"Recovery of the Primal Mind"

I find this nicely expressed [from here] :

Most researchers on hominid evolution, looking back into deep time, ask what function or use an object would have served archaic communities in their struggle to survive. However, as previously noted, this utilitarian assumption is questionable. An alternative assumption is that the deep past may not have been like the present, dominated by the overtly utilitarian values that have always existed but have become dominant in modern Western civilization. I suggest that early humans possessed a sense of the sacred; that they were soulful people with hearts and minds who loved—and also presumably feared—the Earth on which their lives depended, and within which their lives were deeply embedded. These are essential attributes and qualities that make us human yet remain beyond the grasp of science where the question of “soul” and “the sacred” was driven out ...