ArticleNature human behaviour2021
A phylogenetic analysis of revolution and afterlife beliefs.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Three evolutionary radiations shaped the evolution of global religious diversity.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- Phylogenetic insight into the origin of tones.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Supernatural explanations across 114 societies are more common for natural than social phenomena.Nature human behaviour · 2023Article
- Impact of cultural and genetic structure on food choices along the Silk Road.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Global phylogenetic analysis reveals multiple origins and correlates of genital mutilation/cutting.Nature human behaviour · 2022Article
- Food storage facilitates professional religious specialization in hunter-gatherer societies.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Article
- Cultural extinction in evolutionary perspective.Evolutionary human sciences · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Beliefs about the fate of humanity and the soul after death may structure behaviours of religious groups. Here we test theories from religious studies: that belief in an imminent apocalypse co-evolved with and facilitated revolutionary violence, whereas belief in reincarnation caused people to acquiesce to existing social orders and withdraw from political activism. We test these hypotheses by building a cultural phylogeny of historical Islamic sects and schools from the seventh to twentieth centuries and use phylogenetic comparative methods to show that these two types of belief display distinct relationships with intergroup violence. There is substantial evidence that apocalyptic beliefs co-evolved with revolutionary violence, whereas reincarnation beliefs were evolutionarily stable in peaceful groups. In both cases, violence precedes the emergence of beliefs, which suggests that conditions that generate revolutionary violence changed beliefs rather than beliefs generating violence. We also found that apocalyptic beliefs are associated with accelerated group extinction, although causal relationships cannot be determined.
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Identifiers
33398146What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.