Ancient religions that persist
February 2, 2023 7:21 PM Subscribe
Micro McGee, 11, is learning about ancient Mesopotamia, and is curious which ancient religions, from anywhere in the world, survive to the modern era, that are not among the "big five" (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism) or their offshoots. It's okay if they're syncretic or influenced by later movements; among those we've discussed are the religion of the Yazidi, Zoroastrianism, Dravidians, etc.
We're aware of new religious movements, such as neo-Kemeticism, and while they're interesting, that's not this question. However, indigenous religions that have been absorbed into other religions ARE of interest to him, such as Bön, which appears to be a later iteration of the indigenous religion of Tibet that was absorbed into Tibetan Buddhism and accounts for some of its distinctive features.
He is most interested in river valley civilizations (Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Niger, the Indus, the Yellow River, the Inca along the Urubamba). But other ancient religions that have survived/been syncretized into the modern era are also interesting.
This is a super-mushy question! It covers a huge span of time, and both unique religions that survive and syncretic religions that only kinda survive in implication and inference. It covers the cradles of civilization BUT ALSO the religions of wide-ranging wildernesses that ancient peoples had contact with (like Siberian shamanism). So like, jump in and give me what you've got, and I'll exclude what Micro McGee isn't interested in, although I personally will still 100% be interested.
We're aware of new religious movements, such as neo-Kemeticism, and while they're interesting, that's not this question. However, indigenous religions that have been absorbed into other religions ARE of interest to him, such as Bön, which appears to be a later iteration of the indigenous religion of Tibet that was absorbed into Tibetan Buddhism and accounts for some of its distinctive features.
He is most interested in river valley civilizations (Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Niger, the Indus, the Yellow River, the Inca along the Urubamba). But other ancient religions that have survived/been syncretized into the modern era are also interesting.
This is a super-mushy question! It covers a huge span of time, and both unique religions that survive and syncretic religions that only kinda survive in implication and inference. It covers the cradles of civilization BUT ALSO the religions of wide-ranging wildernesses that ancient peoples had contact with (like Siberian shamanism). So like, jump in and give me what you've got, and I'll exclude what Micro McGee isn't interested in, although I personally will still 100% be interested.
These are still practiced but numbers are (relatively) smaller obviously, coming in at a few million each by current estimates.
Druidry / Druidism
Confucianism
Shintoism
Taoism
posted by SquidLips at 7:29 PM on February 2, 2023
Druidry / Druidism
Confucianism
Shintoism
Taoism
posted by SquidLips at 7:29 PM on February 2, 2023
the Druze are an ethnoreligious group with their own religion. They were founded around the 10th or 11th century or so, don't know if that qualifies as ancient.
posted by fingersandtoes at 7:36 PM on February 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by fingersandtoes at 7:36 PM on February 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
Also, echoing not being sure if this is "ancient", but Islam evolved during the 6th/7th centuries AD and actually looks like it has several distinct "eras" or development periods which may be of interest.
posted by SquidLips at 7:41 PM on February 2, 2023
posted by SquidLips at 7:41 PM on February 2, 2023
The Kalasha in northern Pakistan have a distinct shamanic/ Indo-Iranian religion that has probably been around for a very long time.
posted by tavegyl at 7:43 PM on February 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by tavegyl at 7:43 PM on February 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
Mandaeism offers a remarkable Gnostic parallel to Christianity. Instead of Jesus, Mandaeans revere John the Baptist and still have sacred texts in Aramaic (and in some cases still speak a type of Aramaic).
posted by cubeb at 7:53 PM on February 2, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by cubeb at 7:53 PM on February 2, 2023 [5 favorites]
Have a look at Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East by Gerard Russell. Might be a little too difficult for a pre-teen but it also might not be!
posted by lefty lucky cat at 8:23 PM on February 2, 2023
posted by lefty lucky cat at 8:23 PM on February 2, 2023
Lumpy put me on to the podcast Literature and History in response to this question There's A LOT of material here, but he might enjoy a browse through?
posted by kate4914 at 8:26 PM on February 2, 2023
posted by kate4914 at 8:26 PM on February 2, 2023
Here are some accounts of Nganasan shamanism, including some accounts of shamanic rituals and initiations. The Nganasan live in far northern Siberia and their religion has had less historic influence from colonizers than those of some other Siberian peoples, perhaps in part because of their geographic isolation, but the Soviet era damaged their way of life pretty badly.
posted by cubeb at 8:28 PM on February 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by cubeb at 8:28 PM on February 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
How about Candomblé? West African orixa religion, surviving in Brazil by adopting a veneer of Catholicism, preserving African languages, ritual and liturgy. Similarly Vodoun and Santeria.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:00 PM on February 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:00 PM on February 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
The Bahai religion, though founded in the 1800s, incorporates ancient ideas. To quote their website (note: I am not a practitioner, I only know of it from a classmate in long-ago high school who was) : "Throughout history, God has sent to humanity a series of divine Educators—known as Manifestations of God—whose teachings have provided the basis for the advancement of civilization. These Manifestations have included Abraham, Krishna, Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Muḥammad. Bahá’u’lláh, the latest of these Messengers, explained that the religions of the world come from the same Source and are in essence successive chapters of one religion from God." So, they may have some ideas relevant to what you're looking for.
I don't know what to call them, but religions of indigenous peoples on various continents also go way back.
posted by TimHare at 9:08 PM on February 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don't know what to call them, but religions of indigenous peoples on various continents also go way back.
posted by TimHare at 9:08 PM on February 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
Aboriginal Australians have inhabited Australia for something like 65,000 years. Their oral traditions, which consritute an important part of their spiritual practices, accurately recount events that occurred over 10,000 years ago (link goes to pdf) and possibly 36,000 years ago.
posted by cubeb at 9:28 PM on February 2, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by cubeb at 9:28 PM on February 2, 2023 [12 favorites]
It might be interesting for little McGee to think about how ideas from ancient religions survive *inside* the "big five": creation and flood stories and wisdom literature in the Jewish bible, elements of Zoroastrianism in Judaism and Christianity, Mithraism in Christianity, and so on.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:40 PM on February 2, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:40 PM on February 2, 2023 [6 favorites]
You've already given the kid an intelligent answer to an intelligent question, so thumbs up for a parenting victory.
Since you've gotten into topics like syncretism with him, you've introduced the observation that no religion or cultural idea is ever actually stable across time. I would consider taking that observation further, and playfully criticizing the whole premise of the question. Sure, you can point out some central stories from the Yazidi mythos of millennia ago that remain recognizable in the Yazidi mythos today, but bit by bit Yazidiism has converged in practice into something borderline Abrahamic. There's something out there that still goes by the name Zoroastrianism, but now it's a quiet outsider religion, long since adapted to a world that would be incomprehensible to Achemenidans who conquered under its banner and planted a tower of silence on the outskirts of every mid-sized city. Hecate only knows what Hellenic witch-cultists would make of American Wiccans.
Isn't this true of literally every religion, "big five" included? Do we really think that the Christianity of Constantine, the Christianity of the Inquisition, the Christianity of the Ku Klux Klan, and the Christianity of Fred Rogers were all basically the same belief system? Or did they just retain some of the superficial trappings, because when new ideas try to spread, an efficient way to do so is to impersonate existing ones?
posted by foursentences at 9:44 PM on February 2, 2023 [11 favorites]
Since you've gotten into topics like syncretism with him, you've introduced the observation that no religion or cultural idea is ever actually stable across time. I would consider taking that observation further, and playfully criticizing the whole premise of the question. Sure, you can point out some central stories from the Yazidi mythos of millennia ago that remain recognizable in the Yazidi mythos today, but bit by bit Yazidiism has converged in practice into something borderline Abrahamic. There's something out there that still goes by the name Zoroastrianism, but now it's a quiet outsider religion, long since adapted to a world that would be incomprehensible to Achemenidans who conquered under its banner and planted a tower of silence on the outskirts of every mid-sized city. Hecate only knows what Hellenic witch-cultists would make of American Wiccans.
Isn't this true of literally every religion, "big five" included? Do we really think that the Christianity of Constantine, the Christianity of the Inquisition, the Christianity of the Ku Klux Klan, and the Christianity of Fred Rogers were all basically the same belief system? Or did they just retain some of the superficial trappings, because when new ideas try to spread, an efficient way to do so is to impersonate existing ones?
posted by foursentences at 9:44 PM on February 2, 2023 [11 favorites]
The story of the Tigh na Bodach - a shrine to the Celtic creator goddess, Cailleach - has an ongoing ritual which folklorists believe may have persisted for "thousands of years" - certainly from the time before Christianity came to Scotland.
posted by rongorongo at 12:50 AM on February 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by rongorongo at 12:50 AM on February 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
Lots of good examples above, but strong second for Aboriginal religion in Australia. There are challenges with trying to learn about religions based in oral tradition, but knowing about their depth, history, and mode of transmission is cool. I have had similar interests over time, and I wish I'd learned about it when I was first reading about ancient religion as a youngster.
Hard agree with the meta-analysis-type responses above. Big challenges with trying to look at any "religious survival," from rhetorical claims to antiquity as validation to bias of textual sources vs. oral tradition. Another problem is that many anthropologists and religious historians of a century ago were keen to find examples of surviving "authentic" religion of one kind or another, sometimes drawing conclusions later scholars generally have considered fishy at best as sources of information about religion (Murray, Frazer, etc.), and that influence persists to this day.
Hutton's The Triumph of the Moon does a good job of analyzing the hows and whys of one religious revival. In Hutton's case it's Wicca, and looking at the extent which the (or one of them, depending on your perspective) major founder invented and/or borrowed from other traditions. It's a comparatively dense & academic book, so might not fit, but something to think about. Contrast Adler's Drawing Down the Moon, which comes to different answers based on different truths.
The comment about different Christianities is a good one. Early Christianity looked significantly different than most of what goes on today, though repeated claims of "going back to the fundamentals" has been a rallying cry for centuries. Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels is a popular study of a major cache of text that show takes on Christianity from before it became a global religion, and it might offer some fodder for Micro McGee to think about how rapidly religions can change in major ways.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:51 AM on February 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
Hard agree with the meta-analysis-type responses above. Big challenges with trying to look at any "religious survival," from rhetorical claims to antiquity as validation to bias of textual sources vs. oral tradition. Another problem is that many anthropologists and religious historians of a century ago were keen to find examples of surviving "authentic" religion of one kind or another, sometimes drawing conclusions later scholars generally have considered fishy at best as sources of information about religion (Murray, Frazer, etc.), and that influence persists to this day.
Hutton's The Triumph of the Moon does a good job of analyzing the hows and whys of one religious revival. In Hutton's case it's Wicca, and looking at the extent which the (or one of them, depending on your perspective) major founder invented and/or borrowed from other traditions. It's a comparatively dense & academic book, so might not fit, but something to think about. Contrast Adler's Drawing Down the Moon, which comes to different answers based on different truths.
The comment about different Christianities is a good one. Early Christianity looked significantly different than most of what goes on today, though repeated claims of "going back to the fundamentals" has been a rallying cry for centuries. Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels is a popular study of a major cache of text that show takes on Christianity from before it became a global religion, and it might offer some fodder for Micro McGee to think about how rapidly religions can change in major ways.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:51 AM on February 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
(To be clear, those books may or may not be of interest to Micro McGee. They may, though, be of interest to you, if you haven't encountered them, and potentially helpful in discussing these topics with him. Certainly students are likelier to enjoy more and have a more significant learning experience through encountering primary sources/texts and drawing their own conclusions. It's my experience it's generally more fruitful and generative of persistent interest to have a student ask "hey, why do so many religions [do X]" than to have an expert offer one supposedly authoritative answer or another.)
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:06 AM on February 3, 2023
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:06 AM on February 3, 2023
Many traditional Mayan religious practices are still alive. (In case it needs to be said: no human sacrifice. That tradition had probably died out even before the Spanish conquest, and it certainly doesn't survive now.)
Contrary to popular belief in the US, the Maya did not "mysteriously disappear." There was a point in ancient history when a bunch of cities were abandoned, but millions of Maya are still living ordinary lives in Central America, many in newer towns and cities they founded after the collapse. Honestly, the only reason their ancient history is "mysterious" is that the Spanish burned every book they found during the conquest without reading any.
ANYWAY. There's no central top-down organization and no fixed system of beliefs that all Maya follow. But most places have sacred sites — often mountains, rocks, or caves — that people give offerings to, and priests or brotherhoods who are in charge of doing it. Sometimes, people make pilgrimages to faraway sacred sites. There are also old religious dances and ritual drama that still get performed every year.
Often, these rituals follow a 260-day ritual calendar that's been in use since ancient times. The calendar shows up in hieroglyphic inscriptions, and kept being passed down even in communities that had long stretches with no mass literacy, which is pretty cool. Sometimes the rituals have gotten remapped onto the Catholic calendar and are treated like saints' days, similarly to what happened in Santería.
Incidentally, the "Mayan apocalypse" thing that people were going on about in 2012 was just that calendar hitting a round number, like the Gregorian calendar did in 2000. Nobody ever expected it to be the end of the world, but the Maya I knew — even the ones who are Christian and don't practice traditional religion at all — were still proud to have global attention on their history and culture.
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:21 AM on February 3, 2023 [6 favorites]
Contrary to popular belief in the US, the Maya did not "mysteriously disappear." There was a point in ancient history when a bunch of cities were abandoned, but millions of Maya are still living ordinary lives in Central America, many in newer towns and cities they founded after the collapse. Honestly, the only reason their ancient history is "mysterious" is that the Spanish burned every book they found during the conquest without reading any.
ANYWAY. There's no central top-down organization and no fixed system of beliefs that all Maya follow. But most places have sacred sites — often mountains, rocks, or caves — that people give offerings to, and priests or brotherhoods who are in charge of doing it. Sometimes, people make pilgrimages to faraway sacred sites. There are also old religious dances and ritual drama that still get performed every year.
Often, these rituals follow a 260-day ritual calendar that's been in use since ancient times. The calendar shows up in hieroglyphic inscriptions, and kept being passed down even in communities that had long stretches with no mass literacy, which is pretty cool. Sometimes the rituals have gotten remapped onto the Catholic calendar and are treated like saints' days, similarly to what happened in Santería.
Incidentally, the "Mayan apocalypse" thing that people were going on about in 2012 was just that calendar hitting a round number, like the Gregorian calendar did in 2000. Nobody ever expected it to be the end of the world, but the Maya I knew — even the ones who are Christian and don't practice traditional religion at all — were still proud to have global attention on their history and culture.
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:21 AM on February 3, 2023 [6 favorites]
Rractitioners don't commonly use religion as a label, but the spiritualities and ceremonial ways of indigenous Americans are ancient traditions.
posted by anadem at 9:07 AM on February 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by anadem at 9:07 AM on February 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
There are rumors that Mithraism, the military religion which goes back at least to the Romans, still has adherents in modern militaries. I don't know how true this is.
posted by AugustusCrunch at 10:10 AM on February 3, 2023
posted by AugustusCrunch at 10:10 AM on February 3, 2023
Romuva is a neo-pagan movement in Lithuania that is attempting to resurrect ancient Baltic traditions and folklore that predate their Christianization in the 1300s. It's very nature-focused with many holidays involving singing and dancing. In recent years, Romuva has been petitioning the Seimas (the Lithuanian Parliament) to be recognized as a traditional religion. After being rejected in 2021, they sued Lithuania in the European Court of Human Rights and won, however in 2022 they were rejected by the Seimas again. TBC.
posted by ikahime at 10:42 AM on February 3, 2023
posted by ikahime at 10:42 AM on February 3, 2023
This popped up for me today: Tom Holland: Did Religion Exist in the Ancient World? [SLYT 55mins] It's sponsored by Classics for All - a cunning plan to get wider traction for The Classics in British education.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:30 PM on February 3, 2023
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:30 PM on February 3, 2023
Indigenous religions in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, and Philippines) are interesting because even though Christianity and Islam have mostly taken over, older native beliefs sometimes persist outside the mainstream. Philippine culture is distinctive in it's diverse island geography, there are many unique variations on spiritual concepts. Wiki article on Philippine Mythology and related indigenous folk religions.
posted by ovvl at 4:26 PM on February 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by ovvl at 4:26 PM on February 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: To clarify a few things that are coming up that maybe I should have clarified in the question:
"Isn't this true of literally every religion, "big five" included? Do we really think that the Christianity of Constantine, the Christianity of the Inquisition, the Christianity of the Ku Klux Klan, and the Christianity of Fred Rogers were all basically the same belief system? Or did they just retain some of the superficial trappings, because when new ideas try to spread, an efficient way to do so is to impersonate existing ones?"
Mom has two degrees in theology and is quite comfortable speaking to the vagaries of both historical and modern Christianity. :)
"Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels is a popular study of a major cache of text that show takes on Christianity from before it became a global religion ... They may, though, be of interest to you, if you haven't encountered them, and potentially helpful in discussing these topics with him."
I research-assistanted for scholars who worked on the translations of the Nag Hammadi texts when I was in college and got to see the high-quality facsimiles that were mailed (mailed!) to scholars of that type of ancient text, to puzzle and argue over a single line for a whole summer at a time. I have a whole library of didn't-make-the-canon Bible books and divergent source texts on my shelf. My kids have heard my rants many times and have read some of it for themselves. Pagels would seem very old-fashioned to them, I think. :)
I am extremely familiar with neo-Pagan and reconstructionist movements and can speak intelligently to them (and know a lot of the scholars working on them, as well as many of the actual leaders of various movements) -- I almost went on for a PhD in this. I also live about 10 miles from the North American Baha'i temple, and we know SO MANY BAHA'I. I taught world religions to college students for five years, so I'm relatively familiar with the development of the "big five." But a lot of aboriginal and indigenous religions I know very little about (SUPER reading all the Aboriginal Australian links here; most of my knowledge is about legal wrangles over Aboriginal lands), and I only know a few of the many small religious communities with less than 100,000 members who survive into the modern world by sheer force of will.
He's curious if anybody's still running around worshipping Babylonian gods in a NON-reconstructed way, and I'm like, "Not that I know of ... but MAYBE?" Cause there are definitely pockets of people running around practicing religions that most people generally assume "died out," but it survived in the little ethno-religious pocket.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:35 PM on February 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
"Isn't this true of literally every religion, "big five" included? Do we really think that the Christianity of Constantine, the Christianity of the Inquisition, the Christianity of the Ku Klux Klan, and the Christianity of Fred Rogers were all basically the same belief system? Or did they just retain some of the superficial trappings, because when new ideas try to spread, an efficient way to do so is to impersonate existing ones?"
Mom has two degrees in theology and is quite comfortable speaking to the vagaries of both historical and modern Christianity. :)
"Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels is a popular study of a major cache of text that show takes on Christianity from before it became a global religion ... They may, though, be of interest to you, if you haven't encountered them, and potentially helpful in discussing these topics with him."
I research-assistanted for scholars who worked on the translations of the Nag Hammadi texts when I was in college and got to see the high-quality facsimiles that were mailed (mailed!) to scholars of that type of ancient text, to puzzle and argue over a single line for a whole summer at a time. I have a whole library of didn't-make-the-canon Bible books and divergent source texts on my shelf. My kids have heard my rants many times and have read some of it for themselves. Pagels would seem very old-fashioned to them, I think. :)
I am extremely familiar with neo-Pagan and reconstructionist movements and can speak intelligently to them (and know a lot of the scholars working on them, as well as many of the actual leaders of various movements) -- I almost went on for a PhD in this. I also live about 10 miles from the North American Baha'i temple, and we know SO MANY BAHA'I. I taught world religions to college students for five years, so I'm relatively familiar with the development of the "big five." But a lot of aboriginal and indigenous religions I know very little about (SUPER reading all the Aboriginal Australian links here; most of my knowledge is about legal wrangles over Aboriginal lands), and I only know a few of the many small religious communities with less than 100,000 members who survive into the modern world by sheer force of will.
He's curious if anybody's still running around worshipping Babylonian gods in a NON-reconstructed way, and I'm like, "Not that I know of ... but MAYBE?" Cause there are definitely pockets of people running around practicing religions that most people generally assume "died out," but it survived in the little ethno-religious pocket.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:35 PM on February 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: "It might be interesting for little McGee to think about how ideas from ancient religions survive *inside* the "big five": creation and flood stories and wisdom literature in the Jewish bible, elements of Zoroastrianism in Judaism and Christianity, Mithraism in Christianity, and so on."
May I suggest "Old Testament Parallels"? Very classic undergrad text for specifically this, very readable, lots of fun. Also, includes the creation hymn to Atum, for when your local school board goes all "teach the controversy" and gets all anti-evolution. If they're going to teach Genesis you can 100% demand they teach the Creation Hymn to Atum, where Atum masturbates the world into being by ejaculating into his own mouth, it's amazing. (And YES I have both actually done this AND given this text to science teachers in red states to actually do this.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:53 PM on February 3, 2023 [7 favorites]
May I suggest "Old Testament Parallels"? Very classic undergrad text for specifically this, very readable, lots of fun. Also, includes the creation hymn to Atum, for when your local school board goes all "teach the controversy" and gets all anti-evolution. If they're going to teach Genesis you can 100% demand they teach the Creation Hymn to Atum, where Atum masturbates the world into being by ejaculating into his own mouth, it's amazing. (And YES I have both actually done this AND given this text to science teachers in red states to actually do this.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:53 PM on February 3, 2023 [7 favorites]
About Shinto, it’s worth knowing that the religion as it’s practiced today was heavily modified and systematized by 19th and 20th C nationalists, never mind some 1200 years of Buddhist influence, so it doesn’t necessarily have much similarity to its “original” form.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:07 AM on February 4, 2023
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:07 AM on February 4, 2023
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posted by fingersandtoes at 7:25 PM on February 2, 2023 [6 favorites]