An idea that we have is that some of the earliest humans seemed to conceive of the soul as an alternate self. During sleep, the alternate self could leave temporarily in dreams, and in death it could leave permanently.
Early Egyptians had two versions of the soul - the ka and the ba. The Egyptians were much more focused on the concept of self, rather than the animating force that seems to come and go.
Babylonian Mesopotamia had the napistu. This was kind of what the Egyptians did not have. This was the animating force - it was your body, your breath, your life.
The early Vedic and Hindhu texts are a little complicated. Early on, in the Vedic scriptures, there is the body, the asu, the manas. Later, in the Upanishads, there's the prana, which is the animating force.
The Greeks had some different ideas about the soul, the Orphics being particularly influential to later notions about it, with the idea that the soul is both divine and immortal. By contrast, mainstream Athenians thought of the soul as a bother and tended to not believe in an afterlife for it, and if they did, they didn't seem to believe much in rewards or punishment.
What we tend to conceive of as a soul - the general idea of a piece of the self that is immortal - is not really a part of early Israelite concepts. There's a concept of a life-giving force or substance, but it departs upon death. I think it is introduced somewhere in the New Testament, but I don't really know.
I'm not sure what this means. but it helps sort out what people are talking about when they talk about "soul" or something. Like that awful line in "Wedding Crashers" - "the soul's recognition of its counterpoint in another" - this sees a 'soul' not necessarily as a divine, immortal piece of a person, but probably something that more closely resembles the early, alternate-self version.
I think one of the things that fascinated with is the very early examples of a religious inclination. It tends to show up as the horns and skulls of animals, mostly ox-like animals. They would decorate the insides of homes or be buried with people. These type of objects lend themselves to what we can consider the earliest religions - the mother and the bull, as in Mureybet.
There's a bar near my office that is decorated with bull or bison or buffalo skulls.
