new religion. By then Daoism had fragmented into diff erent
sects. Zhang Daoling created the Way of the Heavenly Mas-
ters, which provided a model for earthly as well as heavenly
rule. He established a religious government in the province
of Sichuan, with himself and his heirs ruling a bureaucracy
intended to imitate that of Yu Huang. Th us renewed, Daoism
became a central feature of Chinese religion.
Th e second important religious occurrence was the
spread, beginning about 50 c.e., of Buddhism into China.
By about 65 c.e. it was known to the emperor’s court. Dur-
ing the 100s c.e. it became the most prominent religion in
the capital city, Luoyang. In 166 c.e. Chinese emperors be-
gan holding rituals in which they sacrifi ced to both Laozi
and the Buddha. For common people in China, Buddhism
held the promise of salvation, of a chance to go to heaven.
Early Buddhist translators of scriptures into Chinese oft en
used images from Daoism to explain their faith to people,
and the way of Daoism and the pious way to Nirvana of
Buddhism oft en blended. For centuries most Chinese saw
little diff erence between the two and venerated both reli-
gions even while continuing to worship their ancestors and
believe in magic.
EUROPE
BY KIRK H. BEETZ
Some of the earliest artworks from Europe may also be the
earliest signs of religion there: cave paintings from France
and Spain dating to about 32,000–30,000 b.c.e. and small
stone carvings of large-breasted women, such as the so-called
Venus of Willendorf found in Austria, dating from roughly
28,000 to 23,000 b.c.e. Th e principal subjects of the paint-
ings are animals, richly detailed by the prehistoric artists.
Also found in caves are sculptures, mostly relief carvings,
of animals and of women. Archaeologists have long debated
the signifi cance of the ancient cave art, but most speculate
that the depictions of animals were intended to give people
power over them in order to make hunts successful. Human
fi gures oft en are portrayed hunting the animals, and perhaps
by painting or sculpting these scenes the artists believed they
were making the animals and the hunts real.
Statuettes like the Venus of Willendorf may represent a fer-
tility cult or an earth-mother cult. Whether the carvings were
intended to be worshipped or were totems representing a god-
dess is not known. Some archaeologists suspect that they rep-
resent a matriarchal religion or society, meaning that women
were the dominant priests or social leaders. However, there is
considerable debate over the purpose of these fi gurines.
Ancient religion oft en is connected with death and
burial. Burying the dead goes back at least to the last great
ice age, and many archaeologists believe that the practice is
a sign of belief in an aft erlife. On the other hand, burying
the dead might be merely a sanitary measure—corpses bring
disease and attract predators, and burying them covers both
decay and odor.
By 3500 b.c.e. Europeans were building monuments of
huge stones, or megaliths (from the Greek mega, meaning
“large,” and lithos, meaning “stone”). Usually these people
placed corpses within the stone chambers and then covered
the structures with large earthen mounds, termed tumuli
by archaeologists. In a few places the megalith builders took
more elaborate measures, such as building stairs down into
chambers and constructing several niches for the dead, mak-
ing it clear that more than one person was interred inside a
single tumulus.
Even such large and laboriously built burial structures as
these, however, are not necessarily evidence of belief in an af-
terlife. Th e imposing megaliths might, for example, have been
intended to announce that a particular village or clan owned
the surrounding land. Th e tumuli, some of them visible for
miles, might have carried the same message. On the other
hand, there are indications that mourners left burial goods
in the stony chambers of some tumuli, which would suggest a
belief that the dead needed supplies for an aft erlife.
In Ireland, England, and western Europe many mega-
lithic complexes took centuries to build. Some are merely
enigmatic rows of upright stones weighing tons each, their
purpose unknown. Others provide hints to their ritual sig-
nifi cance. Th e most famous of these is Stonehenge in Eng-
land. Stonehenge was erected in an on-and-off fashion over
hundreds of years, and periodically people, presumably indi-
viduals with high social status, were buried among the stones.
Th is and many similar monuments were situated so as to line
up with astronomical events. At Stonehenge the sunrise on
the summer solstice aligns with the axis of the main passage
between the exterior of the circle and the interior. Th e sig-
nifi cance of this arrangement is unclear, but it must have had
some symbolic or ceremonial meaning.CELTIC RELIGION
Th e Celts appear to have developed in east-central Europe,
perhaps in the area of today’s southern Germany and Czech
Republic, though they may have migrated there from central
Asia. Th ey begin appearing in the historical record about 500
b.c.e., at which time their culture was fl ourishing. Greek and
Roman writers tried to fi t Celtic religious beliefs into their
own understanding of religion, sometimes doing as Julius
Caesar did and giving Celtic gods and goddesses the names
of their Greek or Roman counterparts to make things easier
for their reading audiences.
However, Celtic beliefs were too complicated to fi t com-
fortably with the sorts of gods and goddesses the Greeks and
Romans worshipped. Some archaeologists believe that an-
cient European religions sprang from a core religion (perhaps
belonging to the megalith builders) that once existed in cen-
tral Europe. In Greece and Rome the gods and goddesses of
this core religion each gained preeminence over some special
realm, such as war, agriculture, or the sea. When the Greeks
and Romans ventured into the rest of Europe, they brought
their specialized gods with them. But the people they met, thereligion and cosmology: Europe 849