Art, Gods, Neanderthals, and Hunter-Gatherer Sapiens of the Paleolithic and Postpaleolithic

Human beings have a sense of transcendence that leads them to seek explanations for their existence and their complex experiences with nature and their surroundings.The answers they obtain often go beyond the purely empirical, resorting to the existence of a supernatural world, even since the Paleolithic.Thus, we can define transcendence as the set of perceptions, feelings, beliefs, and behaviors related to the idea of the existence of forces, energies, and entities that are beyond the purely physical but connected to it, giving it meaning, and that in some cases can manifest to human beings, among other situations, in dreams and trance states.The human brain has developed both the ability to interpret the information it has, constructing a story, legend, or myth that explains the events it experiences, and the need to believe in that story, however implausible it may seem to reason, for the psychological tranquility it provides.The first manifestations of this feeling are observed in burials and the rock and portable art of the Paleolithic and post-paleolithic.