Something really wild to me is the extent to which archaeology seems to believe that artifacts were used for some kind of religious / worshipful purpose.
Like, in the modern world, relatively very very few objects are used for worship. If a future civilization finds a figurine, it's probably a Barbie doll or a Funko Pop or something.
Future civilizations might find our most treasured artifacts and presume that we worship glass rectangles or something.
Seems kinda weird if this is the default assumption for unexplained historical artifacts, as it naively appears (to a non-archaeologist). Like, why do we think that these figurines are fertility goddesses rather than toys or instructional tools or even pornography?
@ben My best guess is that they know a lot about how similar contemporary societies (e.g. hunter-gatherers) behave, and that religion is very infused into many activities we consider secular. Those societies are doing worshipful-X instead of just-X.
I'd guess the fandom-forming instinct also exists in many other societies, but there it's channeled into religion. So Funko-pops might be descirbed as semi-religious objects?
@ben but i don't know much about this, and it's a good question