NEOLITHIC RELIGION comprises the religious concepts, cults, and rituals of the early farming communities that sprang up throughout the world in the Early Holocene period (8000–3000 BCE). Unlike the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods of prehistory, the Neolithic period was characterized by climatic conditions, very similar to those of the present, that directed human activity chiefly to the soil and its fruits. Attention that previously had been focused on stone now shifted to earth, which became not only the basic raw material but a multivalent symbol. These preoccupations gave rise to a specific ideology, to sedentary ways of life and the construction of permanent settlements, to the domestication of plants and animals, and to important technological inventions such as pottery making—developments identified as the basic achievements of the "Neolithic Revolution."

The association of complex ideas and numerous activities with earth was not, however, a process completed rapidly...