When were godly rituals created?

[Lagmonster]

Sensitive topic. I'll identify the query, and my thoughts, in a moment, but first some ground rules:

1) I'm postulating a question with certain assumptions already made. That is, I'm asking when humans developed the need to perform rituals for gods, and for what reason. I'm automatically stating that god/gods are a human creation. If you believe that a god exists, this thread is just going to annoy you. Stay away, your opinion will not help and you aren't likely to be recieved well to give it.

2) I admit that I make many observations based on examining myths. While they aren't fact, they DO tell us something about the people who made them up.


I know that there's been talk here about the 'universal human code of ethics', that is, that morals (some encoded into laws, like an abhorrence of murder) have evolved in every culture regardless of the religion that accompanies that culture (the old 'you don't need Jesus to know that murder is wrong' argument). However, the *need* for religion is also universal. Most human cultures have at some time or another created and given name and form to superhuman, invisible entities that control the aspects of the world that people could not explain (the sun, rain, fire, death, procreation).
Later on in human development, these entities are represented often in either spectacularly influential humans (Jesus, Mohammed, Sumerian priest caste, Pharaoh, Caesar, Moses), or as anthropomorphized aspects of our surroundings (god is the sun, god is the rain, god is the wind, god is the earth, god is my pet cat).
Eventually people create dogma and religion to support their beliefs, pass them on, and give them a way to try to improve the parts of the world that they can't control, and believe their deities can (spring rituals to induce good harvests, christian memorial ceremonies to guarantee themselves a place in the afterlife their entity controls).

Why people create gods, I can guess. My question is: When did people create gods requiring ritual and ceremony that dictated the course of daily life?

The earliest record I was able to uncover that mentions gods that DIRECTLY control the destiny of humanity, meddle in its affairs and require worship is Martu (Abraham of Ur, who heard his particular favorite Sumerian god make him a deal, "Go, and I will make of you a great nation" - and there are a crapload of paralells in the Sumerian and Genesis origin myths, so I'm inclined to think they came from the same stock), but the truth is likely older than that (ritual itself is probably older than belief in gods, specifically neanderthal burials and ritual cannibalism which doesn't seem to have anything to do with gods).

The earliest god-worship ritual evidence that I am aware of are the famous 'venus figurines' - images of a large, pregnant woman (upper paleolithic era). The most popular explanation for these faceless figurines was that of a ripe 'earth mother' goddess or other symbol of fertility. However, the imagery and other art/trinkets associated with the people who made the figurines don't POSITIVELY indicate the belief in a meddling god, and may have just been a symbol of female fertility, so I'm going to look a little later on for direct god-worshipping ritual behaviour. Correct me if you know something else on this topic.

My theory is that the use of ritual to appease gods that meddle with humanity didn't come into effect until populations got so large that it was necessary to control people directly by way of a political or priest caste. By the height of the Sumerian civilization, myths and rituals have emerged that indicate a belief in humanoid gods which, logically, have human passions and desires, and who are revered and treated in the same fashion as the ruling castes (which often represented the gods on earth, conveniently enough. See Gilgamesh of Uruk).

Now, this is very limited to one area of the world (Sumerian through to Judeo-Christianity). It is possible that religion evolved differently in other parts of the world. Unfortunately, what I know about earliest African, American, and Asian religious history would fill a very short pamphlet. Any insights would be appreciated.[/img]