The spirits were invisible and powerful, and he assumed that they were responsible for all the incomprehensible forces of nature. They manipulated the rain from the clouds, thunder and lightning, nature's power of growth, and everything else. He realised – or rather assumed – that it was all associated with the spirits.
The next thing to do for him was to find out how he could influence the spirits, so that they gave him what he needed, first and foremost Sunlight, rain and fertility, when he wanted and needed it.
1.2 Sorcery
By studying nature the Stone Age man learnt that the lightning struck the trees and sometimes ignited them. Lightning was always followed by the thunder in the sky, and the fire was very similar to the Sun. It warmed them and lit up their surroundings just like the Sun did, even in the darkest winter nights. He therefore assumed that the fire had been transferred from Heaven to Earth and that it was stored inside the trees. The challenge was to extract the fire from the wood exactly at the moment when he needed it.
When he in his everyday life made different tools out of flint small sparks appeared and fell to the ground, just like the lightning did from the sky. He therefore assumed that this was what happened in the sky as well; mighty spirits struck huge stones against each other, so that lightning occurred and hit the trees, igniting them. He at some point figured that if he did the same he would achieve the same result. When he did the sparks from the stones came into contact with dry wood, and when he used his breath (spirit!) and blew on the tiny embers they some times turned into a live and sparkling fire! Eureka! Ecstatic and amazed the Stone Age man had discovered how to make a fire, by imitating the spirits in the sky! This was a major breakthrough and had a great impact on the shaping of the Stone Age mentality. Could this apply to all the forces of nature?
He studied nature further and discovered that the frogs croaked shortly before the rain started to fall. Was this a signal to or from the spirits? When imitating the spirits in the sky he had managed to make a fire, so in order to make it rain whenever he wanted to he could catch some frogs and make them croak, usually by killing them. He did and it worked. After killing frogs it really started to rain. Eventually anyway.
Note:
I may add that when I was a kid in Bergen/Norway we were told by the adults not to kill or torment frogs, because if we did, the adults claimed, “it would start to rain”. According to them the same applied to black snails. If we stepped on them it would start to rain.
He also saw that when berries from the bushes fell to the ground they turned into bushes themselves. Ergo the Earth's fertility was transferred by contact. The Stone Age man had no idea it was actually the sexual intercourse that made the women pregnant, so in order to make them pregnant he began to transfer the Earth's fertility to them, by flogging their behinds with birch twigs in the spring, when nature was at it's most fertile, by letting the Sun shine upon them and by letting the rain fall upon them. It did not end there, though; if he wanted a person to keep a promise he could ask him to stand on or hold onto a rock when he made the promise, so that the promise would be as strong and firm as the rock. He could also hold onto a ring, so that the loyalty was without an end. He could even catch animals by thrusting his spear into the animal tracks when he came across them, to injure it's leg, making it easier to catch.
With time the sorcery became more and more comprehensive. In the end the Stone Age man had spells covering just about everything in nature, and the idea of sorcery permeated his life. When men died it was logical to bury them in the ground, so that they would come back one day, like the berries and seeds when they were planted in the soil. The Earth was seen as feminine, because the plants emerged from her womb just like children from the womb of the woman. For the dead to return all the Stone Age woman had to do was to touch the dead in the grave, or touch something he had been in contact with. She then had to be made fertile, as described above. When the woman then gave birth to a child the newborn was given the dead person's name and was regarded as the same person as the one in the grave. Because the dead had no memories of his past lives it was assumed that he had forgotten all about this in the realm of the dead.
Note:
This naturally explains why we still have the custom in most parts of Europe of naming our children after their grandparents.
The Sun disappeared into the ocean in the west, and was assumed to travel by boat at that point, through the realm of the dead below the surface of the Earth. It then reappeared in the east, after completing its journey. Man was a part of nature, just like everything else, so the Stone Age man assumed that he too had to travel through the underworld when he died, by boat across the ocean or a vast river, before being reborn again, by a woman. He assumed that it was this trip that made him forget. When the Stone Age man died he was because of this given a boat funeral, or he was placed in a grave shaped like a boat. Some times he was buried inland along with a horse instead, if the sea was too far away and the Sun set over land. The dead were buried on Sunset the first Sunday after the first full Moon after death, because on this day they would have the company of the Sun and the waning (dying) Moon, on their journey into the dark and cold realm beneath the surface of the Earth.
One would think that intelligent human beings, like our forefathers were, would very quickly realize that their sorcery did not work, but if a sorcerer killed frogs and it actually started to rain afterwards it was not easy to know that his spell had nothing to do with this. Perhaps it didn't start to rain right away, but sooner or later it would, and when it did the sorcerer could take the credit for having caused this effect. Besides, since man was so fearful of all things it would take a lot of courage not to trust the sorcerers as well. What if the rain would never fall again, the Sun never shine and the women never become pregnant, if they stopped casting their spells? Why risk everything?
Another point is that some of the things the sorcerers did were indeed very sensible. They did study nature and the processes in nature, they learnt something new all the time, and constantly tried new approaches. Some of the things they did gave obvious and excellent results, such as herbal medicine, brain surgery (trepanning), astronomy/navigation, irrigation, watering the dry fields with wet branches, planting of seeds in the ground, the use of water to cleanse wounds, and so forth. The sorcerers were the scientists and researchers or the Stone Age!
The final and perhaps most important reason for sorcery to survive, from the beginning of modern man to the Bronze- and in some places until the Iron Age, despite the fact that many of the sorcerers must have understood that what they were doing was pure humbug, was the fact that the sorcerers wanted to keep their status and power. The sorcerer had always been the most skilled, creative and intelligent man in the community, he had to be in order to survive as a sorcerer, so he would also be the man best suited to keep the status quo.
1.3 Religion
More and more sorcerers began, from the Neolithic era and onwards, to recognise the fact that they had no power whatsoever over the spirits of nature. However, rather than understand that there are no spirits in nature they concluded that they could not control them by means of sorcery. They still wanted the Sun to shine and the spring to return after winter, and they still needed rain and the women to become pregnant, so they tried a different approach. Rather than cast spells, the sorcerer turned into a priest and began to pray to the spirits and simply ask them for help instead. What had been impersonal spirits everywhere in nature therefore turned into anthropomorphic deities. They were addressed by the priests and because of that were given different names. Everywhere the spirits were given names, and the only reason we – the different European tribes – know them today by different names is the fact that we at that point had developed slightly different languages in the different parts of Europe.