Nonhuman religious behavior
Humanity’s closest living relatives are common
chimpanzees and bonobos. These primates share a common ancestor with
humans who lived between four and six million years ago. It is for this reason
that chimpanzees and bonobos are viewed as the best available surrogate for
this common ancestor. Barbara King argues that while non-human primates are not
religious, they do exhibit some traits that would have been necessary for the
evolution of religion. These traits include high intelligence, a capacity for symbolic communication, a sense of social
norms, realization of "self" and a concept of continuity.
There is inconclusive evidence that Homo
neanderthalensis may have buried their
dead which is evidence of the use of ritual. The use of burial rituals is
evidence of religious activity, but there is no other evidence that religion
existed in human culture before humans reached behavioral modernity.
Marc Bekoff, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary
Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, argues that many species grieve
death and loss.
Setting the stage for human religion
Increased brain size
In this set of theories, the religious mind is one
consequence of a brain that is large enough to formulate religious and
philosophical ideas.
During human evolution, the hominid brain tripled in
size, peaking 500,000 years ago. Much of the brain's expansion took place in
the neocortex.
This part of the brain is involved in processing higher order cognitive functions
that are connected with human religiosity. The neocortex is associated with self-consciousness, language and emotion[citation needed]. According to Dunbar's
theory, the relative neocortex
size of any species correlates with the level of social complexity
of the particular species. The neocortex size correlates with a number of
social variables that include social group size and complexity of mating
behaviors. In chimpanzees the neocortex occupies 50% of the brain, whereas in
modern humans it occupies 80% of the brain.
Robin Dunbar argues that the critical event in
the evolution of the neocortex took place at the speciation
of archaic homo sapiens about 500,000 years
ago. His study indicates that only after the speciation event is the neocortex
large enough to process complex social phenomena such as language and religion.
The study is based on a regression analysis of neocortex size plotted against a
number of social behaviors of living and extinct hominids.
Stephen Jay Gould suggests that religion may
have grown out of evolutionary changes which favored larger brains as a means
of cementing group coherence among savannah hunters, after that larger brain
enabled reflection on the inevitability of personal mortality.
Tool use
Lewis Wolpert argues that causal beliefs that
emerged from tool use played a major role in the evolution of belief. The
manufacture of complex tools requires creating a mental image of an object
which does not exist naturally before actually making the artifact.
Furthermore, one must understand how the tool would be used, that requires an
understanding of causality.
Accordingly, the level of sophistication of stone tools is a useful indicator
of causal beliefs.
Wolpert contends use of tools composed of more than one component, such as hand
axes, represents an ability to understand cause and effect. However, recent
studies of other primates indicate that causality may not be a uniquely human
trait. For example, chimpanzees have been known to escape from pens closed with
multiple latches, which was previously thought could only have been figured out
by humans who understood causality. Chimpanzees are also known to mourn the
dead, and notice things that have only aesthetic value, like sunsets, both of
which may be considered to be components of religion or spirituality.
The difference between the comprehension of causality by humans and chimpanzees
is one of degree. The degree of comprehension in an animal depends upon the
size of the prefrontal cortex: the greater the size of the prefrontal cortex
the deeper the comprehension.
Development of language
Religion requires a system of symbolic communication, such
as language, to be transmitted from one individual to another. Philip
Lieberman states "human religious thought and moral sense
clearly rest on a cognitive-linguistic base".
From this premise science writer Nicholas Wade
states:
"Like most behaviors that are found in societies
throughout the world, religion must have been present in the ancestral human
population before the dispersal from Africa 50,000 years ago. Although
religious rituals usually involve dance and music, they are also very verbal,
since the sacred truths have to be stated. If so, religion, at least in its
modern form, cannot pre-date the emergence of language. It has been argued
earlier that language attained its modern state shortly before the exodus from
Africa. If religion had to await the evolution of modern, articulate language,
then it too would have emerged shortly before 50,000 years ago."
Another view distinguishes individual religious belief from
collective religious belief. While the former does not require prior
development of language, the latter does. The individual human brain has to
explain a phenomenon in order to comprehend and relate to it. This activity
predates by far the emergence of language and may have caused it. The theory
is, belief in the supernatural emerges from hypotheses arbitrarily assumed by
individuals to explain natural phenomena that cannot be explained otherwise.
The resulting need to share individual hypotheses with others leads eventually
to collective religious belief. A socially accepted hypothesis becomes dogmatic
backed by social sanction.
Morality and group living
Frans de Waal and Barbara King both view human
morality as having grown out of primate sociality. Though morality awareness
may be a unique human trait, many social
animals, such as primates, dolphins and whales, have been known to
exhibit pre-moral sentiments. According to Michael
Shermer, the following characteristics are shared by humans and
other social animals, particularly the great apes:
"attachment and bonding, cooperation and mutual aid,
sympathy and empathy, direct and indirect reciprocity, altruism and reciprocal
altruism, conflict resolution and peacemaking, deception and deception
detection, community concern and caring about what others think about you, and
awareness of and response to the social rules of the group".
De Waal contends that all social animals have had to
restrain or alter their behavior for group living to be worthwhile. Pre-moral sentiments
evolved in primate societies as a method of restraining individual selfishness
and building more cooperative groups. For any social species, the benefits of
being part of an altruistic group should outweigh the benefits of
individualism. For example, lack of group cohesion could make individuals more
vulnerable to attack from outsiders. Being part of a group may also improve the
chances of finding food. This is evident among animals that hunt in packs
to take down large or dangerous prey.
All social animals have hierarchical societies in which each
member knows its own place. Social order is maintained by certain rules of
expected behavior and dominant group members enforce order through punishment.
However, higher order primates also have a sense of reciprocity and fairness.
Chimpanzees remember who did them favors and who did them wrong. For example,
chimpanzees are more likely to share food
with individuals who have previously groomed
them.
Chimpanzees live in fission-fusion groups that average 50
individuals. It is likely that early ancestors of humans lived in groups of similar
size. Based on the size of extant hunter-gatherer societies, recent
Paleolithic hominids
lived in bands of a few hundred individuals. As community size increased over
the course of human evolution, greater enforcement to achieve group cohesion
would have been required. Morality may have evolved in these bands of 100 to
200 people as a means of social control, conflict resolution and group
solidarity. According to Dr. de Waal, human morality has two extra levels of
sophistication that are not found in primate societies. Humans enforce their
society’s moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation
building. Humans also apply a degree of judgment and reason not otherwise seen
in the animal kingdom.
Psychologist Matt J. Rossano argues that religion emerged
after morality and built upon morality by expanding the social scrutiny of
individual behavior to include supernatural
agents. By including ever-watchful ancestors, spirits and gods in the social
realm, humans discovered an effective strategy for restraining selfishness and
building more cooperative groups.
The adaptive value of religion would have enhanced group survival.
Rossano is referring here to collective religious belief and the social
sanction that institutionalized morality. According to Rossano's teaching,
individual religious belief is thus initially epistemological, not ethical, in
nature.
Evolutionary psychology of religion
There is general agreement among cognitive scientists that
religion is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved early in human
history. However, there is disagreement on the exact mechanisms that drove the
evolution of the religious mind. The two main schools of thought hold that
either religion evolved due to natural
selection and has selective advantage, or that religion is an
evolutionary byproduct of other mental adaptations.
Stephen Jay Gould, for example, believed that
religion was an exaptation or a spandrel, in other words that religion evolved
as byproduct of psychological mechanisms that evolved for other reasons.
Such mechanisms may include the ability to infer the
presence of organisms that might do harm (agent detection), the ability to come
up with causal narratives for natural events (etiology),
and the ability to recognize that other people have minds of their own with
their own beliefs, desires and intentions (theory of
mind). These three adaptations (among others) allow human beings to
imagine purposeful agents behind many observations that could not readily be
explained otherwise, e.g. thunder, lightning, movement of planets, complexity
of life, etc.
The emergence of collective religious belief identified the agents as deities
that standardized the explanation.
Some scholars have suggested that religion is genetically
"hardwired" into the human condition. One controversial hypothesis,
the God gene
hypothesis, states that some variants of a specific gene, the VMAT2 gene, predispose to
spirituality.
Another view is based on the concept of the triune brain:
the reptilian brain, the limbic system, and the neocortex, proposed by Paul D.
MacLean. Collective religious belief draws upon the emotions of
love, fear, and gregariousness and is deeply embedded in the limbic system
through sociobiological conditioning and social sanction. Individual religious
belief utilizes reason based in the neocortex and often varies from collective
religion. The limbic system is much older in evolutionary terms than the
neocortex and is, therefore, stronger than it much in the same way as the
reptilian is stronger than both the limbic system and the neocortex. Reason is
pre-empted by emotional drives. The religious feeling in a congregation is
emotionally different from individual spirituality even though the congregation
is composed of individuals. Belonging to a collective religion is culturally
more important than individual spirituality though the two often go hand in
hand. This is one of the reasons why religious debates are likely to be
inconclusive.
Yet another view is that the behavior of people who
participate in a religion makes them feel better and this improves their
fitness, so that there is a genetic selection in favor of people who are
willing to believe in religion. Specifically, rituals, beliefs, and the social
contact typical of religious groups may serve to calm the mind (for example by
reducing ambiguity and the uncertainty due to complexity) and allow it to
function better when under stress. This would allow religion to be used as a powerful survival mechanism,
particularly in facilitating the evolution of hierarchies
of warriors, which if true, may be why many modern
religions tend to promote fertility and kinship.
Still another view is that human religion was a product of
an increase in dopaminergic functions in the human brain and a general
intellectual expansion beginning around 80 kya.
Dopamine promotes an emphasis on distant space and time, which is critical for
the establishment of religious experience.
While the earliest shamanic cave paintings date back around 40 kya, the use of
ochre for rock art predates this and there is clear evidence for abstract
thinking along the coast of South Africa by 80 kya.
Prehistoric evidence of religion
When humans first became religious
remains unknown, but there is credible evidence of religious behavior from the Middle Paleolithic era (300–500 thousand years ago)[citation needed] and possibly earlier.
Paleolithic burials
The earliest evidence for treatment of the dead comes from Atapuerca in Spain. At
this location the bones of 30 individuals believed to be Homo heidelbergensis have been found in a
pit.Neanderthals
are also contenders for the first hominids
to intentionally bury the dead. They may have placed corpses into shallow
graves along with stone tools and animal bones. The presence of these grave goods
may indicate an emotional connection with the deceased and possibly a belief in
the afterlife. Neanderthal burial sites include Shanidar
in Iraq and Krapina
in Croatia and Kebara Cave in Israel.
The earliest known burial of modern humans is from a cave in
Israel located at Qafzeh.
Human remains have been dated to 100,000 years ago. Human skeletons were found
stained with red ochre.
A variety of grave goods were found at the burial site. The mandible of a wild
boar was found placed in the arms of one of the skeletons.
Philip Lieberman states:
"Burial rituals incorporating grave goods may have been
invented by the anatomically modern hominids who emigrated from Africa to the
Middle East roughly 100,000 years ago".
Matt Rossano suggests that the period in between
80,000–60,000 years after humans retreated from the Levant to Africa was a
crucial period in the evolution of religion.
The use of symbolism
The use of symbolism in religion is a universal
established phenomenon. Archeologist Steven Mithen
contends that it is common for religious practices to involve the creation of
images and symbols to represent supernatural beings and ideas. Because
supernatural beings violate the principles of the natural world, there will
always be difficulty in communicating and sharing supernatural concepts with
others. This problem can be overcome by anchoring these supernatural beings in
material form through representational art. When translated into material form,
supernatural concepts become easier to communicate and understand.
Due to the association of art and religion, evidence of symbolism in the fossil
record is indicative of a mind capable of religious thoughts. Art and symbolism
demonstrates a capacity for abstract thought and imagination necessary to
construct religious ideas. Wentzel van Huyssteen states that the translation of
the non-visible through symbolism enabled early human ancestors to hold beliefs
in abstract terms.
Some of the earliest evidence of symbolic behavior is
associated with Middle Stone Age sites in Africa. From at least
100,000 years ago, there is evidence of the use of pigments such as red ochre.
Pigments are of little practical use to hunter gatherers, thus evidence of their
use is interpreted as symbolic or for ritual purposes. Among extant hunter
gatherer populations around the world, red ochre is still used extensively for
ritual purposes. It has been argued that it is universal among human cultures
for the color red to represent blood, sex, life and death.[39]
The use of red ochre as a proxy for symbolism is often
criticized as being too indirect. Some scientists, such as Richard Klein and Steven Mithen,
only recognize unambiguous forms of art as representative of abstract ideas.
Upper Paleolithic cave art provides some of the most unambiguous evidence of
religious thought from the Paleolithic. Cave paintings at Chauvet
depict creatures that are half human and half animal.
Origins of organized religion
|
Social
evolution of humans
|
||
|
Society
type
|
Number
of individuals
|
|
|
100,000–10,000
|
Bands
|
10s–100s
|
|
10,000–5,000
|
Tribes
|
100s–1,000s
|
|
5,000–3,000
|
Chiefdoms
|
1,000s–10,000s
|
|
3,000–1,000
|
States
|
10,000s–100,000s
|
|
2,000*–present
|
Empires
|
100,000–1,000,000s
|
Justifying the central authority, which in turn possessed
the right to collect taxes in return for providing social and security
services.
Bands and tribes consist of small number of related
individuals. However, states and nations are composed of many thousands of
unrelated individuals. Jared Diamond argues that organized religion
served to provide a bond between unrelated individuals who would otherwise be
more prone to enmity. In his book Guns, Germs, and Steel he argues that the
leading cause of death among hunter-gatherer societies is murder.
Religions that revolved around moralizing gods may have
facilitated the rise of large, cooperative groups of unrelated individuals.
The states born out of the Neolithic revolution, such as
those of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, were theocracies
with chiefs, kings and emperors playing dual roles of political and spiritual
leaders.
Anthropologists have found that virtually all state societies and chiefdoms
from around the world have been found to justify political power through divine
authority. This suggests that political authority co-opts collective religious
belief to bolster itself.
Invention of writing
Following the neolithic revolution, the pace of
technological development (cultural evolution) intensified due to the invention
of writing 5000 years ago. Symbols that became words later on made effective
communication of ideas possible. Printing invented only over a thousand years
ago increased the speed of communication exponentially and became the main
spring of cultural evolution. Writing is thought to have been first invented in
either Sumeria or Ancient Egypt and was initially used for accounting. Soon
after, writing was used to record myth. The first religious texts mark the
beginning of religious history. The Pyramid Texts
from ancient Egypt are one of the oldest known religious texts in the world,
dating to between 2400–2300 BCE.
Writing played a major role in sustaining and spreading organized religion. In
pre-literate societies, religious ideas were based on an oral
tradition, the contents of which were articulated by shamans and
remained limited to the collective memories of the society's inhabitants. With
the advent of writing, information that was not easy to remember could easily
be stored in sacred texts that were maintained by a select group (clergy).
Humans could store and process large amounts of information with writing that
otherwise would have been forgotten. Writing therefore enabled religions to
develop coherent and comprehensive doctrinal systems that remained independent
of time and place.
Writing also brought a measure of objectivity to human knowledge. Formulation
of thoughts in words and the requirement for validation made mutual exchange of
ideas and the sifting of generally acceptable from not acceptable ideas
possible. The generally acceptable ideas became objective knowledge reflecting
the continuously evolving framework of human awareness of reality that Karl Popper
calls 'verisimilitude' – a stage on the human journey to truth.
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