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Religion originated as a way to fill needs for prehistoric people. With increased mental capacities, the first tribes realized their own inevitable mortality and sought ways to explain and even appease this. Scientists speculate that members of the tribes began inventing their own answers. This is how the first religious belief system, priesthood, set of rituals to appease the Goddess, rituals to control fertility and the environment, behavioral expectations for members, and sets of moral truths to govern human behavior formed. Evidence of food, flowers, tools, weapons, at prehistoric peoples grave sites reinforces scientist's beliefs that religion is prehistoric. Why would they leave corpses with items for the afterlife, a practice popularly associated with the intensely religious Egyptians, if they didn't hold some religious belief that they would in fact require items after death? This circumstantial evidence can't be confirmed with documents, as forms of writing had not been developed yet. Cave paintings are also conceived to be a ritualistic practice.

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