Remember Gobekli Tepe? Early human religion: A 747 built in the basement with an X-Acto Knife?:
The immense complex, which predates Stonehenge by about seven thousand years, has cast doubt on the conventional view that agriculture produced cities, suggesting instead that religion did. We have no idea, of course, what the religion that called forth such a massive long-lasting effort was — not its cosmology, nor its teachings, nor its organization. We only know that no one lived at the site (no water or evidence of cooking). More.
Too sacred for such conventional activities maybe?
Well, the much later (and better known) Stonehenge turns out to have been a way bigger project than we realized too:
Archeologists at Stonehenge have found more than a dozen previously unknown ancient monuments in and around the iconic ring of massive stones, revealing surprising new insights about the people who built it.
Totem-pole-like posts or stone structures in the Durrington Walls “super henge” – a ring-shaped mound more than 1.5 kilometres in diameter.
Prehistoric pits hundreds of years older than Stonehenge that appear astronomically aligned to point to its location at certain times of year.
Huge burial mounds containing piles of gold and jewelry
A massive timber building that was probably used for elaborate burial rituals.
More here.
Our ancestors sure wanted the gods to know they had got the mail.
See also: What can we responsibly believe about human evolution?
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