Was their atheism/irreligion during primitive Communism?

[Red Eagle]

I was thinking, is there any evidence suggesting that early humans didn't believe in god or at least any sort of organized religion just spirits or magical things to explain natural phenomenon. If that was the case that would strongly support the theory that religion won't exist in a classless society because there is no need for belief. So we're there any ancient people with no religion or were atheist?

[Q]

Humans most likely believed in deities and have strong spiritual customs. This is suggested by anthropological field research, among other things, in societies that remain on the border of original communism.

So, what will most likely happen is a shift from stratified religions to more equal forms again.

Useful reads:
- Radical Anthropology Group website (http://radicalanthropologygroup.org/new/Home.html).
- "When all the crap began" part 1 (http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/854/when-all-the-crap-began-supplement-part-1/) and part 2 (http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/854/when-all-the-crap-began-supplement-part-2/).

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I was thinking, is there any evidence suggesting that early humans didn't believe in god or at least any sort of organized religion just spirits or magical things to explain natural phenomenon. If that was the case that would strongly support the theory that religion won't exist in a classless society because there is no need for belief. So we're there any ancient people with no religion or were atheist?

There is evidence of ritual burial from the middle Paleolithic, if I'm not mistaken, and possible cultic objects from the upper Paleolithic. But it's not clear that these are evidence of religion in any real sense.

If I'm not mistaken (might have to bug Blake's Baby on this one), the Natufian culture, which represents the most materially advanced of the primitive communal societies, hasn't given us much in the way of cultic objects, although some burials suggest a shamanism of some sort. But shamanism is far from organised religion.

The first uncontroversial signs of organised religion as we understand it today occur in the settled, stratified societies of the Neolithic.

That said, I think it's extremely disingenuous to equate what Marx called "primitive communism" and the communism that will be the result of the end of class society. The first was insufficiently developed, when it comes to the productive forces and material culture, for classes; the second is too developed for classes. The first took place in conditions of generalised scarcity and precarity, whereas the second will take place in security and abundance.

[Zhi]

Judaism came about in a late primitive communist society just to remind you.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Judaism came about in a late primitive communist society just to remind you.

No, not really. Even if we extend the term "Judaism" a bit to include "henotheisitic worship of Yahweh instead of Baal Hadad", this dates back to the Bronze Age, the time of the first settled, agricultural slave societies.

[newdayrising]

According to anthropological linguist Daniel Everett, the Pirahã tribe in the Amazon has no concept of god, religion or social hierarchy.
His description of them is very interesting, but has been disputed.

[contracycle]

I think two things have to be split out in order to understand what might be meant by "religion" in primitive communism.

We are used to that term having connotations like hierarchy, doctrine, commandments, and faith. But associated with all of these is also the concept of cosmology, that is, the attempt to understand and explain what the world is, and how it came to be.

Obviously, people living in almost any period up until the development of the modern scientific method had very little solid information on which to base their understanding. But some kind of explanation was necessary, and it also had utility - even if you didn't know why things happened, or why a certain thing should be done, it could still be socially useful to mandate and enforce a rule that required they be done.

All that other stuff, the hierarchy, the legitimation of rule, comes later, with the appearance of the god-kings and the temple economies. So I would say so little of what we mean by the term "religion" is relevant to such early periods, it's not really useful to use the term. Indeed, you could argue that seeing as what they were attempting to do was to interrogate the world and understand their place in it, they were really practicing a kind of "science".