Fear of a godless world

[Pappa]

Yeh, but when you have no idea what makes babies get sick and die, or what the sun and moon are, or why there are seasons, then bogey men would seem extremely real.
It's easy to look at ancient civilizations as superstitious idiots, but they didn't have any better answers. Compared to todays religious fundamentalists, they were actually quite rational.

Definitely. Any anthropology books I've read always present 'primitive' worldviews as entirely empirical in their reasoning. Humans think that way.

[JimC]

Yeh, but when you have no idea what makes babies get sick and die, or what the sun and moon are, or why there are seasons, then bogey men would seem extremely real.
It's easy to look at ancient civilizations as superstitious idiots, but they didn't have any better answers. Compared to todays religious fundamentalists, they were actually quite rational.

Definitely. Any anthropology books I've read always present 'primitive' worldviews as entirely empirical in their reasoning. Humans think that way.

I agree with mistermack, but I'm not sure that the term "empirical" fits the bill. Hunter-gatherer and early agrarian societies were certainly pragmatic, and wanted to make sense of the world in a way that aided day to day survival, but there were many other strands woven into that. For instance, it suited the shamans to have certain mysteries that they alone could make use of. The animist tendency to ascribe agency to natural events made a certain sense, but it was the embryonic stage of religion.

The luxury of true empiricism and the scientific method had to wait until some settled societies allowed some individuals time and resources to explore the world using maths and logic, as well as a certain level of technology (measuring instruments, for example).