Religious women push lawmakers to investigate Kavanaugh, suspend confirmation

[MineralMan]

41. No. I think they developed alongside each other.

We know virtually nothing about the development of religion in prehistorical times. The written word is part of the developing of cities, trade and what we call civilization. So, by the time we have stories, civilization was already in place.

Religion predates civilization. That's virtually certain. Slavery, however, requires supervision, so it probably didn't develop until people lived in areas in more concentrated populations. A small tribal unit probably wouldn't be able to support slave labor, and agriculture and construction of buildings was probably the first use of slaves. Both of those developed to support higher population densities.

It's not all that simple, really. And we have no records before writing developed. Even cuneiform and hieroglyphics came out of more densely populated civiilizations. Religion, on the other hand, developed even in nomadic and small village cultures. That we know from isolated village cultures within historic times.