From Barbara King of the Friday Animal Blog:

The painted caves of Lascaux in what is now France, and the stone monuments of Stonehenge in what is now England, are archaeological marvels famous the world over. At both locations, our ancestors’ connection to animals is evident—and our ancestors’ emerging religiosity is suggested.
It’s impossible to know for sure what meaning animals held for our ancestors in prehistory. Yet hints of animals’ sacred significance are tantalizing clear back to 5,000 (Stonehenge) and even 17,000 (Lascaux) years ago.
Lascaux’s walls are covered in gorgeous, colorful animal images, including bulls and horses; as at other painted caves, there’s a very real possibility of animal-centered ritual at Lascaux. In England, at a village near Stonehenge, animal teeth have been found and analyzed, showing from their chemical signature that cattle were brought near to the ritual site from a long distance, possibly as far away as Scotland and Wales.
Dated to a period right between that of Lascaux and Stonehenge is another site, far less known but deserving of equal fame: Gobekli Tepe in what is now Turkey. There, atop a hill near Syria, more than 11,000 years ago, people erected what seems to be the world’s first temple. Made of 50-stock blocks, sitting among a much larger complex of multiple stone circles, this construction speaks to monumental levels of group cooperation.
And its columns are thick with animal images! Lions, boars, foxes, birds, scorpions, snakes, and more adorn them. Archaeologist Klaus Schmidt speculates that Gobekli Tepe acted as a magnet for pilgrims from 100 miles around; if he’s right, some form of religious ritual involving animals or animal images (or both) went on at Gobekli Tepe. Judging from the animal bones present at the site, a strong possibility is animal sacrifice, perhaps as part of ancestor worship.
This architecture and the practices it may have housed are fascinating because the Gobekli Tepe people were hunter-gatherers. They lived by foraging off the land, neither growing crops nor keeping animals. Anthropologists have long known that there’s no simple link between food-procurement strategies and forms of social organization—still, Gobekli Tepe is a “supernova” (Schmidt’s word) example of the intricate ways that hunter-gatherers made meaning at the extended group level, even way back in our past.
Let’s now make a monumental leap in time. In the United States in the 21st century, Blessing of the Animal ceremonies are popular events in churches, especially around the time of St. Francis’ feast day in October. To stand inside the vast Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan and watch the grand Procession of Animals approach the alter, even as people in the audience glance at the dogs, cats, and rabbits by their side who will later be blessed themselves, is to feel the emotional power of the connection among people, animals, and religious life.
Gobekli Tepe in ancient Turkey and the United States’ busiest modern city: It would be foolish anthropological practice to draw any direct comparison between the two, or to project our own animal-based emotions back into prehistory—especially because Gobekli Tepe may well have been a place of animal sacrifice. Still, I’m struck by the knowledge that we can find the earliest roots of temple-based worship so far back in time, and that these involved animals in some way.