DNA Haplogroups in the Khoisan

• Haplogroup A (such as A-M51 and A-M14): This is the root lineage of the human Y-chromosome tree. Certain sub-lineages within Haplogroup A appear to be unique or highly localized to the Khoe-San populations in southern Africa, representing an ancient continuous lineage. [1, 2]
• Haplogroup B (such as B-M112): Frequently found in basal forms, Haplogroup B points to early ancient gene flow and divergence shared across eastern and southern African hunter-gatherer networks. [1, 2]
• Later Admixture: Some modern Khoisan groups also display minor frequencies of other haplogroups (like E1b1b, J1, or R1b) resulting from later historical interactions and migrations with neighboring Bantu-speaking agriculturalists or back-migrations. [1, 2]

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Reconstructing Prehistoric African Population Structure

“Genome-wide analysis of 16 African individuals who lived up to 8,100 years ago show that forager populations related to southern African San were once widespread in eastern Africa, especially compared to modern Africans.” ref

“The primary ancestry of the southern African San had a wider distribution in the past, contributing approximately two-thirds of the ancestry of Malawi hunter-gatherers (who did the oldest known cremation in Africa at 9,500‑year‑old; most closely genetically related to the modern Khoe-San) ∼8,100–2,500 years ago and approximately one-third of the ancestry of Tanzanian hunter-gatherers ∼1,400 years ago. We document how the spread of farmers from western Africa involved complete replacement of local hunter-gatherers in some regions, and we track the spread of herders by showing that the population of a ∼3,100-year-old pastoralist from Tanzania contributed ancestry to people from northeastern to southern Africa, including a ∼1,200-year-old southern African pastoralist. The deepest diversifications of African lineages were complex, involving either repeated gene flow among geographically disparate groups or a lineage more deeply diverging than that of the San contributing more to some western African populations than to others.” ref

“Today, some of the earliest-branching African lineages are present only in populations with relatively small census sizes, including the southern African Khoe-San, central African rainforest hunter-gatherers, and Hadza of Tanzania.” ref  

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“Southern African hunter-gatherers, primarily known currently as the San peoples. After about 100,000-70,000 years ago, small groups of southern African hunter-gatherers may have/seem to have wandered northwards, carrying several of their genetic signatures, complex thinking, and techno-behaviors with them. The genomes of ancient southern African hunter-gatherers as one of the earliest Homo sapiens groups to split from a common ancestor, and these markers are still found in sub-Saharan Africa, mostly in San or Bushman people such as the Ju/’hoan in Namibia and Botswana, and the Karretjie Mense of South Africa.” ref

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With art by Damien

“SLC24A5 originated at least 19,000 years ago and is associated with up to 40% of European light skin, as recently as the last 5,000 years. Introduced to the Khoisan people through a “back-to-Africa” migration around 2,000 years ago, it partly explains their distinct African skin tone.” ref, ref, ref, ref

“Light-skinned genes SLC45A2 and SLC24A5 seemingly arose in the Afontova Gora culture (mtDNA R), seen in Eastern hunter-gatherers (who had mtDNA R1b, just like Afontova Gora 3) and Caucasus hunter-gatherers (with 52–62% DNA close/related to ancient north Eurasians or eastern European hunter-gatherer) at 13,000 years ago with SLC24A5, just as light skin is seen in the Tarim mummies over 4,000 years ago, who descended from a population related to the Afontova Gora 3 specimen from 18,000 years ago, despite a 14,000-year gap. Distinct from European-related Andronovo and Afanasievo cultures, or the BMAC culture. Afontova Gora (18,000-12,000 years ago) is a Late Upper Paleolithic complex of Siberia. Afontova Gora has cultural and genetic links to the people from Mal’ta–Buret’ (c. 24,000 years ago) an ancestral component that represents the lineage of the Ancient North Eurasian population in Siberia. A study noted that Eastern hunter-gatherers, Scandinavian hunter-gatherers, and Baltic hunter-gatherers carried high frequencies of the derived alleles for SLC45A2 and SLC24A5, which code for light skin. Around half of the Yamnaya (referred to in archaeogenetics as Western Steppe Herder ancestry, “light-skinned with SLC24A5,” and related to the Kurgan hypothesis and Proto-Indo-Europeans) people’s DNA comes from the Caucasus hunter-gatherers, with the other half being derived from Eastern hunter-gatherers. African SLC24A5 likely relates back to the Anatolian Neolithic Farmers (with “intermediate to light skin complexion” from SLC24A5) who brought agriculture to Europe and Northwest Africa around 9,000 to 7,000 years ago. Around 8,000 to 6,000 years ago, populations from the Near East and the Levant began expanding into North and East Africa. The Arabian Peninsula was also a geographic bridge for part of these back-to-Africa migrations. In ancient Saudi Arabia between 8,000 and 6,000 years ago (the Neolithic period), the SLC24A5 gene was highly prevalent and played a significant role in the regional demographic shifts. The Arabian Peninsula is a region through which numerous migrations between Africa and Asia took place since ancient times. The gene that causes lighter skin pigmentation, SLC24A5, was introduced from eastern African to southern African populations just 2,000 years ago. Strong positive selection caused this gene to rise in frequency among some KhoeSan populations.” ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Siberia as the Origin and Migration place of “Light Skin” genes SLC24A5 and SLC45A2, about 22,000 to 28,000 years ago?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“The genetic legacy of the Bantu expansion that began 6,000–4,000 years ago in western Africa, and that genetic diversity amongst Bantu-speaking populations declines with distance from western Africa.” ref

African Bantu Languages and Peoples: Their Migrations, Culture, Beliefs, and Mythology

Since we can’t see into the deep past to understand what group dynamics or animistic thinking they may have had, or their beliefs about death and ritual burial, I have added contemporary, highly animistic African cultures below to provide an ethnographic and anthropological perspective on what such past thinking might have involved. 

While addressing animism in modern African hunter-gatherers as a potential reference to the Paleolithic past. However, modern hunter-gatherers were first influenced by Bantu agriculturists through their paganism, shamanism, totemism, and animist thinking. Then, next by European Christians and colonialism. These influences must be realized when understanding the religious and cultural ways we see today in modern African hunter-gatherers. Some may have also been influenced by the spread of Islam.

African Traditional Religions

“The beliefs and practices of African people are highly diverse and include various ethnic religions. Generally, these traditions are oral rather than scriptural and are passed down from one generation to another through narratives, songs, myths, and festivals. They include beliefs in spirits and higher and lower gods, sometimes including a supreme being, as well as the veneration of the dead, use of magic, and African traditional medicine. Most religions can be described as animistic with various polytheistic and pantheistic aspects. The role of humanity is generally seen as one of harmonizing nature with the supernatural. Highly complex animistic beliefs build the core concept of traditional African religions. This includes the worship of tutelary deities, nature worship, ancestor worship, and the belief in an afterlife, comparable to other traditional religions around the world. While some religions have a pantheistic worldview with a supreme creator god next to other gods and spirits, others follow a purely polytheistic system with various gods, spirits, and other supernatural beings. Traditional African religions also have elements of totemism, shamanism, and veneration of relics.” ref 

“Followers of traditional African religions pray to various spirits as well as to their ancestors. This also includes nature, elemental, and animal spirits. The difference between powerful spirits and gods is often minimal. Most African societies believe in several “high gods” and a large amount of lower gods and spirits. There are also some religions with a single supreme being (Chukwu, Nyame, Olodumare, Ngai, Roog, etc.). Some recognize a dual god and goddess such as Mawu-Lisa. Traditional African religions generally believe in an afterlife, one or more Spirit worlds. Ancestor worship is an important basic concept in nearly all African religions. Within contemporary Africa, many people identify with both traditional African religions and either Christianity or Islam, practicing elements of both in a form of religious duality. Traditional African religions have faced persecution from Christians and Muslims. Adherents of these religions have been forcefully converted to Islam and Christianity, demonized and marginalized. The atrocities include killings, waging war, destroying of sacred places, and other atrocities.” ref

Stealing Meat, from Carnivores “MEAT Eaters”, that Kill?

Animists stealing meat without killing, stealing meat from Lions and stealing meat from Cheetahs! By doing so, it shows me that these Animists are brave enough to steal “food” from lions and cheetahs, and thus Animists do not fear nature.

AI Overview: Specific groups of indigenous hunters in Africa do intentionally steal fresh kills from apex predators like lions. This rare but documented phenomenon is a form of aggressive scavenging called kleptoparasitism, where humans leverage their psychological dominance and teamwork to bully large carnivores off their food. Dorobo or Maasai hunters in East Africa. Rather than tracking and killing game themselves, a trio of hunters will spot a lion pride feeding on a carcass and orchestrate.

“Kleptoparasitism meaning “parasitism by theft“) is a form of feeding behavior in which one animal — i.e. the kleptoparasite — deliberately takes food from another animal, often via aggressive confrontations.” ref 

AI Overview: Cheetahs are built entirely for speed rather than combat. Because a single deep scratch or broken bone means starvation, a cheetah will almost always abandon its kill rather than fight. Throughout history, human hunter-gatherers tracked vultures or watched for cheetah sprints to easily chase the exhausted cats away and claim the fresh meat.

Misunderstanding of Animist thinking societies

Some theorists of the evolution of religion may misunderstand indigenous animist cultures. While animism may be at the foundation of religions origins it is a misunderstanding of the agency of things in nature seeing them “like us” alive and thinking or having a spirit or personhood as we do. Thus, some theorists of the evolution of religion projected their own fear of, and separation from, nature onto animist thinking societies that felt/feel deeply connected to it and whole part of it. Animism stems from a cognitive tendency toward psychological belief/feeling of sameness and a misunderstanding of non-human entities not being the same as us, rather than from baseline fear or anxiety. Animism in child psychology, “unlike pretend play,” can involve the feelings/beliefs that inanimate (not living) objects may/can have agency, feelings, consciousness, and/or lifelike qualities. This animist thinking can support or create a worldview full of spirit thinking, which I call “spiritism,” and I feel it explains the misunderstood term animism better.

Religion is beyond animistic thinking, but all “Religion” links to animistic thinking?

Religion is a cultural product (simultaneously acting as a primary driver that constructs human culture as well as is also shaped and evolved by it), but animistic thinking is somewhat common, a childlike way of perceiving the world. Religion is a culturally taught thinking and set of behaviors, but animistic thinking can and does emerge in children naturally. Religion does not invent animism; it expands on it and hijacks this internal misunderstanding about reality and the (non-supernatural) natural world. Religion teaches children to keep thinking animistically even after reason would have inspired them to do otherwise. No child is born knowing religion; it is an instructed and constructed cultural product. Children naturally engage in animistic thinking, involving the belief that inanimate objects have feelings, consciousness, and intentions (including the further speculation of supernatural possibilities). This is most common or typically seen in the development of children between the ages of 2 and 7 years old. Through an inaccurate scientific understanding of the world, animistic thinking is often linked to a normal stage of childhood cognitive development, where a child thinks non-living things are alive or have a thinking agency behind them, as expressed in the preoperational stage of child development. Young children in the preoperational stage of child development can and often may assume objects experience the world the exact same way they do. Young children in this stage of child development lack the scientific understanding of biology and physics; thus, they use themselves as a way of understanding or their own feelings to understand things and explain how things are motivated to move, behave, or work.

Mediation of fear helped the emergence of religion?

People with a tendency to see or perceive the world animalistically also felt powerless against forces they could not see or understand. Feeling out of control can be mediated by believed pseudo-controlling ritual behaviors. Pseudo-controlling ritual behaviors can soothe humans emotionally and psychologically. Not knowing the future or the cause of tragedy created deep emotional stress. Rituals provide a powerful psychological buffer against anxiety, uncertainty, and stress. When people face situations they cannot control, performing repetitive, structured behaviors helps them regain a sense of agency and emotional stability. Pseudo-controlling ritual behaviors, thus, are a foundational aspect of mediation to fear and helped the emergence of religion with other animistic thinking about the behaviors with the responsive animistic believed world. Not the only reason, but the fear of lacking control over life is a major reason why religion emerged in human history. Early humans faced constant threats, including the unpredictability of death and the fragility of life, which helped religion emerge, along with animistic thinking that life involved supernatural relations.

No one should put “Faith” in Faith?

Faith is a form of primitive (undeveloped or unsophisticated thinking style) pseudo-knowledge or belief of knowing. Faith as pseudo-knowledge mimics the position of real facts without using facts, relying instead on feelings, hopes, or desires. Faith is to feel some level of unjustified confidence; it acts as an unproven claim to know things, establishing validation for beliefs without facts or reason and adding certainty regardless of any lack of proof or contradictory evidence or reason. Reason, unlike faith’s blind form of primitive pseudo-knowledge or belief confirmation, requires evidence and logic to justify a claim or belief confirmation. There is thus no reason in faith.

Cartoonish thinking about Ancient Peoples or Hunter-Gatherer lifeways is all too common.

The thinking is that Hunter-Gatherers (a subsistence style) are/or tended to be limited/primitive, mostly naked or wore loincloths (a clothing style), and were only egalitarian (a social behavioral style). The limitation was that this was believed to be absolute and not variable (cartoonish), as actually found expressed in actual Ancient Peoples or Hunter-Gatherer lifeways. People must think beyond the “cartoonish” oversimplification of hunter-gatherer societies (not trapped in a single social mold) as always about the same, rigid, primitive, and uniform. Nuanced egalitarianism can be expressed as a behavior of generally/some elevated amount of equal food or item distribution or a social arrangement of generally/some elevated amount of equal status or ranking, though there may still be a division of a kind by family/band/clan, gender, age, or leadership. Ancient Peoples or Hunter-Gatherer lifeways can range from the more simple to highly complex. Cultures and peoples were varied; it is our perceptions that are limited and cartoonish in their thinking. The first person to critically challenge our beliefs as good thinkers should be ourselves.

“Animism emerged as a means for early societies to comprehend the world and forge a relationship with the natural environment. At the core of animistic philosophy lies the belief that all entities, regardless of form, can and often do possess a spiritual essence. This essence is not limited to humans, but also animates animals, plants, rivers, mountains, and even inanimate objects such as rocks and tools. Moreover, animists perceive the natural world as intrinsically interconnected and interdependent, underscoring a complex web of relationships among all beings. This worldview inspires reverence, respect, and a profound sense of responsibility toward nature. Animistic traditions frequently incorporate elaborate rituals and ceremonies intended to sustain this delicate balance and promote harmony between humans and the natural environment. Notably, animism has been a significant cultural force throughout human history and continues to shape the worldview of many indigenous societies. Its emphasis on the spiritual dimension of existence and the interconnectedness of all things resonates with those seeking a deeper and more meaningful relationship with the world. Although animism does not adhere to a single cultural tradition, it can be found wherever indigenous peoples have lived.” ref

Animism as the Dominant Religious Tradition Across All Human Societies

“Animism, in some form or other, has been the dominant religious tradition across all human societies since our ancestors first left Africa. Despite the near ubiquity of animistic beliefs and practices among indigenous peoples of every continent, and despite the crucial role of animism in the early emergence and development of human religious thought, contemporary academic philosophy of religion is virtually silent on the subject. Animism is a foundational religious and ontological perspective common to many indigenous cultures across the globe. At a minimum, animists accept that some features of the natural environment, such as trees, lakes, mountains, thunderstorms, and animals, are non-human persons with whom we may maintain and develop social relationships. Additionally, many animist traditions regard features of the environment to be non-human relatives or ancestors from whom members of the community are descended.” ref

“Animist religious traditions have been particularly prevalent among hunter-gatherer societies worldwide. A variety of different and conflicting religious traditions across the globe have been labeled “animist”. So, animism is not a single religious tradition, but is instead a category to which various differing traditions appear to belong. Note that the terms “theism” and “animism” are not mutually exclusive: an animist may or may not also be a theist. Animism could be understood as consisting of a distinct ontology with distinct commitments. One way of thinking about animism is that it is just one competing way among several in which the culturally universal notions of “interiority” (subjective or private states of experience) and “exteriority” (physical states) can be carved up. Thus, for the animist, while humans and trees, for example, differ in exteriority, they nevertheless share in common the possession of similar interior states. In ‘animic’ systems, humans and non-humans possess the same type of interiority. Since this interiority is understood to be common to both humans and non-humans alike, it follows that non-humans are understood as having social characteristics, such as respecting kinship rules and ethical codes.” ref

“On such an account, the animist takes the interiority of any given creature to differ from human interiority only to the extent that it is grounded in different cognitive and perceptual instruments. A tree, for example, cannot change location at will, and so has an interior life very different from that of a human being or a raven. Nevertheless, trees, humans, and ravens share in common the quality of interiority. A more radical view in the same vein, dubbed “perspectivism”, holds that a common interiority consists in a common cultural life, and that this common culture is cloaked in diverse exterior appearances. This view turns the traditional, Western, naturalistic notion of the unity of nature and the plurality of culture on its head. Instead, the unity of culture is a fundamental feature of the animists’ world. Whereas under normal conditions humans see humans as humans and animals as animals, animals do not see themselves as animals. Although perspectivism seems to apply to only a limited number of cultures, it may not serve as a broad and inclusive account of animism that could act as an umbrella for the broad range of traditions that are, on their face, animistic.” ref 

“An increasingly popular view understands animism, not as depending upon some abstract notion of interiority or soul, but rather as being fundamentally to do with relationships between human and other-than-human persons. Thus, what is fundamental to the animist’s worldview is a commitment to the existence of a broad set of non-human persons. One way one could approach animism is to summarize the animist’s belief as the position that “the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others.” That is not to say that animists have no concept of objecthood as divorced from personhood, but rather that animist traditions seriously challenge traditional Western views of what sorts of things can count as persons. What is fundamental to the animist’s worldview is the subject-subject relation, in contrast to the subject-object relation taken up in a naturalist’s understanding of the world. This does not hinge on a metaphysical dualism that distinguishes spirits/souls from bodies/objects. Rather, this account hinges on a particular conception of the world as coming to be known principally via socialization.” ref

“The animist does not hypothesize that some particular tree is a person, and socialize accordingly. Instead, one personifies some particular tree as, when and because one socializes with it. Thus, the commitment to the idea of non-human personhood is a commitment that develops across time and through social interaction. The animist’s common adoption of kinship terms (such as “grandfather”) for animals and other natural phenomena may also be elucidated in this picture. One can describe the extent to which “bear cults” of the circumpolar region carefully avoid general terms, such as “bear” or “animal”, when addressing bears both pre- and post-mortem. Instead, kinship terms are regularly adopted. This can be explained on the assumption that the social role of the kinship term is being invoked (“grandfather”, for example, refers to one who is wise, who deserves to be listened to, who has authority within the social life of the community, and so on). For the animist, with this worldview or perspective, the world does not so much consist in a variety of human and non-human persons, who differ in their species-specific and special forms of community life; rather, the world is composed of a network of human and non-human relatives, and what is fundamental to the animist’s worldview is this network as well as the maintenance of good relations within it.” ref

Animism: sensibility and way of relating

“Animism is a particular sensibility and way of relating to various beings in the world. It involves attributing sentience to other beings, which may include persons, animals, plants, spirits, the environment, or even items of technology, as well as human creations. Animism is really more a sensibility, tendency, or style of engaging with the world and the beings or things that populate it. Through ethnographic examples drawn from animistic societies worldwide, this entry examines key themes in the study of animism, from principles of animation to attributing sentience to animal spirits and animistic places. Because early and contemporary anthropological approaches to animism are often grounded in the principles, philosophies, and conclusions of modern science, anthropologists use concepts such as immanence, transcendence, and disenchantment to understand animistic sensibilities. By contrast, animistic people do not rely on scholars’ concepts to understand their own worlds. Recently, anthropologists have approached animism as a particular ‘ontology’ in the world, bringing it into conversation with related ontologies such as totemism, analogism, naturalism, and a newly proposed homologism. These and other terms are briefly explained, while humor and reflexive awareness are explored as themes that push anthropologists to re-envision the effects of imagination and creativity in a variety of animistic worlds.” ref

“To an animistic person or social group, sentience is often envisioned as a vital force, life force, or animated property that is ‘immanent’, accessible, and ‘ready to hand’ in the everyday world, even if this property is usually latent and not perceivable. There is often an important contrast between the ‘immanence’ of animistic sensibilities and the ‘transcendent’ qualities attributed to a monotheistic god or polytheistic gods, which are related to as beings that exist apart from the everyday lives of human beings. Just what it is that animates any particular being or thing can vary between different animistic persons and societies. These two ethnographic studies point to seminal themes in the study of animism. One theme is the existence of various kinds of ‘spirits’ and ‘souls’. Spirits are understood in a broad sense that encompasses the spirits of beings, things, or energies. Souls are often the spirits of beings and things, depending on the social context. There is no set definition for animism, just as there is no set definition for spirits or souls. Yet a general feel for how the terms animism, spirits, and souls are understood can be gleaned from the ways that scholars (and, in some cases, animistic persons) apply them to social contexts.” ref 

“A second theme in the study of animism revolves around the attribution of personhood. Such as the idea that active things like animals, trees, and rivers are ‘people like us’ because, like human beings, they possess certain kinds of souls. It is these shared souls that imbue animals, trees, and rivers with a sentience that enables them, like humans, to move, grow, and breathe. By contrast, static things like stones, skis, and food products are ‘not persons’ because they only share one soul in common with humans and lack the kind of sentience that would enable them to move and show signs of animated life, consciousness, and motivation. Not all beings or things have the same animistic sensibilities. Given this difference in animistic sensibilities, the following question arises: Is there an archetypal form of animism in which spirits or souls animate all beings?  If so, could this form have undergone a process of ‘diminution’ or ‘disenchantment’ in some societies, which caused certain of their animistic sensibilities to become less important or widespread? Would disenchantment explain why some animists view their stones, tools, or food products as being ‘not people’? Conversely, explain why some animists may or have sought to inhabit a ‘re-enchanted’ world, where everything has Spirit?” ref 

“Studies of animism often point out the importance of animal spirits and places that are sacred or charged with animistic potentialities. Animal spirits refer to the spirits or souls attributed to animals that may be considered the seat of an animal’s consciousness and motivation. These studies show how animistic potentialities go beyond the human subject. In animistic societies, animals frequently show their sentience, awareness, and motivation to act through their relationships to human beings. Diverse ways of relating to animal sentience are revealed by the ways that hunters and shamans in particular treat animal spirits. For example, consider that the spirits of the animals one hunts are master-parents to all humans. As parents, animal spirits may take pity on their children – which include Eveny persons – by offering themselves up as food to eat. A hunted animal does not make this sacrifice lightly, but ‘will “give itself up” only when the relation between hunter and prey is hierarchical’ – that is, when the human being needs to eat meat to survive. But like parents, animal spirits are manipulated into giving themselves up to justify their acts of killing. To this end, hunters seek to establish ‘social contact’ with prey animals in a way that makes them appear vulnerable, not a threat, but in need.” ref 

“L0 (130,000 to 200,000 years old) is found most commonly in Sub-Saharan Africa. It reaches its highest frequency in the Khoisan people at 73% on average. Some of the highest frequencies are: Namibia (!Xun, also called “!Kung or Ju”) 79%, South Africa (Khwe, also called “Khoe”/!Xun) 83%, and Botswana (!Kung) 100%.” ref, ref, ref

“The ǃKung people of Southern Africa recognize a Supreme Being, ǃXu, who is the creator and upholder of life. Like other African High Gods, he also punishes man by means of the weather, and the Otjimpolo-ǃKung know him as Erob, who “knows everything”. They also have animistic and animatistic beliefs. Amongst the ǃKung there is a strong belief in the existence of spirits of the dead (llgauwasi) who live immortally in the sky. The llgauwasi can come to the earth and interact with humans. There is no particular connection to personal ancestors, but the ǃKung fear the llgauwasi, pray to them for sympathy and mercy, as well as call on them in anger.” ref

“The ǃKung practice shamanism to communicate with the spirit world, and to cure what they call “Star Sickness”. The communication with the spirit world is done by a natural healer entering a trance state and running through a fire, thereby chasing away bad spirits. Star Sickness is cured by laying hands on the diseased. Nisa, a ǃKung woman, reported through anthropologist Marjorie Shostak that a healer in training is given a root to help induce trance. Nisa said, “I drank it a number of times and threw up again and again. Finally, I started to tremble. People rubbed my body as I sat there feeling the effect getting stronger and stronger. Trance-medicine really hurts! As you begin to trance, the nǀum [power to heal] slowly heats inside you and pulls at you. It rises until it grabs your insides and takes your thoughts away.” ref

“Traditionally, especially among Juǀʼhoansi ǃKung, women generally collect plant foods and water while men hunt. However, these gender roles are not strict and people do all jobs as needed with little or no stigma. Every first marriage is arranged. The culture of the ǃKung is “being directed at marriage itself, rather than at a specific man.” Even though it does not matter who the man is, the woman’s family is looking for a specific type of man. The man should not be too much older than the woman, should preferably be unmarried rather than divorced, should be able to hunt, and should be willing to take on the responsibilities of the wife’s family. The latter is because a woman’s family depends heavily on her husband’s family, particularly through trade, when there are times of scarcity.” ref

“On the marriage day, the tradition is the “marriage-by-capture” ceremony in which the bride is forcibly removed from her hut and presented to her groom. During the ceremony, the bride has her head covered and is carried and then laid down in the hut while the groom is led to the hut and sits beside the door. The couple stay respectfully apart from each other and do not join the wedding festivities. After the party is over, they spend the night together, and the next morning they are ceremonially rubbed with oil by the husband’s mother.” ref

“Marriage is generally between a man in his twenties and a girl in her teens (14–18 years old). Newlyweds live in the same village as the wife’s family so she has family support during her new life. Often, young wives return to their parents’ houses to sleep until they become comfortable with their husbands. During this time, the husband will hunt for his wife’s family (a form of bridewealth). Extramarital sex is not condoned, but is equally acceptable for each spouse. Domestic violence is prevented because villages are small and close, and houses are open so that neighbors and relatives can intervene as needed.” ref

“Unlike other complex food-foraging groups, it is unusual for the ǃKung to have a chieftain or headman in a position of power over the other members. These San are not devoid of leadership, but neither are they dependent on it. San groups of the Southern Kalahari have had chieftains in the past; however, there is a somewhat complicated process to gain that position. Chieftainship within these San groups is not a position with the greatest power, as they have the same social status as those members of “aged years”. Becoming chieftain is mostly nominal, though there are some responsibilities the chieftain assumes, such as becoming the group’s “logical head”. This duty entails such roles as dividing up the meat from hunters’ kills; these leaders do not receive a larger portion than any other member of the village. The ǃKung people have given name to the Theory of Regal and Kungic Societal Structures due to their peacefulness and egalitarian social structure.” ref

“Kinship is one of the central organizing principles for societies like the ǃKung. Richard Borshay Lee breaks ǃKung kinship principles down into three different sets (Kinship I, Kinship II, and Kinship III or wi). Kinship I follows conventional kin terms (father, mother, brother, sister) and is based on genealogical position. Kinship II applies to name relationships, meaning that people who share the same name (ǃkunǃa) are treated as though they are kin of the same family and are assigned the same kinship term. This is a common occurrence as there are a limited number of ǃKung names. Kung names are also strictly gendered, meaning that men and women cannot share the same name. Names are passed down from ancestors according to a strict set of rules, though parents are never allowed to name their children after themselves. Kinship III, or wi, has to do with the principles of relative age status. In situations where there are two people trying to decide what kin terms to use, the older person makes the ultimate decision. This is especially important in cultures like the ǃKung, as there are not many status distinctions.” ref

“Hunting can take days of tracking, attacking, and following a wounded animal. The Juǀʼhoansi have rites to prevent arrogance amongst male hunters. When a man kills an animal, he does not take it directly into the settlement, but leaves the body and returns as if he was unsuccessful. An older man will inquire about his hunt and remark upon his failure, to which the hunter must avoid credit and accept humility. The next day, a group will go “see if some small animal was nicked by an arrow.” Upon finding the quarry, the hunter will be reassured of the little value of the kill which is finally returned. Additionally, the kill may belong not to him, but to the person who gave him arrows (man or woman), who then follows rules on how to distribute the meat to everyone in the group. Upon returning from a successful hunt, if the kill is transportable, it will be brought back to the village. The ǃKung promote the belief of community well-being, and so the village elders or “those of mature years” will allot meat to the members of the group. The ǃKung also believe in the betterment of their neighbors, so if the kill is too large to move or there is a surplus of meat, word will be spread to villages that are close by to come collect meat for themselves.” ref

“The San are the peoples of southern Africa who traditionally lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and spoke non-Bantu languages with click consonants (thus excluding the Twa, Kwisi, and Cimba, but also the Kwadi and Damara). The San peoples, are the members of any of the indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures of southern Africa, and the oldest surviving cultures of the region. Some interpretations of the genetic analysis suggest divergence from other humans as early as 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. Their recent ancestral territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and South Africa. San is a pejorative Khoekhoe term that was adopted by Western anthropologists; the representatives of San peoples stated their preference in 2003 to be referred to as their respective nations. The San refer to themselves as their individual nations, such as ǃkung (also spelled ǃxuun, including the Juǀʼhoansi), ǀxam, Nǁnǂe (part of the ǂKhomani), Kxoe (Khwe and ǁAni), Haiǁom, Ncoakhoe, Tshuwau, Gǁana and Gǀui (ǀGwi), etc. The compound Khoisan is used to refer to the pastoralist Khoi and the foraging San collectively.  The San speak, or their ancestors spoke, languages of the Khoe, Tuu, and Kxʼa language families, and can be defined as a people only in contrast to neighboring pastoralists such as the Khoekhoe and descendants of more recent waves of immigration such as the Bantu. Due to their mode of sustenance based primarily on hunting and foraging, San were able to migrate and spread more rapidly than herder or farmer cultures, and are believed to have spread to present-day South Africa, including the South Coast, before the Khoe and Bantu peoples. The San organized themselves into hunting parties, and did not have clans nor chiefs, with decisions taken by elders. Early San societies left a rich legacy of cave paintings across Southern Africa, which depict hunting, battles, domestic life, and mythological events.” ref

“The San kinship system reflects their history as traditionally small mobile foraging bands. San kinship is similar to Inuit kinship, which uses the same set of terms as in European cultures but adds a name rule and an age rule for determining what terms to use. The age rule resolves any confusion arising from kinship terms, as the older of two people always decides what to call the younger. Relatively few names circulate (approximately 35 names per sex), and each child is named after a grandparent or another relative, but never their parents. Traditionally, the San were an egalitarian society. Although they had hereditary chiefs, their authority was limited. The San made decisions among themselves by consensus, with women treated as relative equals in decision-making. San economy was a gift economy, based on giving each other gifts regularly rather than on trading or purchasing goods and services. A set of tools almost identical to those used by the modern San and dating to 42,000 BCE was discovered at Border Cave in KwaZulu-Natal. And what is thought to be the world’s oldest ritual is interpreted as evidence that would make the San culture the oldest still-practiced culture today.” ref

The /Xam San (Animistic Religion)

“Most of our information about the /Xam San comes from a man named //Kabbo, a member of the /Xam San who in the 1870s was released from prison into the custody of Dr. Wilhelm Bleek, a German linguist who hoped to learn about the /Xam San, their culture, language, and practices.” ref

“The /Xam San believed in a realm invisible to them, but one that also influenced their lives. Phenomena such as altered states of consciousness, including visions and hallucinations, were evidence of this supernatural realm and its connection with the natural realm. They also believed that beings within this supernatural realm could inhabit animals such as the eland, the meerkat, and the praying mantis. The /Xam San people also held cosmological views, including a three-tiered view of the cosmos, with the spirit world placed both above and below the natural world. They also believed each world was accessible to the other, and that what occurred in one world influenced another. Some people with special powers given to them by their creator could enter the spirit world, and a trance-like dance was a way to open access. Those who entered the spirit world would plead for the sick in the hope of returning with healing powers.” ref

“They believed in a creator named/Kaggen, who dreamed the world into being and inhabited the upper realm alongside animals and the spirits of the dead. /Kaggen could transform into human beings and animals if he wished; for example, he would transform into an animal so it could be hunted and provide food for the /Xam San people. The /Xam San had their own myths to explain the origin of things such as natural phenomena. They believed that the children of the Early Race (a respected hybrid race of animal-humans who had the power to create, shape, and transform, and who were the first to live on Earth) threw the sleeping sun into the sky, that the stars were created by throwing the ashes of fire into the Milky Way, and that clouds came about as the result of the hair of the dead. When a person died, his or her hair was transformed into clouds to shelter human beings from the sun, particularly because the /Xam San were a desert-dwelling people. Rain was believed to come from an animal; for example, thunderstorms came from a rain bull, and gentler rain from a rain cow.” ref

ǀXam religion

The ǀXam prayed to the Sun and Moon. Many myths are ascribed to various stars.

• ǀKágge̥n (sometimes corrupted to “Cagn”) is a Mantis, demiurge, and hero in ǀXam folklore. He is a trickster god who can shape-shift. His wife is ǀHúnntuǃattǃatte̥n.
• ǀHúnntuǃattǃatte̥n (also known as, or corrupted to, “Coti”), the Dassie, adopted ǃXo, Porcupine, as their daughter.
• ǃXo, Porcupine, the daughter of ǀKágge̥n and ǀHúnntuǃattǃatte̥n, married ǀKwammang-a, and her son was the Egyptian mongoose.
• ǀKwammang-a, a dangerous stranger carnivore, married ǃXo, and his son was Ichneumon, the Egyptian mongoose.
• ǂKá̦gára and ǃHãunu are brothers-in-law who fought with lightning, causing massive storms in the east.
• ǃXu, from the Khoikhoi word ǃKhub ‘rich man, master’, was used by some Christian missionaries to translate “Lord” in the Bible, and repeated by various San peoples in reporting what the Khoikhoi had told them. It is used in Juǀʼhoan as the word for the Christian god. It has been misinterpreted as the “Bushman creator”.
• ǃXwe-ǀna-ssho-ǃke was a girl who was one of the people of the early race. ref

“To enter the spirit world, trance has to be initiated by a shaman through the hunting of a tutelary spirit or power animal. The eland often serves as a power animal. The fat of the eland is used symbolically in many rituals including initiations and rites of passage. Other animals such as giraffe, kudu and hartebeest can also serve this function. One of the most important rituals in San religions is the great dance, or the trance dance. This dance typically takes a circular form, with women clapping and singing and men dancing rhythmically. Although there is no evidence that the Kalahari San use hallucinogens regularly, student shamans may use hallucinogens to go into trance for the first time.” ref

“Psychologists have investigated hallucinations and altered states of consciousness in neuropsychology. They found that entoptic phenomena can occur through rhythmic dancing, music, sensory deprivation, hyperventilation, prolonged and intense concentration and migraines. The psychological approach explains rock art through three trance phases. In the first phase of trance, an altered state of consciousness would come about. People would experience geometric shapes commonly known as entoptic phenomena. These would include zigzags, chevrons, dots, flecks, grids, vortices, and U-shapes. These shapes can be found especially in rock engravings of Southern Africa. During the second phase of trance, people try to make sense of the entoptic phenomena. They would elaborate the shape they had ‘seen’ until they had created something that looked familiar to them.” ref

“Shamans experiencing the second phase of trance would incorporate the natural world into their entoptic phenomena, visualizing honeycombs or other familiar shapes. In the third phase, a radical transformation occurs in mental imagery. The most noticeable change is that the shaman becomes part of the experience. Subjects under laboratory conditions have found that they experience sliding down a rotating tunnel, entering caves or holes in the ground. People in the third phase begin to lose their grip on reality and hallucinate monsters and animals of strong emotional content. In this phase, therianthropes in rock paintings can be explained as heightened sensory awareness that gives one the feeling that they have undergone a physical transformation.” ref

“Pictographs can be found across Southern Africa in places such as the cave sandstone of KwaZulu-Natal, Free State and North-Eastern Cape, the granite and Waterberg sandstone of the Northern Transvaal, the Table Mountain sandstone of the Southern and Western Cape. Images of conflict and war-making are not uncommon. There are also often images of therianthropic entities which have both human and animal traits and are connected to the notion of trancing, but these represent only a fraction of all rock art representations. Most commonly portrayed are animals such as the eland, although grey rhebok and hartebeest are also in rock art in places such as Cederberg and Warm Bokkeveld. At uKhahlamba / Drakensberg Park there are paintings thought to be some 3,000 years old which depict humans and animals, and are thought to have religious significance.” ref

“The Khoikhoi attached special significance to the moon. The new and full moons were important times for rainmaking rites and dancing, and it seems that the moon was viewed as the physical manifestation of a supreme being associated with heaven, earth, and especially rain (of key significance to people in drier regions, whose existence was so dependent upon rainfall).” ref

“Amongst the Nama, two prominent figures stand out in their religious mythology. The first is Tsui-//goab, the deity who was sometimes seen as the founding ancestor of the Khoikhoi. He was ‘the creator, the guardian of health, the source of prosperity and abundance, and above all the controller of the rain and its associated phenomena of clouds, thunder and lightning.’ By contrast, //Gaunab was ‘primarily an evil being, who causes sickness or death.’ The other major figure is Haitsi-aibib, a folk hero and magician of great repute who could change his form. Haitsi-aibib died many times in different places, but had the ability to come to life again – often being reborn in a different form. His ‘graves’ are widely distributed, and it was seen as good luck for passers-by to add to the piles of stones already there, or to leave branches, pieces of their clothing, or skins.” ref

AI Overview: Khoisan Religion

• • Shared Personhood: Humans were not viewed as separate or superior, but rather as one strand in a vast network of relationships with non-human persons and kin. [1, 2]
  • Spiritual Resonance: Natural features like hills, water sources, and celestial bodies carried active power, intention, and memory. [1, 2]
  • Interconnectedness: Survival depended on maintaining respectful, reciprocal social relationships with the animals they hunted and the landscapes they inhabited. [1, 2]

• • Rock Art: Ancient rock paintings in southern Africa feature powerful depictions of animals and therianthropes (blending human and animal features), reflecting a fluid spectrum of being and early shamanistic mediation. [1, 2]
  • Deep Roots: Studies on the origins of human spirituality suggest that this relational, animistic perspective dates back 60,000 to 90,000 years or more among ancestral groups in the region. [1]