>Wrong, marriage was a religious ceremony all along. Maybe you have "mating" in mind, not marriage. Check anthropological accounts. Actually religion predates m

>Wrong, marriage was a religious ceremony all along. Maybe you have "mating" in mind, not marriage. Check anthropological accounts. Actually religion predates most forms of even government and cultural practice. I think the problem here is defining religion. Many people here equate it with belief. Certainly religious marriage in the Protestant sense of religious only comes around after the advent of Christianity, perhaps after the advent of Protestantism.... But as you point out, ritualizing (almost always with religious symbolism, again for anthropological definitions of religion, not Protestant definitions) procreative marriage is universal. In fact I would point out it is more universal than is ritualizing remembering the dead. Fewer cultures don't have rituals involving procreative marriage than don't have rituals for funerals, etc. >Religion is a "Big Fucking Deal" in all fucking cultures. Visit any archeological museum of any civilization to check this out. It's just that there are many forms of religion, and not all involved a bearded deity in the clouds. Even confucianism serves the role of religion, with several societal norms and guidelines etc. I think again the problem is defining religion. Here in the West we see religion as a system of belief. Outside the sphere of Christian influence (Christianity, Orthodox Judiasm, Islam, Sikhdom, and derivatives), religion is a far more flexible concept than that.