TY - JOUR
T1 - Explaining the rise of moralizing religions
T2 - a test of competing hypotheses using the Seshat Databank
AU - Turchin, Peter
AU - Whitehouse, Harvey
AU - Larson, Jennifer
AU - Cioni, Enrico
AU - Reddish, Jenny
AU - Hoyer, Daniel
AU - Savage, Patrick E.
AU - Covey, R. Alan
AU - Baines, John
AU - Altaweel, Mark
AU - Anderson, Eugene
AU - Bol, Peter
AU - Brandl, Eva
AU - Carballo, David M.
AU - Feinman, Gary
AU - Korotayev, Andrey
AU - Kradin, Nikolay
AU - Levine, Jill D.
AU - Nugent, Selin E.
AU - Squitieri, Andrea
AU - Wallace, Vesna
AU - François, Pieter
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by a John Templeton Foundation grant to the Evolution Institute, entitled “Axial-Age Religions and the Z-Curve of Human Egalitarianism,” a Tricoastal Foundation grant to the Evolution Institute, entitled “The Deep Roots of the Modern World: The Cultural Evolution of Economic Growth and Political Stability,” an ESRC Large Grant to the University of Oxford, entitled “Ritual, Community, and Conflict” (REF RES-060-25-0085), a grant from the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programe (grant agreement No 644055 [ALIGNED, www.aligned-project.eu ]), a Templeton World Charity Foundation grant, entitled “Cognitive and Cultural Foundations of Religion and Morality” (Grant ID# TWCF0164), an Advanced Grant (“Ritual Modes: Divergent modes of ritual, social cohesion, prosociality, and conflict”, grant agreement no. 694986) from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programe, a grant from the Institute of Economics and Peace to develop a “Historical Peace Index”, and the program “Complexity Science,” which is supported by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG under grant #873927. We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of our team of research assistants, post-doctoral researchers, consultants, and experts. Additionally, we have received invaluable assistance from our collaborators. Please see the Seshat website ( www.seshatdatabank.info ) for a comprehensive list of private donors, partners, experts, and consultants and their respective areas of expertise. We also thank Carlos Botero for sharing his data and methods for calculating environmental variables.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - The causes, consequences, and timing of the rise of moralizing religions in world history have been the focus of intense debate. Progress has been limited by the availability of quantitative data to test competing theories, by divergent ideas regarding both predictor and outcomes variables, and by differences of opinion over methodology. To address all these problems, we utilize Seshat: Global History Databank, a large storehouse of information designed to test theories concerning the evolutionary drivers of social complexity. In addition to the Big Gods hypothesis, which proposes that moralizing religion contributed to the success of increasingly large-scale complex societies, we consider the role of warfare, animal husbandry, and agricultural productivity in the rise of moralizing religions. Using a broad range of new measures of belief in moralizing supernatural punishment, we find strong support for previous research showing that such beliefs did not drive the rise of social complexity. By contrast, our analyses indicate that intergroup warfare, supported by resource availability, played a major role in the evolution of both social complexity and moralizing religions. Thus, the correlation between social complexity and moralizing religion seems to result from shared evolutionary drivers, rather than from direct causal relationships between these two variables.
AB - The causes, consequences, and timing of the rise of moralizing religions in world history have been the focus of intense debate. Progress has been limited by the availability of quantitative data to test competing theories, by divergent ideas regarding both predictor and outcomes variables, and by differences of opinion over methodology. To address all these problems, we utilize Seshat: Global History Databank, a large storehouse of information designed to test theories concerning the evolutionary drivers of social complexity. In addition to the Big Gods hypothesis, which proposes that moralizing religion contributed to the success of increasingly large-scale complex societies, we consider the role of warfare, animal husbandry, and agricultural productivity in the rise of moralizing religions. Using a broad range of new measures of belief in moralizing supernatural punishment, we find strong support for previous research showing that such beliefs did not drive the rise of social complexity. By contrast, our analyses indicate that intergroup warfare, supported by resource availability, played a major role in the evolution of both social complexity and moralizing religions. Thus, the correlation between social complexity and moralizing religion seems to result from shared evolutionary drivers, rather than from direct causal relationships between these two variables.
KW - Big Gods
KW - evolution of religion
KW - evolution of social complexity
KW - moralizing supernatural punishment
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U2 - 10.1080/2153599X.2022.2065345
DO - 10.1080/2153599X.2022.2065345
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85133211066
SN - 2153-599X
VL - 13
SP - 167
EP - 194
JO - Religion, Brain and Behavior
JF - Religion, Brain and Behavior
IS - 2
ER -
