9781422281123

12 T HE M ONOTHEISTIC F AITHS : J UDAISM , C HRISTIANITY , AND I SLAM

Like modern humans, people of the Stone Age understood the relationship between cause and effect. They knew, for example, that touching fire would cause a painful burn, or that eating the leaves of a particular plant would make them sick. However, there were many things prehistoric humans could not understand. What caused the sun to rise every morning and disappear each night? Why did thunder and lightning sometimes cause the forest to shake? To answer these types of questions, Stone Age people used their imaginations. They created stories to explain the forces of nature that they could not understand. It is a short step from asking, “why does this happen?” to wondering “who or what caused this to happen?” People of the Stone Age came to believe that there were vital living forces, or spirits, everywhere in nature. People had spirits, which could be glimpsed when they saw their shimmering reflection in a pool of water. Trees, animals, rocks, rivers, and stars all had spirits. Good spirits caused dreams, and evil spirits brought illness. Angry spir- its could express themselves through floods or storms. Humans wanted to keep the spirits happy so they would pro- tect the people. To do this, humans began to develop rituals intended to satisfy the spirits. Anthropologists consider the prim- itive myths about spirits, and the rituals created to appease them, to be the earliest expressions of religious thought. This type of reli- gion is known as animism , and it is still practiced by people in some parts of Africa, South America, and Asia. Human existence changed radically with the development of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. When humans learned to grow crops and raise domesticated livestock, they were able to control their food supply for the first time. This enabled them to settle in permanent communities. As farming became more effi- cient, it resulted in food surpluses, which in turn meant humans could devote more of their time to other pursuits, such as weaving cloth, making pottery, or working metal. As people living in these communities shared their knowledge and skills, the earliest civi- lizations began to develop.