ArticleHuman nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.)2016
Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion.
Article in Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.), 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed.
- Community participation in secular and religious contexts across sociodemographic groups in 22 countries.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- A cross-national analysis of demographic variation in belief in God, gods, or spiritual forces in 22 countries.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- From Shamans to Priests of Sekhmet: A Review of the Literature in Search for the Origins of Doctors in Ancient Egypt.Cureus · 2024Review
- Kin selection favors religious traditions: ancestor worship as a cultural descendant-leaving strategy.Religion, brain & behavior · 2024Article
- Exploring causality from observational data: An example assessing whether religiosity promotes cooperation.Evolutionary human sciences · 2023Article
- Why did doctrinal religions first appear in the Northern Subtropical Zone?Evolutionary human sciences · 2023Review
- Norm violations and punishments across human societies.Evolutionary human sciences · 2023Article
- Food storage facilitates professional religious specialization in hunter-gatherer societies.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Article
- Disguises and the Origins of Clothing.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2021Article
- A phylogenetic analysis of revolution and afterlife beliefs.Nature human behaviour · 2021Article
- Psychedelics, Sociality, and Human Evolution.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- The Cultural Psychology of Religiosity, Spirituality, and Secularism in Adolescence.Adolescent research review · 2021Review
- Why do religious leaders observe costly prohibitions? Examining taboos on Mentawai shamans.Evolutionary human sciences · 2020Article
- A Practice-Inspired Mindset for Researching the Psychophysiological and Medical Health Effects of Recreational Dance (Dance Sport).Frontiers in psychology · 2020Review
- The Elements of Eco-Connection: A Cross-Cultural Lexical Enquiry.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2019Article
- Article
- The evolution of stories: from mimesis to language, from fact to fiction.Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science · 2018Review
- Ethnopharmacology of Love.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2018Review
- Cooperation and the evolution of hunter-gatherer storytelling.Nature communications · 2017Article
- Human population history revealed by a supertree approach.Scientific reports · 2016Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Recent studies of the evolution of religion have revealed the cognitive underpinnings of belief in supernatural agents, the role of ritual in promoting cooperation, and the contribution of morally punishing high gods to the growth and stabilization of human society. The universality of religion across human society points to a deep evolutionary past. However, specific traits of nascent religiosity, and the sequence in which they emerged, have remained unknown. Here we reconstruct the evolution of religious beliefs and behaviors in early modern humans using a global sample of hunter-gatherers and seven traits describing hunter-gatherer religiosity: animism, belief in an afterlife, shamanism, ancestor worship, high gods, and worship of ancestors or high gods who are active in human affairs. We reconstruct ancestral character states using a time-calibrated supertree based on published phylogenetic trees and linguistic classification and then test for correlated evolution between the characters and for the direction of cultural change. Results indicate that the oldest trait of religion, present in the most recent common ancestor of present-day hunter-gatherers, was animism, in agreement with long-standing beliefs about the fundamental role of this trait. Belief in an afterlife emerged, followed by shamanism and ancestor worship. Ancestor spirits or high gods who are active in human affairs were absent in early humans, suggesting a deep history for the egalitarian nature of hunter-gatherer societies. There is a significant positive relationship between most characters investigated, but the trait "high gods" stands apart, suggesting that belief in a single creator deity can emerge in a society regardless of other aspects of its religion.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.