Religion I think came first to answer questions in a primitive way. Then when they started requiring others to believe the same thing, government was formed.

Its like the chicken or the egg - which came 1st? - neither - they developed together

Right from the get go people took advantage of others fears = religion. then we got in groups large enough to warrant organization = govt.

None of the above should have been an option. Traveling back to the beginnings of the Homo line, groups traveled in small numbers, never more than about 25. They were clans and there was a built-in hierarchy. This hierarchy was the beginnings of government. Simultaneously, it is in man's nature to assign agency to things. Wandering in the African savanna, a group sees the tall grass swaying ahead of them. They have some options. It is possibly the wind. It may be much needed game meat. It may be something getting ready for lunch. Of those options, it was prudent to assume there was a predator there. Either of the other conclusions would lead to early extinction of the clan. We accepted an imaginary malevolent agency and it helped us survive. Lightning was a question for which there was no answer, so one was supplied -- an agent was responsible and more often than not those agents were to become the gods of early man.

Government and supernatural agency began together, but religion is not belief. One can believe in anything, yet have no religion. Religion is the organization of these beliefs into a fixed set, including rules (dogma) and rituals. Religion is the sinister outgrowth of applying supernatural agency to things beyond explanation. This is the reason that religion per se is facing more and more difficulty in its ability to survive. Rational and real explanations have come faster than religion could morph to cope with them.

The reason I said none of the above is because I assumed you lumped belief and religion together. I may have been wrong in that assumption. If I was, please accept my apology.

I don't think religion was "created"; I think it always existed (vide Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth and "perennial philosophy" ). I think government came about when population groups got large enough to necessitate it, and "religion" as we know it got codified at stages, but faith in the unseen has always been with us, whether we had words or concepts for it or not.

Religion came about long before there was a society to even govern. (Unless you consider a family patriarch a form of government.)

I think they evolved slowly together. Although I can see an argument for government being first, in that parenting is a primitive form of government. So maybe I should change my vote to gov. came first. Whichever, they were closely entwined.

That was before my time so... what do I know if a priest decided to govern the village or village boss decided he should be worshipped? Can't say dudes.