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ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The religion and media field has grown strongly as an academic subject in recent years, especially regarding studies of religion in contemporary mass media, TV, film, internet, social media etc., and in relation to popular culture. Scholars of religion have also begun to pay attention to the important role that media, mediation, and mediatization have played in the history of religions. It is this growing awareness that we wish to examine here. Our focus is not intended to signal the abandonment of interest in contemporary religion, media and popular culture; rather we wish to place this development in the deep and broad perspective of the study of religion. Media, mediation, and the more recent phenomenon of mediatization, are processes that are inseparable from the ways in which religion functions and is passed on from generation to generation. Thus, from a general study of religion perspective, we promote the argument that media and mediation processes are central aspects of how all religions function because all communication, including religious communication, can be seen as mediated. In this article, we reflect on and discuss the roles that media have played in the deep history of religions and continue to play in the present by bringing religion and media studies in conversation with cultural evolution and cognitive perspectives. DANSK RESUMÉ: Religion og medier er blomstret stærkt op som emnefelt i de seneste år, særligt med fokus på religion i samtidens massemedier, tv, film, internet, sociale medier m.m. og i relation til populærkultur. Samtidigt er religionsforskere blevet opmærksomme på at medier og mediering har spillet vigtige roller for religionshistorien og det er dén udvikling vi her vil gribe fat i. Dermed ønsker vi ikke på nogen måde at signalere en opgiven af interessen for religion, medier og populærkultur i samtiden, men snarere at vi ønsker at indsætte denne udvikling i et langt og bredt religionsvidenskabeligt perspektiv. Medier og mediering er uadskilleligt fra hvordan religion fungerer og videreføres fra generation til generation. Derfor anlægger vi det overordnede perspektiv her, at medier og mediering udgør centrale aspekter af hvordan alle religioner fungerer, da al kommunikation, inklusiv religiøs kommunikation, kan anskues som medieret. I denne artikel reflekterer vi over og diskuterer den rolle medier, mediering og medialisering har spillet i religionshistorien og i samtiden bl.a. med inddragelse af kulturevolutionære og kognitive perspektiver.

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It has often been said that the origins of religion, cognition and culture are beyond the ken of modern man. And yet, it is the most interesting, challenging and provocative of topics in the natural and human sciences. Perhaps our origins are no longer as murky today as in previous centuries. The past twenty-five years have startled the world with major advances in a number of disciplines and sciences: evolutionary psychology, cognitive archaeology, neuroscience, ethology, developmental psychology, social psychology, cognitive linguistics, palaeoanthropology and genetics. These advances have significantly impacted on comparative religion and have led to the establishment of a burgeoning new field called the cognitive science of religion. This new field has succeeded in casting new light on age-old problems. Efforts to discover and explain the evolutionary origins of Homo sapiens sapiens have led to a wide variety of hypotheses attempting to discover what is particularly human about human beings. We have witnessed such memorable ideas as the grandmother hypothesis, the aquatic ape, man the tool-maker, man the hunter, woman the gatherer, crossing symbolic thresholds, the speaking ape, social intelligence, the great hominid escape, mankind's epistemic hunger, the hybrid mind, and so on. All of these attempts to understand the origins of humanity have raised fundamental questions about the complex relationships between cognition and culture. Are they two sides of the same coin? Or is culture epiphenomenal to other more basic processes? And how does religion fit into the picture?.