On the origin of religion

[The Grand Nudger]

Shamanism is also encoded in written form, both historically and today...so tyhat can;t be the point at which one turns into the other...if they're different to begin with.

[Mr Greene]

Indeed though it is likely an influence.
Shamanism as I understand it is concerned primarily with describing the natural environment within which the tribesmen live.
Civilization has a tendency to insulate its citizens from nature to greater or lesser extent which is likely another influence and one that may well alter the message that shamen/priests present.

[The Grand Nudger]

Nevertheless, shamanic explanations have been presented to civilization (and not just those you don't accept as examples of civilization).  I'm not so much disagreeing as pinging opinions as to when a holy man ceases to be a shaman and becomes a priest.

When is it no longer appropriate or accurate to call the man in a dress a witch doctor, a bruoa, a vodun? When is it no longer appropriate to call what they believe in shamanism? The foundational concept of shamanism is that there are human intercessionary agents between ourselves and the divine and/or spiritual....at what point does any tradition of holy practitioners distance themselves from that designation? Such that we could say that one arose from the other...rather than one -being- the other by another name?

[Whateverist]

As I've said before the transition involves risk. Shamanism demands the involvement of the entire person and a risk of madness in the search for a primal experience of the sacred. Priesthood is mostly rule following and rational, though that can be debated and I know there are some who question the sanity of the priesthood. Religion is a way to venerate the remains of past religious practice from a safe distance.

[Mr Greene]

Primarily the diference would be in the formal position of the priesthood within the social heirachy developed in civilizations since the Neolithic Revolution.

[The Grand Nudger]

Shamans have and have had privileged positions,again, I don't see the distinction. Before or after the stone age.

[Mr Greene]

As stated previously the citizens of civilzations were becoming insulated from the natural world as opposed to the requirements of a hunter-gatherer society or nomadic culture. This could have threatened the position o shamen as citizens may not have seen them as relevant.
Also as Whateverist indicated the shamen's position is generally based on experiences whilst priests tend to have a more academic outlook.
Primarily the change must be in the audience.

[pocaracas]

As I've stated elsewhere searching for the origin point of religions led to Lascaux and the Venus figurines of 40,000 years ago. This would tend to indicate some form of shamanism and shamanism is widespread across the planet being found on all populated continents.
Further thoughts flag up those areas where shamanism isn't generally found - civilizations.
Extrapolating from this it would appear that shamanism and civilization are somehow incompatible and civilization forces beliefs to mutate forming organised religions.

Ah... Venus figurines... Archaeologists are so naive, sometimes...
Why attribute religious value to something when porn will do the same job?

Oh, look... some seem to think like me! who'd have thought?!

There's no way to know what the statuette was used for or what meaning it carried, although scientists theorize that it might have been used in shamanistic rites or was simply pornography. Anthropologist Paul Mellars of Stony Brook University in New York state says the focus on exaggerated sexual features fits with other artifacts found from the period, including phalluses carved out of bison horn and vulva inscribed on rocks. "It's sexually exaggerated to the point of being pornographic," Mellars says. "There's all this sexual symbolism bubbling up in that period. They were sex-mad."

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/05/e...ornography

[Sal]

All this implied meaning about origin of religion is kinda misleading, IMO.

I think we simply evolved, slowly, to incorporate religious belief along with cultural evolution 12,000+ years ago. These figurines don't imply any religious belief directly; they're more akin to pornography than anything else.

[Fake Messiah]

You first had hunter-gatherer people were different then later agrarian people.
Hunter-gatherers lived in egalitarian mindset and society, meaning they had to share everything, including hunted food. Therefore they were against anyone with a bloated ego and were conditioning social pressure to share things. There was no heroes. For instance if some great, strong hunter brings a big fat pig to his commune other people prey-shame him by saying "What a bony pig. This is ridiculous. Why even bother?" to prevent hunter to think of himself as superior and that he stays modest.
They saw lavish prey meat and gifts as an attempt to exert control over others, curry political support, or raise one’s own status, all of which run counter to their culture. Bands didn't even had leaders .

So when people switched to agrarian way of living, the opposite started occurring and we see the emergence of "big men" who win control of the flow of surplus food and other goods and so amass a group of dependents or followers by bestowing gifts on others, placing them in his debt, and they must reciprocate with more generous gifts in the future. But they also needed "bigger connection" with nature and distortion of reality kept people in debt.
Then you see among the world's first civilizations there was a clear congruence between the payment of taxes by the masses to the elite and the “payment” of sacrifices and offerings by the elite to the gods to return energy to its divine source, so that the source could continue to animate nature and supply humans with food. The gods were thought to be dependent on humans, and humans were thought to be dependent in turn on the gods.
So you give sacrifices and prayers and in return, the gods provided physical nourishment for humans by making plants and animals grow. Sacrifices were regarded as an essential means of maintaining this cycle.
Even in the Bible YHWH demands human sacrifice - that every first born son must be sacrificed to him after 8 days.
Not to mention others even in Mesoamerica.

And this is why most of the people in medieval times were slaves working for the king's land that was handed down to him by Jesus and clergy was there to make it official. That's why the Pope still criticizes social order wherever he goes and starts ranting about "secularism" because in medieval time Church just in England had 75% of the land. He no doubt thinks "If only people were stupid again. Believing in nonsense we feed them."