Feb 24, 2012 -- 9:57PM, solfeggio wrote:

According to that timeline, Homo sapiens sapiens appears about 200,000 years ago.

When were the first recorded religious beliefs? That would be about 6,000 years ago, in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, but Neanderthals may have had some sort of ritualistic religious beliefs.

Anatomically modern Homo Sapiens appeared around 200,000 years ago.  What happened after that is, interestingly, less clear.  But it seems that about 50,000 years ago, culture began to progress much more rapidly.  Advances in tool making and novel tool-making between groups, art (cave painting) and jewelty, and burial of the dead appear to have begun around this time.  There is not universal agreement about this from what I have read, and there is no consensus about what caused this.  Perhaps this is when sophisticated language appeared.  Perhaps this is linked with some change in brain anatomy which left no indications on the skull.  It  seems that around this time (sometimes known as the "great leap forward"), recognizably modern culture appeared.  But nobody really knows why.  Fascinating stuff.