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The Known and the Unknown
Recognizing the shaman/philosopher in all of us.
The first philosopher was a shaman gazing deep into the prehistoric sky, trying to extract truth from the sun, moon and stars. By then our kind had already developed a sense of time — an acute awareness of birth, death, and the succession of events between. By then we had been burying our dead, painting pictures on cave walls, and engaging in other ritualistic behavior for many, many generations.
The shaman observed the world about him, gave it some thought, then made his proclamations. He told his fellow primitives that, above all else, the world is a magical, mysterious place. Fifteen thousand years ago, as the great sheets of ice were retreating north and the landscape was changing dramatically, no one had any doubts about this. The shaman was only stating the obvious.
The celestial bodies passing overhead marked time. Somehow they controlled day and night, the seasons, and other natural cycles. As humankind gradually developed agricultural societies, understanding these cycles became increasingly more important. It was up to the shaman, now a high priest, to make sense of these things. So the high priest carefully studied the sky overhead, creating calendars and charts. The high priest became the arbiter of all the knowledge locked in the heavens. And religion was born.
