Religion Influence On Early Culture

The Influence of Religion in Early Cultures Since the beginning of time, religion has been a key factor to the roles that people play in society. All people think differently from one another, but a system of beliefs make people think alike. People’s beliefs not only have influence over their behavior, but it also has influence over the different aspects of their life, such as architecture, social order, sometimes legal system, and the different forms of artistic expression. Although the early civilizations lived so far apart from each other, they had in common that their beliefs were influencing the cultures’ myths, hierarchy, and art. To begging with, societies created different myths based on their beliefs to explain what was happening

In early civilizations, the people who were “closer” to god enjoyed more privileges, like a better social status. For example, the Egyptians had a theocracy system, which means a state ruled by a god representative, which in this case it could be the queen or king (Sayre). there was no higher power than to be the queen or king of one of the most powerful empires ever existed on earth, so the people attributed this privilege to be the representative of their god on earth. It did not matter where the cultures where settle, religion was what move the important aspects of their life. Moreover, in the other side of world, civilizations in America started to emerge. The Olmecs were a civilization settled in between Veracruz and Tabasco on the southern coast of the Gulf of Mexico (Sayre). In the Olmec civilization the highest social role that a person could have was the role of a priest. Again, the person "closest" to god was in the top of the social scale. The Priests had the rest of the population working for them because their Gods chose the priests to represent the gods on earth. To summarize, the hierarchy of early civilizations was mainly based on their beliefs about their gods and who could communicate with

Art was supposed to honor the civilization’s gods. From the material the people used, to the location in the city. Everything had a purpose to be. For example, one common trait between cultures was the impressions on the wall of the temples with images of their gods. Sometimes these impressions tell the story of the city or important events. Although Egyptians used art as a way of expression and to honor their gods; art was used to communicate. For example, the Egyptians had something called "Pallets", which are pictograms. The pallets had "stylized drawings that represent objects or beings, which can be combined to express ideas" (Sayre). The drawings in the palettes were mainly telling stories through art. As divine figures were so important in the Egyptian's culture, the gods were represented in these palettes as items from the nature. For example, in the Palette of Narmer, there is a hawk, but the bird is a symbolic representation of the god Horus. Also, in the top of the pallet there is Hathor, the Sky Mother (Sayre). These people use their deities to communicate with each other in form of art, so the amount of influence that the divine figures had over the people was really big. Most of the art created in this culture was to worship their gods or telling stories about gods. These are clear examples of how Egyptians were so influenced by their system of