When did people get souls?
By Kevin Reed
Do you believe you have a soul? Do you believe people have souls? All people? Do animals have souls?
This seems like one of those things you can’t answer definitively, like, you either believe it or you don’t, and there’s no way to know until you die and you find out and then it’s too late because you can’t tell anyone because you’re dead. Maybe you could work something out with someone close to you: “Okay, here’s the deal. When I die, if I find out we have souls, I’ll let you know by throwing a spoon across the room every Thursday for a year.”
If you have an applicable religion or belief system, then it’s a no-brainer. “Of COUSE we have souls!” Many major religions believe in a soul, and many of these believe in only a human soul - no animal souls. This also seems to tie into the belief that humans are somehow separate from animals.
So when did people get souls? If you believe every living thing has a soul, then that’s easy, because every living thing has a soul. If humans are somehow different from animals and only humans have souls, then when did humans actually get those souls?
Well, let’s say you and I each have a soul.. And your family, naturally, they have souls. And your friends have souls (even that one person that everyone believes doesn’t have one). Does everyone? Probably, like, it wouldn’t just stop at the edge of your neighborhood, town, city, or country; souls would extend to all people, good bad or indifferent. ”Body and soul.” They have the soul, and it’s up to them what they do with it, and up to your belief structure as to what happens to a good or bad person’s soul in the end. So, if we go with this, then as of this writing, there are roughly 7.753 billion human souls on planet Earth. Which is perfectly fine. Wouldn’t seem like the volume of souls would be an issue. The paperwork might be a headache, but that’s not our concern.
Our parents, they have or had souls. Their parents had souls. Our great-grandparents had them. On back, down past the 1800s, 1500s, 1200s, and into pre-history, all those people had souls. Human civilization arose ~10,000 years ago with the move to farming - if we measure each generation as 25 years, then that’s just 400 generations back to 10,000 BC, more people with souls.
Prior to that, Homo sapiens go back another 300,000 years, give or take. Homo sapiens arose in Africa at that time before fanning out over the globe. So, if people have souls, people are Homo sapiens, and if Homo sapiens go back 300,000 years, then souls go back 300,000 years.
Did the first soul appear along with the first Homo sapiens individual?
The primary human ancestor before Homo sapiens were Homo erectus. They thrived on Earth for 2 MILLION years - not too shabby! Did they have souls? Or, since they were not humans, did they not have souls?
If you follow human evolution back in time, we diverged from chimps as early as 13 million years ago, with possible hybridization as recently as 4 million years ago. Between then and now, there have been at least 17 known species of human or early human relatives, and more are being discovered. These overlap and some interbreed during that time period (humans interbred with Neanderthals until ~39,000 years ago), so where in that 6 million years did the first soul show up? Between Australopithecus afarensis and Homo naledi? Between Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens?
If souls exist in humans and not in animals, they had to show up somewhere - where in the record did they appear?
Timeline of human evolution - where on the timeline did souls appear?
This would seem to lead to several possibilities:
all life forms have souls
no life forms have souls
Of course, a person could conclude that souls somehow appeared when the first Homo sapien was born, meaning that the mother and father didn’t have souls, but that this new individual did have a soul. This would mean that either souls spontaneously evolved, or some entity would have to have been aware that this new species had appeared, that the new species should have souls, and had then somehow implanted a soul within this first individual, who would then go on to spread souls throughout the entire human population.
But then - as Homo sapiens evolves into new species into the future - do the souls go into each new species?
That’s a thinker.
Really seems most likely that either all life has some sort of soul, or none of us do.
Image Homo erectus skill, Creative Commons, Ohio Status University Art and Design
