Once had Erectus filled the earth it was forced to start competing with itself. The winner of this competition was obviously us and we flatter ourselves by imagining it’s because we are smarter. But our brains were actually smaller than some other species like neanderthal. Our trick was that we evolved a polymorphic brain. 19/20 sapiens come out and the womb and imitate those around us religiously. We don’t ask why we just do. It’s been shown by experiment that modern chimps are more thoughtful than modern humans. But counter intuitively that is why we are so much smarter. When sapiens started copying the previous generation it created a new type of thing. Culture. And through natural selection culture could evolve. But not just through natural selection. Because of the polymorphic brain some sapiens had their curiosity switched on and these people serve the role that sex plays in natural selection. They add variation into the culture and when they discover a positive mutation the rest of the tribe would patch their software with the new update. This enabled a faster rate of evolution than biology alone because it had a higher rate of transmission. Having sex with a fire making monkey doesn’t necessarily mean your kids will be able to make fire because only one parent has the mutation. And it enables multiple mutations within one generation. Having sex with the fire making monkey and the rock sharpening monkey will at best give your kids one of those abilities but more likely neither. While cultural evolution enables both you and your kids to gain both abilities with a 100% chance of transmission. It’s important note here that nowhere here have we become smarter per se. The role of the 1/20 was not to be the smart member or the tribe. They were invariably morons. Their role was simply to explore the possibility space. No more. Thinking was something that one lucky idiot invented much later and learning to think is what transforms the curious idiot into at least a demigenius.
With the trick of cultural evolution humans quickly became more powerful than any other animal on the planet including close relatives like neanderthals. And we reconquered existing hunting ranges and even began to expand our hunting ranges onto the ocean and into colder northern climates
Early religion was essentially anthropomorphising nature. It developed a rich set of stories but people found it hard to believe they were real when their supposed powers were not reliably manipulated by their sacrifices and greek satirists mocked them while greek philosophers provided alternative explanations for natural phenomena.
The Intelligence Paradox by Satoshi Kanazawa provides a good explanation for where religion originates. He explains that in the context of the Sahara it’s a positive adaptation to be paranoid about any unusual noise since it could potentially be caused by a predator. The cost of zoomorphising too many things is very low so people evolved to assign animal origin to every unexplained sound or vision
Early religion was essentially anthropomorphising nature. It developed a rich set of stories but people found igreece to believe they were real when their supposed powers were not reliably manipulated by their sacrifices and greek satirists mocked them while greek philosophers provided alternative explanations for natural phenomena.
Greek mystery cults developed the idea of an afterlife and combined with the mythology of Dionysus to create the popular religion of christianity which combined a likeable god with the clever trick of hiding his false promises in the afterlife.
Cynicism grew out the ground cleared by the satirists. It was an anti-civilisation philosophy. The very work means dog-like. And while the its abstract ideas had wide appeal only hardcore philosopher types like Diogenes implemented the ideas. This was enough him one of the most famous people in greece though.