Because I was out of context, I did think you were overemphasizing prehistoric evidence and ideas rather than any later developments, because I didn't know that your world was prehistoric-themed and therefore this is the specific area you researched. You have a really nice voice btw!
Fun fact: the venus of willendorf was the oldest known figure that was indisputably humanoid, until another older venus was found which now holds that title.
In modern parlance, yes. Though etymologically \s\ would be appropriate for Celtic in French and Mediaeval Latin, from which the term is taken. However the origins of the term Celt in both languages are the Classical Latin Celtae and initially the ancient Greek Keltoi, both pronounced with a \k\. So both \selt\ & \kelt\ are correct for referring to the culture, depending on exact context. \kelt\ is probably the more appropriate one outside of discourse about linguistic history and etymology though, you're quite correct.
You've tapped into a rich source of inspiration here! The evidence you covered seems like a protocultural soup, the undifferentiated stem cells of what would become all kinds of human traditions. I could see the origins of art in cave painting and sculpture, of medicine in the possible use of surgery and certain herbs. You could even make a case for early shamans, supposedly invested with supernatural power, being first in the time honored line of rulers with "divine right." (I hope you'll address the role of religion in maintaining social order when it becomes relevant.) It really gets me thinkin' Not to mention the art is very pretty, as always
Thanks! I definitely got very inspired working on this, and I hoped it carried through to you all :) Religions are very fun to work on and as far as we know people who "commune" with the gods are universal in religion, its a pity I didn't mention it in the video ^^" I'm so glad you liked it though!
I just started my Worldbuilding journey for a comic project and i would like to give thanks to the Almighty algorithm for leading me to you. You have just gained a new subscriber😊
That's brilliant! Best of luck with your comic! It's hard work but very rewarding from what I've found :P And thanks so much for the sub! It's an absolute honour :)
Wow, the RU-vid algorithm works sometimes! This video was a suggestion on my feed, and it was gold. Thank you so much for such a well researched and presented introduction TO religion, not just A religion.
I’ve been working on my next DnD setting for a few months now and the Venus figures reminded me of the funeral rituals in the world. One of the few options for preserving a loved one post mortem, is cremating them and keeping their ashes in a small pendant. The Pendant’s can resemble the person themself, something related to the person’s life (like a sword if they were a warrior or a farming tool if they were a farmer), or a symbol of the late person’s choosing, that could be anything.
Amazing video, one small nitpick: "Homo sapiens" is always written as Homo sapiens, preferably either in bold, outlined or italicized too. It is not a plural and only Homo is capitalized, with it being always capitalized.
Not to add to how hard it is to interpret ancient peoples, but sinking large animals into a lake was pretty common practice--it turns out that it's kinda like those butter dishes that use water to seal the butter in. You get a cool, bacterially suppressed environment down there and can retrieve the meat for months after the kill. You scrape off the outer layers and the interior is perfectly edible. And because of there being some loss of material, it's a particularly good idea to use large chunks of meat, so big herbivores are the best.
I’m so glad this channel’s popped up on my recommended. I’m looking forward to everything to come out of it, it looks so promising! The religions I’ve been writing about have generally been vague things that generally feel real, just not fully realized. Maybe this channel could be some help in realizing it :) In my script, there’s all this stuff about these bronze/iron age aliens burning and cooking meat to be tossed into the sacred river, singing hymns to the god that dwells in it. A sacred bronze sword only able to be drawn from its scabbard by the king, a sword they treat like a manifestation of the Sun. Branches of the Simi tree, symbols of good fortune with their bright pink flowers and fruits. The tucking of Simi leaves, warded necklaces, and fired clay prayer tokens into the bags and quilted armor of soldiers by family members. I haven’t written it down yet, but I had the idea that because the blood of this native species uses hemocyanins, the copper in it making it blue, that they would see water as a form of godsblood. That the periodic flooding of this river is this river god purposely shedding blood to both destroy and renew the world. Perhaps that red tides, if they happen on this world, are caused when the Sun God either comes to blows with the River God and the Sea deity, or perhaps sheds his own blood. I’m not to certain on this part yet. Anyway, I hope it’s okay if I share that all. Don’t want to annoy people lol I wish this channel the best, and I look forward to the second episode of this.
I love history documentaries, especially when it comes to anthropology and religion. Bug DAMN! The information! The production quality! I'm impressed! Kudos!
Just stumbled onto this vid and your channel on my home screen. When the paleoanthropology and archeology parts came up, I instantly subbed. I'll give you a snid bit of what I'm writing, but the TL;DR is *_John Frum._* I'm currently writing a story that messes with space and time, but there's a tribe of a human ancestor (or close cousin now extinct) like H. heidelbergensis that the main characters come across and befriend. In my story the main characters (contemporary 21st century humans) do not even know that the tribe they meet are not H. sapiens, but people just like them, if not a little stranger in appearance. The way the main characters and the tribe come into contact and eventually become friends is when the main group stumbles upon a small hunting party of the tribe where one of the hunters was grievously injured during the hunt and has a shattered leg. The leader of the hunting party is about to "un-alive" his injured companion as to them the injury is already fatal and it's an act of mercy. The main group was attracted to the area by the injured man's screaming and interrupt the "act of mercy" which leads to a brief and tense standoff between the two parties until a woman of the main group retrieves a trauma kit (a more complex first aid kit) that's a red bag with a white cross embroidered on it. For some reason this amazes and partially pacifies the tribal hunters causing the leader to send a runner back to their people. They allow the woman to stabilize the injured man but he needs more than what the trauma kit can provide. As both groups try to break down the language barrier to come up with a plan and some time passes, the runner from the tribe returns with a gray haired woman walking with a staff that appears to have snake skins dangling from near the top just below a pair of crow wings mounted on the staff. The older tribal woman's forehead is painted with red ocre and emblazoned with a white cross above the bridge of her nose. She carries a red furred animal skin pouch full of pungent herbs. What will later be discovered by the main group is that this tribe they just met had met a modern human decades prior, a person who seemingly had healing abilities. As a result the tribe took on the practices most similar to those of a *_Cargo Cult._*
Finally another video! And on religion at that! I don't know how, but you somehow always manage to make a video about the thing I'm currently working on for my world. Coincidence? I think so! (But a welcome one) Your pronounciation of 'Hohle Fels' is actually quite good, your 'Fels' was perfect even. If you want to improve it just stretch the 'O' in 'Hohle' (the silent 'H' after the 'O' indicates a long vowel) and try to keep the pitch the same throughout 'Hohle' (Your pitch raised slightly during the 'Ho-'). I don't know why, but up until now I honestly had a hunch that you might be from Germany, but I guess I was wrong XD.
Hey that's awesome! I really hope this and the next one help you out :) and thanks so much for the pronunciation guide! It's great to know how it's supposed to sound :P
Super cool video! Tysm! One thing I would like to mention: for pre-modernity cultures, specially paleolithic societies, there is absolutely NO distinction between "practical" acts and "religious" acts. All cultural evidence from non-modern societies (social, material, etc) points to a complete integration of spirituality in them, down to everyday practices that we could consider mundane from our perspective. The concept of non-religious acts is only possible once spirituality has been severed from the way we think about things, about society, about work, about authority, etc. And this doesn’t really happen in human history up until modernity comes around.
This is what I want to see more of when it comes to world building content on the Internet! Researching is my personal favorite part of world building and I think encouraging that is great!
That's amazing that RU-vid suggested this to me! This is the general subject that I was drunkenly talking to my next door neighbor about next to a splendid fire, less than 24 hrs ago. I had my phone next to me as I ranted.... Guess it's listening 😅😢
great videos! Watching people fall into rabbit holes of information most people are unaware of is strangly cathartic and rewarding. Good luck with your story!
Thank you for sharing your thought process with us. I never thought of building up a religion from the very basics, but now I would love to do it. Where did it begin and how did it get there in the story is a very interesting mind-game I will enjoy playing over and over again.
You are SUCH a cool creator and artist! These videos are really useful to both feed my little knowledge hungry brain, but also to help my worldbuilding! You're amazing, keep up the good work!
I wonder if the early cave paintings were used like football playbooks, being a set of symbols to indicate how to got after an animal. Also, Venus statues being worn could be for showing a woman is fertile or with child, a protection talisman in a way.
The way I'm kinda tackling religion is via a soft worldbuilding approach of historical revisionism. The status of something as "divine" I'm keeping primarily to the scale it can achieve feats that are possible within the magic system. The more evolved a species is in tandem with exposure to the magic system, how many planets could an individual or group could seize, etc. The current setting I'm working on with an emphasis on religion as a way to discuss gender relations and self-expression, rather than analyze the Gods themselves, I often took notes on how actual polytheistic cults functioned and built the intrigue off of that. The resemblance, thus, will appear more fluid, despite the gods in question being a bit broad and vague. This helps leave wiggle room for things like localizations in religious practice, interpretation, and so on. I will say, while I wasn't exactly lacking for tools at my disposal to start with, I can say I'm glad to have found your channel. You offer a much more laid back, casual conveyance of information than the likes of Tim Hickson from Hello Future Me, or Matthew from Worldbuilding Corner(Matthew if you're reading this, please come back, we miss Locus :c); your art style is incredibly inviting, and you yourself are *KILLING* the "cute, friendly archaeologist" vibes immaculately. *chefs kiss* PS: Your segment on skull cults gave me a *VERY* fun dogwhistling tool for illegal cults to employ as a way to spite more legally-recognized ones, or even threaten outsiders, in case you were just thinking I was being a backseat-writer. ;)
You need exactly none of this for a D&D campaign and if anything, your players will resent that you keep trying to monolog about your worldbuilding project while they're trying to play.
Although I'm a newbie when it comes to writing, I've recently been inspired by DnD sessions with my friends to create a world in which to run a campaign for them. I don't have much time at the moment to write, but what I've written so far is a reasonably comprehensive overview of the spirituality within it. I appreciate this video very much because the major religion of my world seems to be deeply rooted in animism. I don't think anybody has the patience for my waffling, though, so I'll just say thank you, this was very encouraging.
I’m with you. I’m so fed up with the “retellings” of Greek mythology. I want my fictional religion to not be based of the Greek Pantheon, but how they were worshipped back in ancient times, which lets me kill two birds with one stone of personal research and book research. Ooo, 5:31 looks like carvings of Ogham. I’ve never seen archaeological incorporations, just modern. So pretty. 😍
2:36 Ok, but as someone writing a story with a deep emphasis on a religion with 3 distinct cultural branches and pantheon of real gods who are electing representatives for themselves this may be the exact video I was looking for!
Glad to get into this! Ta Mando has manifest deities so the idea of religion and spirituality is, by and large, a forgone conclusion since you can literally go have a picnic with the lecal waterfall God! (and probably SHOULD! We hear the poor guy gets lonely...) But it's always fantastic to think more deeply about religion in world building! Great stuff!
Great video. It is kind of funny. One can never find the absolute truth of truth. But one can find patterns that can give us better ideas and perspectives. My religion is truth seeking. And I just got to look until I get to the answer or die trying. Worth a try anyway 😂
0:07 I’m sorry, but I just realized that your characature’s eyebrows are on the top of her head, nowhere near her eyes, and I can’t decide if it bugs me or is hilarious.
I always use my three step process. 1. Make up a simple story about some decent blonde being decent but crazy. 2. Have people telephone game that a while and some greedy people see an opportunity. 3. Rinse and repeat with a few variations. Boom! World religion. The version for pantheons is ussually just “Several magicians with good tricks” or “Superpowers and we didn’t understand that yet”.
16:40 IIRC the nearby karahan tepe is actually a few hundred years older, but it is mostly un-excavated as far as I know, dont know much abput the site sadly
I personally hated how GOT (the TV series at least) did religion, because they basically just copy and pasted 12th century the papacy onto a pagan religion and society with no explanation.
interesting fact! ritual cannibalism was the reason main reason why "kuru" a prion disease very similar to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, was so prominent in its home base of Papua New Guinea
I tried to make a religion, that after of a series of events; everyone would preach to different deities but trough the same apostle. The idea was to make a very diverse country but very apart by ethnicity. My writing sucks so that's all I could get.
meanwhile I'm trying to answer the question "why do people believe what they believe?" just so I can craft a religion that feels kinda natural for my world. Its 1800s China but the religion they follow is completely made up by me. Also, its a question I need to answer because religion is one of the centural themes of my story.
I’ve seen a few really interesting videos arguing for original universal Monotheism, which shifted into henotheism. (And some arguing the other way) although these are minority positions.
I think looking at the just the forms of the earliest known religions isn't telling us a whole lot about where religions come from. First of all, knowing the practices of an early religion doesn't tell you how that religion came about, and second, most of the religions that exist today can barely even be counted as being the same religion as the one that they evolved from, so the question of where the modern religions (or those at most points in time) come from isn't really answered at all when you don't include any of the mechanisms through which religions evolve. When you look at just the origins of Christianity, for example, you can see a polytheistic pantheon of local animal gods try resolving its contradictions as different groups have varying interpretations based on the generations that came before, with the surviving version depending on which is beneficial to propagandize for and which seems the most plausible to the greatest number of people, and each of those require compromises that may even lead to new inventions. Alex O'Connor recently did an interview on the topic, "The History of Yahweh", and I think that explains a lot about the logic that religious evolution is based on Edit: A lot of what I said was missing actually was accounted for in part 2. I should have watched that one before writing a comment, I just thought that the second part would be focusing more exclusively on the writing than it actually was.
In Esoteric Enterprises, the true gods are suppressed. Any and all of them. For some reason, the state comes down hard on all who start to form a real divine connection with obscure saints, Anassa, Ithaqua etc. All devotees are isolated individuals or cells the size of a 20-30 strong street gang. The gods are jealous and petty.
Came to learn a little thing or two on how to write a proper, real-seeming religion, stayed after I got tricked into learning stuff about IRL origins of religion and old burials, skeletons, and caves where ancient people were carving a snake? Dear god, I'm allergic to learning! Oh no!
There's some views of those venus figures which suggests that they were self-portraits, perhaps a way of recording or documenting the changes in one's body during pregnancy. The researched compared the "unrealistic" portions of them to how that part of the body looks from one's own perspective. Therefore their purpose might have been primarily diary or education, rather than religion - though there's no reason either of those would necessarily be independent of religious trappings. As far as I'm aware this view was first espoused by LeRoy McDermott ("Self-Representation in Upper Paleolithic Female Figurines, 1996) but I could've sworn I saw another analysis within the last few years that I now can't find again. I'm not sure about your religion/sorcery dichotomy - what are you basing that perspective on? My perspective might be biased on this, because I have some connection to minority beliefs, but I feel that many people would consider that to be a highly European-influenced perspective rather than a universal principle. Are these existing dichotomous definitions that I'm just unfamiliar with, or is there some research attributing those trends to the practice of sorcery under its broader and more common anthropological definition?
You make some very interesting points, and it is entirely possible I leaned towards a western European bias without noticing as it is the area I'm most familiar with in terms of religion and mythology - but I was working with the understanding that one of the primary systems for developing religion is through dichotomies and the dual contrasts humans tend to sort information through, I talk about it in part 2 in Classifications, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the topic :)
Venus figurines dont technically have to be of a woman, there are a lot of similarly made statueettes depicting mammoths, smaller humanoid figures, and other things.
