The First Religion

There’s a kind of religion older than gods, older than temples, older than scripture.

Older than civilization.

Older than the version of “human” we like to imagine in museums.

It’s the most natural form of religion — religion in its raw, untouched state.

Prehistoric humans, maybe even the creatures who came *before* us, practiced it long before anyone carved a commandment into stone or claimed authority over the sacred.

They were from the earth.

So as early as we could worship, we worshipped the earth.

And here’s the part people always get wrong:

It’s not *their* ancestral religion — the Siberians, the North American nations, the Indigenous groups who preserved it.

It’s **ours**.

Because before they were *them*, they were **us**.

We share the same origins.

The same early world.

The same first instincts.

This was the spiritual language of the human species long before any of us split into tribes, cultures, or continents.

Before belief, there was **relationship.**

You didn’t pray *to* nature — you lived *inside* it.

A river wasn’t symbolic. It was a lifeline.

A mountain wasn’t decoration. It was a guardian.

An animal wasn’t “game.” It was a partner in the oldest contract we ever made:

**Respect for respect.

Balance for balance.

Take only what you can honor.**

This wasn’t Siberian or North American or African or European.

It was human.

Some peoples — the Nenets, the Evenki, the Cree, the Ojibwe, the Dene, the Yupik, the Inuit — kept it whole.

They protected the original religion of our species while the rest of us smothered it under kings, priests, walls, and dogma.

And evolution backs this up.

If a behavior appears across *different species* of early humans —

Neanderthals burying their dead with red ochre,

Homo erectus collecting special stones,

Homo sapiens carving spirits into bone —

that means the instinct predates culture itself.

It predates language.

It predates nation and tribe.

It predates the split between Siberia and North America by tens of thousands of years.

Evolution proves continuity.

You don’t develop the same rituals on different continents unless they started before the separation —

before migration,

before identity,

before “us” and “them.”

Meaning: we didn’t adopt this worldview.

We **inherited** it.

Humans have been animists — earth-worshippers, nature-listeners, spirit-walkers — for 300,000 years.

We only switched to organized religion about five minutes ago.

And if you still doubt this?

Look around.

The fact that these practices still live — under different names, in different countries, across Asia, Africa, South America, hell, even Europe — proves something simple:

**We are from the earth.

Not put here by some man in the sky.

We belong here.

This is our home.

We are part of it.**

So when you see what you call the “silly dances” of an ancient religion meant to bring rain?

Don’t laugh.

If any religion ever got it right, it was theirs.

So maybe share a peace pipe with your brothers.

Sit in a sweat lodge.

Stick fight at a wedding.

Rub mud on your face.

Cry to the heavens and thank the earth that you’re alive.

Because that was the first religion —

and it might be the only one we ever truly understood.

Fact check me.