Organized religion may have preceded agriculture rather than followed it

Evidence

We also know that this transition coincided with population explosions. However, in more than 15 years of careful excavation, archeologist Klaus Schmidt, who first discovered these stone structures on top of a mound buried in earth, and others who have worked there since then, have not found any in Göbekli. If the builders and early worshippers of Göbekli Tepe were indeed hunter-gatherers, then we face the intriguing possibility that early forms of organized religious activity predated the agricultural revolution and the massive cultural transformations it ushered. This scenario, if confirmed, would turn on its head the conventional wisdom that organized religion, with priesthood classes, elaborate rituals, and sacrifices to powerful Big Gods, was a mere consequence of the transition to agricultural societies. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 391

Categorization

• BMF: The inversion that sacred motives could precede material subsistence rearranges civilization’s founding causality — reminiscent of the way We’s OneState claims to be founded on a purely rational-material calculus while concealing a deeper irrational drive at its core (the Integral’s hidden irrationality beneath the rational facade).
• SEED: Essays/worldbuilding angle: a civilization founded on worship before wheat — what social forms would a religion-first society take as it drifts into agriculture unintentionally?
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Big God / partner-choice framework: if religious fervor predates agriculture, the moralizing-god mechanism may have operated in hunter-gatherer bands, complicating Norenzayan’s larger timeline claim elsewhere in the book.