urCulture

Burials, sacred places, ritual objects and representations of gods or supernatural beings are the last evidence that can provide information about the religious thought worlds of prehistoric people. Often, however, the meaning of the objects and rituals reflected in the excavation findings remains enigmatic and ambiguous. Nevertheless, they show that the inhabitants of the Lower Rhine at that time must have already possessed complex religious ideas. Ritual deposits of Neolithic jadeite axes, Bronze Age offerings in bodies of water, Roman amulets and images of deities paint a colorful picture of religious life, which in many cases seems strange and yet familiar to us, but often only becomes understandable through ethnographic comparisons.

The exhibition and voyage of discovery into the intellectual history of early times was created in cooperation with the Institutes for Prehistory and Early History as well as for African Studies and Egyptology at the University of Cologne.