Don't have any reasonable good links available but over here, further East (present-day Romania and then the Roman province of Dacia) there was a strong presence of Oriental/Siro-Palmyrian deities like Mithras, Dea Syria or Belus. There's this (non-academic) page [1] in Romanian which you can use Google translate on in order to get a better hang of it.
> I found that interesting too, and curious about what it implies for how people thought about religion at the time
Religion is an invention of the rennaisance. People at the time would have just perceived what we see as "religion" as worldview, much like people today typically believe in a fusion of economic theories.
That's fascinating but makes sense. any places to go learn more about this you recommend? googling things like invention of religion don't really lead anything on this specific topic
yes i second this. just a bit clarification. not as "the concept of religion" as we call it today would have been an invention. it existed since humanity. rather that religion is something besides or independent of the everyday life ← this is a modern invention. today people say "you can be of any religion" and still do the same civil life as everyone else, go to school, to the grocery, watch TV, participate in the economy system: religion is "something like a hobby", a coloring to your everyday life, like a "community flair" of some people does not eat this-or-that on this-or-that day or cutting their hair in a specific manner, etc.
it just happened when common welfare got high enough that people did not need to worry about keeping "old customs" to keep the community and themself *aligned with the created order*. consequentially the rationale for "old customs" gets blurred and forgotten and mostly becomes "superstition". so people more and more trusting themself in the hands of industry and tech they themself created as a protection around themself instead of the tangible instruments of ageless wisdom gathered along the ages, which they swipe instead in the box of "religion" and move on.
thus economy + industry and tech become the new religion itself.
Interesting; does anyone have a link showing a typical amulet from that era, for comparison?