I've heard many theories that monotheism came after polytheism, but how can that be when the religions of the birthplace of humanity, Africa, are monotheistic? Practitioners of AFR say they are monotheistic, believing in a Supreme Creator with lesser spirits to do His bidding.
I think there are two ways at getting at this question.
Is there a universal process where religions develop from animism to polytheism to monotheism?
Can African Traditional Religions tell us what the earliest human religion was like?
I'll address them in that order.
Did monotheism come after polytheism? Well, at least in the Levant it did, and monotheism succeeded polytheism in the Mediterranean and in Arabia.
However, those specific examples do not necessarily mean that all societies and religions must tend towards monotheism.
But, during the 19th century there was a trend within anthropology to say just that: that societies pass through phases from simple hunter-gatherer bands, through intermediate farmer tribes, to complex societies. And associated with that social evolution towards complexity, there was at the same time religious development from simple animism or ancestor worship, to polytheism, and culminating in monotheism.
That position of the "Evolutionary school" was strongly challenged in the early 20th century, revived as the neo-evolutionary school in the 1950s-1970s, and finally abandoned in the 70s and 80s.
I will briefly quote from Archaeology, Ritual, Religion to give a sense of evolutionist thought about religious development:
Edward Burnett Tylor, in his Religion in Primitive Culture (1958), also developed a notion of three stages of social evolution: animism (‘belief that a spirit or spirits is active in aspects of the environment’ (Hinnells 1995:41)); polytheism (belief in, or worship of, many gods); and monotheism (belief in, or worship of, one god) (Bowie 2000:15). Animism was equated directly with ‘stone age religion’ and seen as something that was still extant in ‘primitive’ cultures (Sharpe 1986:58). Direct analogies (see pp. 114–15) are used and prehistoric archaeology is called upon to support his theories of cultural advancement whereby ‘primitive’ forms such as ‘the megalithic structures, menhirs, cromlechs, dolmens, and the like’ of European prehistory are still found ‘as matters of modern construction and recognized purpose among the ruder indigenous tribes of India’ (Tylor 1929: vol. 1, 61).
Durkheim, though advocating a sociological definition of religion as already described, also approached his Elementary Forms of Religious Life (2001) through an evolutionary framework. He might have rejected animism and naturism and thus separated himself from Tylor or Max Müller, but as Cladis (2001:xvi) notes, his work reflected the ideology of the nineteenth century, ‘the belief that the explanation of complex human phenomena requires the examination of their simpler, earlier forms’. Yet Durkheim’s study is also brilliant in other respects, and cannot simply be discarded. One is his realisation that the search for the origins of religion, an absolute first beginning, must be dismissed as unachievable for ‘like any human institution, religion begins nowhere’ (Durkheim 2001: 9); this is an intuitive deduction that it would serve many well to acknowledge more fully today.
Evolutionary approaches can, rightly, be discarded as simplistic, reductionist, and in instances, racist. A posited sequence whereby a series of religious ‘stages’ is passed through is largely untenable. An example of such would usually involve a scheme in which shamanism could be described as largely the religion of hunter-gatherers because of the links with animals which recur, whereas ancestors as custodians of the land might grow more important with the growth of agriculture through being linked to cycles of fertility, seasonality and possession of the land (see Chapter 3). Then, increasing social stratification could be said to give rise to hierarchical religions involving priest castes/increased sacrifice/centralised control of resources. Finally, the historical dimension of literacy associated with a growth in universalising tendencies might be said to give rise to world religions.
Such a sequence is flawed, for the co-existence of different forms is evident—contrary to older approaches which ultimately saw the lower religions wiped out as they were replaced by higher ones. This is obviously not so; there are no universals. Similarly, the existence of a High or Sky God has to be admitted as existing amongst all these religious forms as well, something that might previously have been denied within an evolutionary schema. The sliding scale of religious evolution does not work; old gods can easily become new gods in an identity shift rather than a simple evolutionary step.
TL;DR- there is not a order where "more developed" religions supersede "less developed" ones. We cannot simply follow a path to find the oldest and "least developed" original religion.
I gave away the answer above.
No. African Traditional Religions are not "the original religion".
Quoting Paul Lane from African Archaeology- a critical introduction:
By the mid-19th century scholars influenced by evolutionary thinking (e.g., Edward Tylor, Lewis Henry Morgan) drew more explicit links between contemporary non-Western societies and the lifeways of ancient European societies. This “comparative approach” laid the basis for all subsequent uses of analogy within archaeology. One of the earliest proponents was Sir John Lubbock, who early on observed that:
[d]eprived . . . of any assistance from history ... the archaeologist is free to follow the methods which have been so successfully pursued in geology... [such that] if we wish to understand the antiquities of Europe, we must compare them with the rude implements and weapons still or until lately used by the savage races in other parts of the world. (Lubbock 1912:407–408, emphasis added)
Living modern “savages” and “barbarians” were believed to be “living fossils” who provided direct analogs for the way of life of peoples in the past with comparable technologies and subsistence practices. Subsequent approaches to the use of ethnographic analogy in archaeology have refined and amended this concept, but the discipline has yet to fully rid itself of the latent assumption that “the Other” represents not just different places but also different times.
I think your question relies on this inherent logic that: because humans originated in Africa, the traditional religions of Africa must represent the beliefs of the earliest humans.
But, that assumes that where religion in the Middle East or Europe has experienced much change and innovation, the "traditional" religions of Africa must be timeless and unchanging. We should not assume that is the case, because just as African societies have experienced change over the many millennia, we should recognize that their religious beliefs are as adaptable and capable of innovation as any other peoples.
now, specifically to your assertion that African Traditional Religions are Monotheistic, not Polytheistic.
Another quote from Tim Insoll in Archaeology, Ritual, Religion:
In addition, Yoruba religion is also elusive in attempting to define what it actually is: monotheistic, polytheistic, animistic, ancestral. It defies categorisation in being composed of multiple elements, having a supreme god, Olódùmarè, remote but the focus of people’s ultimate devotion. Equally, there are many lesser gods who are also the focus of devotion, as can be the ancestors, but the latter are not the focus in themselves but one of several avenues of connection with the supreme god (Awolalu 1979). Spirits of earth, lagoons, rivers, the sea, wind, trees, hills and mountains are all found as well, but, as Awolalu (ibid.: 49) notes, ‘it would be wrong to call the whole religion animism’. This in itself, it can be suggested, carries warnings for our categorisations of past religious systems which were probably similarly conceived as more flexible, complex and ambivalent than our neat reconstructions of neolithic ancestor ‘cults’ or mesolithic shamans allow.
The ways to the gods are likewise multiple and complex. Yoruba religion can be seen to function at both the level of the individual and the community, and the access points to religiosity reflect this. Prayer can be personal, as individual circumstances, desires and outcomes dictate, but it can also occur in a communal situation. Similarly, song, dance and masquerade function at a communal level, whilst sacrifice can function at both levels, communal and individual (Awolalu 1979). The primary purpose of the latter ensuring, according to Adediran and Arifalo (1992: 313), ‘the continuous benevolence of the deities’. Here again we can suggest that comparable complexity underpinned much of past religious systems as well, complex manifestations in how devotions were offered, devotions which functioned at a variety of levels both individual and communal.
I think Insoll brings up a very important point here, that the categorizations and labels we place on Yoruba religion (or African Traditional Religion more broadly) carry our intellectual baggage. We define Monotheism as something distinct and separate from Polytheism, and struggle to parse a religion which has multiple gods but also ranks deities in a hierarchy of power.
I think leaning too much on "polytheistic" or "monotheistic" label impedes understanding of these religions on their own terms as modern, living religions. Not as keys to "the first religion".
edit- bolded passage, bullet point 2nd section.