79. Religion
It has already been said that knowledge of religion, a non-material thing, can be preserved from the remote past only by the most roundabout means. It is conceivable that the people of the Upper Palæolithic spent at least as much time in ceremonial observances as in working flint. Analogy with modern uncivilized tribes would make us think that this is quite likely. But the stone tools have remained lying in the earth, while the religious customs went out of use thousands of years ago and the beliefs were forgotten. Yet this is known: As far back as the Mousterian, thirty thousand years ago, certain practices were being observed by the Neandertal race of western Europe which modern savages observe in obedience to the dictates of their religion. When these people of the Mousterian laid away their dead, they put some of their belongings with them. When existing nations do this, it is invariably in connection with a belief in the continued existence of the soul after death. We may reasonably conclude therefore that even in this long distant period human beings had arrived at a crude recognition of the difference between flesh and spirit; in short, religion had come into being. Even to say that Neandertal man did not know whether his dead were dead, implies his recognition of something different from life in the body, for he recognized of course that the body had become different. Whether the Neandertal race already held to the existence of spirits distinct from man or superior to him, it is impossible to say.
The Upper Palæolithic Cro-Magnon peoples laid out the bodies of their dead and sometimes folded them. They also sometimes painted the bodies, and buried flint implements and food in the graves. That is, funerary practices were becoming established. We may assume that hand in hand with this development of observances there went a growth of ritual and belief.