The book was compared back then with Olaf Stapledon's 'Last and First Men' which it is not.
I read this book about twenty years ago. It is a story about pivotal moments for humankind when humankind comes up with things like the concept of a soul, gods and an afterlife.
There was mention of a jurassic civilisation that used language, and wooden/leather tools.
The story had no book-spanning main characters, people just were the main character(s) in a single chapter/episode.
I wonder if this could be Evolution by Stephen Baxter. It's a collection of short stories and novelettes that go from the time of the dinosaurs to the distant future. The timing is about right, from 2003.
The first part of the book reads like episodes from Walking with Dinosaurs and its sequels. Each animal is supposedly an ancestor of humans. There was a part about sentient raptor dinosaurs that used tools. I don't think they could talk, though. They followed a migrating herd of sauropods (that weren't sentient) but for some reason the sentient ones died out when the herd arrived at the shore of the ocean. Then it goes through prehistoric times and the present, continuing on into the distant future. Not long after the present, humans start to lose their technological civilization and eventually the ability to speak. I don't remember parts about theology though.
