Have humans always (ever?) had a soul?

Question

The earliest humans lived in caves and were barely smarter than the other primates....what about them?

Answer 1

Depends on how you use the language.  Those poor souls who lived in caves probably never knew much beyond their immediate area.  We can be saying the same thing but for argument sake never agree on anything if we don't want to.  Your the soul who asked this question.  There is no doubt this soul is talking about you and the souls that respond to you are just as soulfull as any and you know without me having to elaborate further as to what souls I am talking about.

Answer 2

First, remember that you are assuming that you know that at that time in history "all" humans lived in caves. We weren't there, we can only guess, using our 21st century guessing techniques, lol.

Nevertheless, I wonder...Our great great great grandfathers probably didn't know as much as we do about science, math and technology. Does that mean they didn't have a souls as valid as ours?

Answer 3

This is not a question science can answer, as a soul, by definition is supernatural, and science deals with the non-supernatural.

I can give you my own opinion.  I believe that God created this reality so that it would produce intelligences through natural forces that could interact and have fellowship with Him.  Form did not matter.  Place did not matter.  Here, at some point in the last 170,00 years or so, hominids reached the point of mental development needed to commune with God and He began to do so.

I do not know about other planets, but I know of no rational reason to think we are the only beings so blessed.

Answer 4

every one has a soul and there are spirits. the unbelievers will sometimes have to be shown to know the truth. once you have seen you will have no question

Answer 5

It all depends on what you see as the definition of a "soul". From my point of view, the human soul is his/her awareness (a larger amount of awareness logically leads to a greater amount of intelligence) in combination with his/her character, which in turn is formed by the persons genetics, memories and circumstances that this particular person is in and has been in. These factors determine someones character.

So from my point of view, cavemen, and every form of primate that we descended from, all had souls. Also, from this point of view, all animals have souls, as long as they have a certain level of awareness. However, plants, bacteria, viruses, microbes and fungi, do not have souls. They have no awareness, and no memory, so how could they have souls? They are more like machines, programmed to do what they do. They do not feel emotions or pain. Please note that the word "animal", comes from the latin word "animus", which means spirit or soul. So from the moment that our far, far ancestors gained a certain form of awareness, probably around the time that they started developing the earliest forms of brains, they had souls. Perhaps just not very distinct, intense, and for that matter important ones.

Now, as to the "intenseness", or if you will "importance" of souls, by that i mean that the more aware an animal is of its existance, the more intense and thus important its soul is. This might sound strange to you, but if you kill a fly, do people look at you the same way as they would have looked upon you if you killed a mouse? Or a dog? Or a human? No, of course not. Why not? Care to explain, anyone? Why is a mouse's life more valuable than that of a fly, a dogs life more valuable than that of a mouse, a humans life more valuable than that of a dog? Because the mouse is more AWARE of its own existance than the fly. Because the mouse can feel more pain, more joy, more emotion, because the entity, and thus the soul of the mouse, is more INTENSE than that of the fly. And the soul of the dog is more aware, more intense than that of the dog. And the soul of the human being is the strongest, most aware, most intense, thus most IMPORTANT soul we have yet encountered. Humans can be so aware of their own existance, that they can fully understand what they are, what will happen to them, where they came from, even how their brain works. The mere fact that i am sitting here, arguing about how my soul is different from that of a dog, is evidence to the fact that some souls are more important than others. Don't get me wrong, every soul is important. But if you kill a human, a very large awareness, a very intense entity, disappears. If you kill a fly, at best a microscopic entity, just about aware that it likes to eat, disappears. Its probably not even quite aware that it is alive, let alone what life is.

So, in short: in my opinion, all animals, in fact all lifeforms that are aware of its own existance in a sort of way, have souls. Some more aware than others. The earliest humans had souls as well, probably more aware than those of all other animals at that time, but still less aware than those of most of us humans nowadays.

I hope this answers your question adequately,

Max L

Answer 6

I suppose it depends on your point of view.  It sounds as if you aren't too sure if humans have one now.  However, how smart they were is evidenced by their inventing the wheel, domesticating plants and animals, and their discovery of the uses of fire.  Before you judge them, perhaps you can name three things you did that were comparable.

Answer 7

this question is in the wrong category. this is a philosophical question. why in the world did you post it in Anthropology? as of right now, science cannot answer this question.

Answer 8

The soul is a creation of man to help describe the uniquness each person feels about themselves.  We fail to see things on the truly grand scale they are on. We dont realize that if we were to take an outsiders perspective on our tiny little planet in our huge galaxy (100,000 light years accross/1,000 light years thick) which is within an even huger (made that word up) universe we would all realise we are really very similar.  So i dont believe that we have a soul.  I believe when we die and our brains shut off our "soul" perishes with it.

Answer 9

The theory of evolution is a belief system in itself. You have to have just as much faith or more to believe  that evolution is statistically possible than to believe that God created man. The first man was Adam and was very intelligent. Some did live in caves, like Lot & his daughters, but they were not illiterate. So, to answer the question, God breathed into man the breath of life & he became a living soul.

Answer 10

You make the assumption that if we have souls our are superior or that only modern humans have them, however this is not necessarily true, why does a bigger brain affect the soul. Despite this I don't believe we have ever had, have or will have souls.

Answer 11

I have come to learn that there are many things that we don't know.  Clearly assuming there is a soul, which I believe, than it has been around before man.  Humans didn't really live in caves.  They may have sometimes used them occassionally and sometimes even lived in them but caves are simply good places for fossils to be left and later found.

Answer 12

wow... interesting, maybe if we trace the soul existence it would be merely shrink from human soul to the smaller kind of organism,

we will curiously ask,

if primates have soul , so animal should have soul too ,

and how about fish ? do they have soul ? if fish have soul, then a small little prawn should have soul too even bacteria, or virus, they all have soul,

maybe soul is just one part of universe element, it's some kind of energy that converse to another shape, and then attached to the other organic substance, then there be a living organism,

Answer 13

Hmm. An anthropology question about the soul. I think the creationists are taking this board over.

Answer 14

Scientists are still looking for the soul. In males it is believed to be somewhere between the prostate and pancreas.

Answer 15

there are only 2 souls available for humans to posess, and i ate one of those...

one left...

Answer 16

Modern man minus cave man =accumulated knowledge. I assume that you talking about Cro-magnon man when you say cave man.  They lived in tents, huts, and tents inside of caves.  They had things, we just don't know what all they had because much was made out of materials that rots.  To me a soul is an energy that has been enhanced by life and awareness. So yes, they did in my estimation.

Answer 17

Interesting question.

First of all the soul concept appears to be purloined by modern christians as something assigned to religion. And, like most things claimed by religion, is not a religious idea but one stolen from literature, in this case, Greek literature.

I have seen Aristotle credited with the idea and this is certainly short sighted and an insult to the memory of three Greeks I can think of and I am no scholar. They were famous thinkers all of whom wrote on the subject of trying to come up with a definition of the idea.

Democritus (who suggested the atom 2000 years before we discovered it), his teacher, Leucippus and Anaxagoras to name three scholars tried to define the term that Aristotle finally is credited with defining.

Aristotle spent the first couple of chapters in Book I on what and who to consider when trying to understand the concept to even have a chance at a workable definition. The term is, after all, a construct of man's attempt to understand...man.

It is fair to appreciate that, unlike the christians, Aristorle made no attemp[t to claim the idea as his own; he gave proper literary credit to scholars he read and from whom, he drew ideas.

So, do we have a soul? If we use the Greek definition, I’d have to say… Yes, we do in the sense that it was their term for what we call ...t'he mind'.

If we use the stolen and redefined christian version…I’d have to say No!

They may have stolen it but they didn’t understand it.

Answer 18

What's "a soul"? By most definitions, your question is one for religion, not anthropology.

Answer 19

ya they had soul.