Effigy Almond Joy Builders

The gist of this article goes something like, the Late Woodland people in Wisconsin constructed massive mounds of earth in forms representing their societal classes and spiritual realms. These realms were divided into air, earth, and water, and represented by various animal and human forms, as well as some more mysterious geometric shapes.

In many ways, this reflects the paleolithic art that we saw from early humans. Symbolic reflections of animals. The notable difference would be the immense scale and the lack of naturalism. Even so, humans have not progressed to the abstract symbols (such as the cross or Star of David) that we see today. There system of belief is in a sense very accurate. Their "sky", "earth", and "water" could reflect and explain the states of matter found on the Earth. This would support the idea that religion explains something not understood abstractly. It's all rather mysterious, these giant piles of dirt in shapes. Why are we, now, in the future with our great technology intrigued by these man-made hills. It's clear that the construction of these mounds was daunting, and I find it amazing that people who needed to worry about finding food took the time to build immense piles of dirt. Clearly these mounds were not build out of boredom or curiosity. How is it someone can hold a belief so dearly as to drive them to do something apparently irrational, something out of their way, and other people can be clueless as to what that belief might be? That is the intrigue of religion.

This post seems a little flaky, but I guess, what I'm getting at is, as humans, we inherently care what the people around us believe. We can't even be sure that our senses aren't deceiving us, so belief is an inherent part of an attempt to live a productive life. We seek verification of our beliefs, we are threatened by apparent inconsistencies, potential flaws in the necessary assumptions we make. From that need comes our inherent interest in the religions of the people around us, past and present, and also the anger and fear and hate, that cause people of different faiths to take each others lives. Well, that's my belief anyhow.