The Anthropological Approach to Meditation

Humans practiced meditation in the process of adapting to the ecosystem. There is a lack of archaeological evidence pointing to when and how meditation was first practiced. Records of meditation began around 1500 BC. Experiences of meditation before written records can be indirectly inferred through fossil artifacts, cave paintings and the lives of hunter-gatherers. After splitting off from the last common ancestors of the chimpanzees, hominins walked upright, controlled fire, held funerary rites, and, through language, established knowledge and created various cultures. It is speculated that during this evolutionary process, meditation helped humans transform their consciousness and adapt to the ecosystem. This chapter was written in the hope that it will help solve the problems facing our time, which people call the Anthropocene.