The Roots of Religion: Genevieve Von Petzinger at TEDxVictoria

There should only be one religion , that of caring for your fellow human. It’s called Humanity , try it !

My cats have religion, they believe if they run around the house knocking stuff off of tables and counters and generally making a loud ruckus for an hour or so, then they will get fed. In reality, I feed them at 9am and 6pm everyday, regardless of how they behave or when they start their ritualized antics. But they sure do believe their highly correlated behavior is causal to their feedings. And they have escalated the rituals over time.

She's really great. I think I'd enjoy a much longer lecture on this topic.

Speaking in a colloquial fashion, Ms. Von Petzinger breathes new life into the ancient mysteries of what it is to be us and how we might have arrived there. Utterly brilliant and insightful.

I really like this speaker. I like how she was able to present the information without picking sides about religion, plus, she didn't act paternalistic toward primal cultures.

Ah, hard work, and giving your life with passion, curiosity and dedication to discover the real why's of it all. This is what everyone should be listening to on Sundays.

She is a very good speaker I could listen all day

Working on something creative, especially trying to reinvent something from scratch, gives a few people known to me a certain high which they relate to at a spiritual level, even if they are not followers of conventional religion. This talk makes so much sense.

This is the second TEDtalk I've seen of this woman. I love how passionate and knowledgeable she is about her field of study.

MS. Genevieve, what a wonderful presentation !! I have seen you in two vids,on youtube, but I will search for more. THANKS

when i was a kid..me and my dog would play chase. I would chase him and he would chase me in turns. I ran around the well house two times in a row, and Brandi, a basset, stopped, and went the other way to catch me going around. Animals use planning and have 'visualized' fore thought capabilities. They use it in hunting as well. Human huge brains has taken it to another level with religion, but I see many aspect of our thinking and behavior very similar and relatable.

All religions are made in earth. ‏I left Islam when I read the Qur’an and the biography of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam ‏Now I live in Iraq and I can't talk about it even with my family I might be killed, and society will reject me, it's very difficult for me ‏and many Arabs leave Islam every day, but they cannot announce that because they may be killed and of course society rejects them.

"Religion is a phase where species become intelligent enough to ask profund questions but not intelligent enough to answer them" - forgotten where I read this.

Fascinating research. I just watched another one of her TED's and she's really interesting, deep but still understandable. Trying to find "the particle" of something is just wonderful; getting to see "the first" of something; being able to do the "original gesture" that made us who we are, that's marvelous.

Really animated, lucid, and clear lecture on the origin of religion and prehistory. Thankyou.

I found this presentation to be fascinating. By extension, while Ms. Von Petzinger touches upon the use of visual items and themes to bridge the "here and now" with the unfolding of the mental notion of the future and human understanding of the divine, I think it would be interesting to do the same regarding the other senses. For example, certain songs relative to key life transitions, the playing of certain instruments and associated melodies at special life events or ceremonies, and the crafting of certain foods made with specific ingredients and served at key life events or ceremonies. Such things that are meant to "enable bridging" across the time continuum from one generation to the next and from one epoch to the next.

This is so fascinating that we can learn so much about early humans, that our real history, though unwritten, is so ancient and to consider what this tells us about how we think and what it means to be human... and so disappointing that a large majority of humanity because their religion just says 'nope' just denies that any of this is real, that we have any connection to these people. They refuse to know how humans actually developed into what we are because they think it conflicts with their precious story, ignoring of course that every culture that came before them did the same thing.

Utterly bloody fascinating! What a treat of a lecture. Love it! 🙏

"Is it all in the lobes?" The Ferengi Alliance has entered the chat

Dr. Genevieve Von Petzinger beautifully shares anthropological evidence of early human behaviour and the beginning of belief systems some 50,000 years ago.