An interesting hypo7. I’ve never thought about religion’s effect on the BIRTH of civilizations. I always thought that is was correlated but not a creating factor, but now when you talk a out it and what we know of Gobekli Tepe, that this first started as a religious place that led to agricultural use and permanent buildings, keeping that in mind makes sense.
But can you elaborate on what you have thought, your conclusions etc?
Religion is a glue that holds Civilization together. It gets people who might even hate each other to cooperate. It serves as the beginning of the rule of law vs. law of the jungle. It has the draw back that war often results when different religious factions meet but even that has the benefit of advancing technology even if it was originally developed to kill the other side .