Dec 21, 2024  
2018-19 Undergraduate Catalog 
    
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2018-19 Undergraduate Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

RE 326 The Dawn of Humanity and the Search for Religious Experience

The course embarks on a journey back through time in search for the earliest religious experiences. Along our way the class will recount the discovery of prehistory, explore cave paintings in France and Spain, decipher Venus Figurines, investigate archaic burial rites, and interpret the appearance of Homo sapiens. A key consideration is the cognitive evolution of the brain and the power of brain toharness its own spiritual energy and power as manifest in the first religious specialist, the shaman. The evidence is explored from a multidisciplinary approach including evolutionary psychology, biological anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, archeology, archeo-astronomy, and art history. The link between these early forms of religions experience and the later forms of religion such as those found today is discussed. Students undertake individual and group projects that analyze these first religious experiences.