Europe didn’t always have civilization. Agriculture was introduced to western hunter-gatherers from neolithic farmers and occured in what we call the Fertile Crescent today, in ancient Mesopotamia where people started to grow crops in addition to hunting around 8000 BC. This gave birth to villages and towns. And it changed everything.
It wasn't until the Neolithic Revolution...
Around 10000 BC, that primitive farming and the domestication of animals slowly became a part of survival. Before that, lives were dependent on hunting, gathering and living in tribes that could sustain themselves. The importance of animals, as a source of food, clothing and tools, but also as a spiritual connection, can not be stressed enough. While Agriculture may have developed in different parts of the world, it may have been introduced to the nomadic hunter-gatherers via neolithic farmers from, what it sometimes called the cradle of civilization, the Fertile Crescent.
Agriculture gave rise to an agricultural based civilization, a higher population and growing crops such as wheat and barley and permanent settlement. All of our ancestors were once hunter/gatherers and farmers and this is important in order to understand how pre-christian “pagan” Spirituality developed.
The European continent was settled a long time ago. After all, Neanderthals have roamed Southern and Central Europe and spread as far as Siberia. Neanderthals had a migratory instinct and relied on hunting Ice Age animals. But they were not primitive people.
They had sophisticated stone and bone tools, made birch tar out of birch bark in order to craft their weapons and other tools, they could make fire and survived the harshest and coldest climates as they lived during the last Ice Age and were well equipped for that climate, even though they were seeking shelter in the limestone caves of Eurasia.
They have lived in Europe from 400,000 until about 40,000 years ago and they are still a big mystery. Although not much has been left, except from Paleolithic Art, it seems to be likely that even Neanderthals had some type of Spirituality as they buried their dead and lived in small social groups. Paleolithic Art is all we have left to study, and there clearly are more questions than answers. The mystery is far from being solved! Ancient caves, paintings of giant animals, and the rock structures of the Bruniquel Cave in France certainly are fascinating.
