Neanderthals

The article on the Singing Neanderthals was very interesting and informative but after reading it once I didn’t get any sense of religion at all. I mostly read if for the facts and was waiting for religious ideas to be mentioned. When the topic of religion didn’t pop up in the text I was sort of shocked and disappointed that I just read this for religion and didn’t see any sign of it. I then looked over it again for the major concepts and to my surprise found quite a few connections to religion. The majority of the article is about the ‘Hmmmmm’ and I was trying to relate it back to religion some how and all I could think of was the singing I as a Christen do in church. I then ran across the quote “’Hmmmmm’ music-making not only when their groups were challenged by death and injury, but also during the ‘good times’ of Neanderthal life.” This made reread the part about Neanderthal burial and connect it to most religions of today, and of all time, that burial is a major part of all of them. I found it interesting that these beings have no symbolic logic yet they buried there dead. I found it reasonable that they could have done if for some of the same reasons Catholics, Egyptians, Muslims, or almost all religions that bury for purely religious reasons. I then tough about the opposite of death, birth, or one good times of the Neanderthals, and found some similar connections. They sang to there babies just as is done by mothers now and in rituals such as baptism. It is also said that they used gestures and other movements to communicate as Catholic parents no make gestures such as having the holy cross up in the child’s room or other religious gifts given to them by godparents or other relatives. I still have some of the crosses and other religious gifts from when was born just as I remember my parents prying next to the child’s bed every night. I could imagine some of the Neanderthals had some similar practices even if more related to nature such as the Native Americans. I then came across the part about the empty space for performance out side of the cave and could it not have been a religious building for worship such as churches, synagogues, pyramids, and other religious buildings.