When did the evolution of religion start?

Answer 1

We can tell from some of the cave art in Europe that man must have been practising religion up to 30,000 years ago. Also, some human fossils from this period were ritually buried, providing further evidence of religious activity. This evidence is described in some detail by Richard Leakey in The Origin of Humankind(1994). In historic times, the very earliest civilisations of Egypt and Mesopotamia were practising religion more than five thousand years ago.

Answer 2

Religion has been evolving for thousands of years and will probably continue to do so as long as there are people who wish to believe in some form of religion. The earliest forms of religion were animistic, followed by shamanism, then worship of earth and fertility deities, generally goddesses, then celestial gods. Monotheism is considered to have reached Judah around the middle of the first millennium BCE, at about the same time as Greek philosophers were toying with the same idea.

The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem brought an end to Second-Temple Judaism and ushered in rabbinical Judaism and Christianity. Six hundred years later, Islam arose out of a mixed pagan-Christian-Jewish milieu in souther Arabia. Eventually, the Druze and Bahai faiths evolved out of Islam. Mormonism is the most pronounced evolution within the Christian milieu.