Why would you think there is a single "root" religion? Can you even define what that is?

"Sky Father" (Sun)/"Earth Mother" cult --Eurasian steppes, 10,000-12,000 B.C. The Sun was the biggest object in the sky, and moved from east to west. Therefore, it became a patriarchal deity to the steppe-dwellers. The Earth nurtured, and blossomed, making it a matriarchal deity. variations on this are found throughout the ancient religions.

I’m not sure that it is necessarily the case that there was a root, or original religion. Many early cultures or societies had in common a number of the same needs. Tools and pottery are two examples. These were often developed by cultures independently from each other. It’s possible that in much earlier times, many cultures developed religion independently of each other in response to the shared need of controlling or coercing beliefs and behaviors of its members. In the same way that all pottery serves the same purpose but has small inter-cultural differences, religions are largely similar to each other. They each have their own quirky creation myths, and their own name for the deity, but their societal function is the same across all cultures. Also, it sounds as though you plan on using logic on a bunch of churchers. It’s up to you, of course, but I’m not so sure that’s the best strategy to use with that particular group. But hey, I wish you Godspeed, if you’ll pardon the expression.

I don’t see any reason to think there is any connection of any religions to the one of ancient Egyptians. Further, I think there are plenty of religions that have sprung forth completely independently.

Totally backwards.

Early humans had place based religions that were exceptionally diverse, often animistic or pantheistic in nature, even occasionally agnostic to some degree. The religions were diverse in part because they were place based (Their stories connected to a specific river, or tree, or animal) but also because of the organic limits of geography on early gather hunters.

It is with domestication and the shift to more sedentary living that religion became more abstract, and less rooted in place. Tribes shifted from beliefs that a specific tree or river were sacred, to instead creating deities that represented trees or rivers or animals, and thus shifted from animistic or even non-theist types of spirituality towards more distinctly theistic, specifically polytheistic religions that could be spread to other geographies and adopted by other peoples (Often through colonization). That polytheism was the root to what became early monotheism, such as Zoroastrianism.

i don't know that that's necessarily true. it may well be that early man, pre-formal language and prehistorical, took the world as he saw it, and that the diaspora from africa was pre-religion. the deviations are natural because of the diaspora, and the similarities are also natural because they were developed from uneducated observation of the same basic phenomena: rain, snow, grass, trees, lightning, earthquakes, whatever, lots of food, not so much food, poisoned water, pillars of salt from a receding sealine.... different versions of the same elements.

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It is possible that humans spread out around the globe before any religion existed, and then they developed separatly. It's more or less imposible to tell for sure now.

As far as religion separating over time into new beliefs and cultures, I don't think wealth has a whole lot to do with it because many tribes of native Americans for example have basically no wealth (or private property for that matter) but have unique religions. For this reason I would have to conclude that religion diversified naturally.

Many ancient religions died when more powerful entities arived and out competed the locals, converting them in the process. Most large religions backed by powerful entities have stayed together for the most part, only spliting when they could not maintain control. wealth and power were used to unite religion either through force or cultural intermingling.

Not strictly correct. Indigenous religions all have a similar thread, mainly attempting to explain in metaphor the aspects of the world they didn’t understand, but presented in wildly different ways.

It’s misleading to presume that Abrahamic religions have a continuum with these ideas as Abram was part of an idol worshipping culture. A new brand of monotheistic religion is developed and codified as a rebuttal of idol worship.

Monotheistic religion is a ‘new’ invention not an adaptation or evolution. See Akhenaten as a Bronze Age prototypical advocate of monotheism.

The Mayan religion has been around for an extremely long time , without contact with African , European , Mediterrian , or Asian influence .

Most religion comes from the questions of is this all what happens when I die and the need to continue in some form basically a fear of dying

Early religions were the keepers of knowledge. They were divided roughly into sun or moon worshipers. Moon people held sway when we lived mostly by hunter-gathering but were usurped when grasses mutated and agriculture became our main source of food. Only to re-emerge later when we started to trade and looked to the tides.

I agree that splinter groups do partially explain all the varieties of religious belief and practice we have across cultures and geographic regions. I think of Puritans, Mormons, and Evangelical sects as specific examples of Protestants in America who saw themselves as 'reformers'. Unorthodox beliefs meant leaving the 'parent' group, by choice or by force. Gospel interpretations might have bordered on heresy but they were able to gain converts nonetheless. I suppose there are interpretations that could include economic disparities but they alone don't seem necessary to explain religious migration patterns, for lack of a better concept. Very interesting to think about!

I'm thinking somewhere around the time people started to recognize death and develop rituals around it.

Of course even some animals can be seen to have much depth of feeling about the death of those near them, and I am confident animals do not have a belief in a god no matter how much the silly christians love images of puppies praying.

This is how it all started

There is no seed or root religion from which all other religions came. It just sometimes seems that way when new religions plagiarize the hell out of the religions around them.

I don't think you're fundamentally wrong in your posit, but the flaw I see in this view is the assumption that humans operated as a homogeneous species throughout its evolution. I suggest to you that, although there is a kernel of truth in what you posit, it must be applied to isolated and disparate groups of humans over vast expanses of terrain. No single seed, but a plethora of them.

I further suggest that any similarity between Hinduism and Sikhism was most likely driven simply by common evolutionary experience or through shared early myths or any combination of the two. Each religion would also be somewhat tailored to the environment.