J Garneir writes: “Not merely Egyptians, Chaldeans, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans, but also the Hindus, the Buddhists of China and of Thibet, the Goths, Anglo-Saxons, Druids, Mexicans and Peruvians, the Aborigines of Australia, and even the savages of the South Sea Islands, must have all derived their religious ideas from a common source and a common centre. Everywhere we find the most startling coincidences in rites, ceremonies, customs, traditions, and in the names and relations of their respective gods and goddesses.”—The Worship of the Dead, London, 1904, p. 3
This idea is very fascinating to me, the concept that there are, at least, even little things in every culture that resemble a common origin.
Any thoughts?
I can't speak to Chaldean influence around the world, but they appear several thousand years after many of the burial rites of the other religious practices. Chaldean religion, as I understand it had a Levantine religion, similar to Canaanite or Semitic religions and later converted to Assyrian or Babylonian religion, which were already established by that time, and had been for some two-thousand years. So, we can probably rule out Chaldean influence on everyone.
However, of those, the Greeks, Romans, Hindus, Buddhists, Goths, Saxons, Druids, and many more besides are descended from the Proto-Indo-European religion which led to similar practices and rites. Greek religion also had influence from the Near-Eastern religions such as Egyptian and Babylonian. Abrahamic religions are descended from the Canaanite religion via the Israelite people who codified worship of a war god and take their rites from themselves and the other Near-Eastern religion. That said, many of these other religions had next to no contact with one another after about 1000, 2000, 5000, even 10 or 15 thousand years.
It would be a mistake to attribute any currently known religion as having been the genesis of all the religious traditions of the world since some have had no contact after neolithic times. However, certainly, there has been contact between many different cultures and religions since then across Eurasia and Northern Africa which have affected the beliefs of the people. Similarly, over the past 500 years, Europe has contacted and converted a great number of people and their current beliefs are influenced by the Christian traditions brought by the Europeans.
Beyond that, I can't say whether or not there is a common genesis for all religion, or whether it is a "natural" part of human development that people all over the world developed. In any case, religions diverged a long time before the Chaldeans. Hell, about half of those would have never had even indirect contact with Chaldean culture.