Religion is a universal aspect of human culture.
It consumes vast amounts of time and energy in every culture and is the source of inspiration for countless great works of architecture, literature and art. This course deals primarily with early forms of religion. It covers the earliest rituals of the Palaeolithic, the importance of fertility cults, ancestor cults, alliance rituals, shamans, witchcraft, and monotheism. This course requires you to adopt at least a modest experiential approach to understanding traditional religion by doing several exercises. By the time you finish this course, you should have a good basic understanding of what traditional religions are, what shamanism is, an the kinds of explanations that are commonly proposed for why humans have such strong affinities for religion.