If the evolution of models involves a speciation of fields of meaning-making, then the more ancient the time period, the less differentiated such fields were. Out of all the present-day strands of meaning-making, the most ancient models that survive from the lineages of preliterate times are those preserved in religious traditions. The religious lineage might be seen as an original all-embracing trunk from which all other branches of modelling, including the arts and sciences, later diverged. As a unified system, it originally functioned not only as ‘religion’, but as ‘science’, ‘philosophy’, ‘history’, ‘law’, and the rest, for the small community who reproduced it, with variation, generation after generation.
ChatGPT revised:
If the evolution of models involves a speciation of fields of meaning-making, then the more ancient the time period, the less differentiated such fields were. Out of all the present-day strands of meaning-making, the most ancient models that survive from the lineages of preliterate times are those preserved in religious traditions. The religious lineage might be seen as an original all-embracing trunk from which all other branches of modelling, including the arts and sciences, later diverged. As a unified system, it originally functioned not only as ‘religion’, but also as ‘science’, ‘philosophy’, ‘history’, ‘law’, and the rest, for the small community who reproduced it, with variation, generation after generation.