A Biblical Question

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   So, I have a question that has genuinely puzzled me ever since I was a certified adult (and by that, I mean when I was 21). It concerns a trail of re-occurring details that I find a bit confusing. The question is this: Were there any actual demands for offerings and sacrifices before God asked for them after the exodus of the tribes of Israel? 

  I understand that there are possible answers, but I'm not sure if they give a full answer. The first answer I can think of is, "Moses added it to the accounts." But why would he want to do that? What would give Moses the idea to add sacrificial offerings and altar-building to the stories told before the exodus from Egypt? There is a possibility that someone else added it instead of Moses, but the questions only build from there without answering the initial question. 

  The other answer I can think of is that it was borrowed from other nations or communities soon after the fall of man mentioned in Genesis 3 and/or the scattering of peoples in Genesis 11. I mean, there were a lot of people by that point. Maybe it was a sign that humans do borrow ideas from each other. But why would they do that to begin with? Where did those people learn that behavior from? Why would biblical characters like Cain/Abel, Noah, Abraham, and Issac do something when they were chosen by God to be a separate blessed familial line? 

  Perhaps I am mulling over this too much. It bugs me though. Why would those in the line of Adam (all the people I mentioned above, not to mention Jacob aka Israel, Joseph, and all of the Israelites before Moses) leading up to Moses be required to do it without a explicit command from God? I recall one time when God asked Abraham to make a sacrifice to establish the covenant between them, but that's all I can remember. There is no specific place in the Bible that says any person before the exodus from Egypt needed to build altars or offer sacrifices because God commanded it. I guess I find it off-putting. I know that there are laws in the Torah to sacrifice animals or certain foods to be able to be within God's presence, but but that law wasn't established until Moses and the tribes of Israel left Egypt and travelled to the Promised Land. 

  If anyone has any idea/insight into this, please reach out to me. I would really like to understand this.

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