Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion

[rousseau]

In the past few years, among other things, I've studied the North American Indigenous, African Indigenous, as well as Ancient Chinese. One commonality I noticed between the spiritual life of all three groups was ancestor worship. Which got me wondering - was ancestor worship one of the original, universal precursors to modern religion. So I did a bit of searching and came across this interesting article:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4958132/

Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion

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.

Not sure I have any type of moral or punchline to draw from this, but it's interesting to note that animism is considered the original pre-cursor to religion - basically the notion that living beings have spirits.

 

[bilby]

In the past few years, among other things, I've studied the North American Indigenous, African Indigenous, as well as Ancient Chinese. One commonality I noticed between the spiritual life of all three groups was ancestor worship. Which got me wondering - was ancestor worship one of the original, universal precursors to modern religion. So I did a bit of searching and came across this interesting article:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4958132/

Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion

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.

Not sure I have any type of moral or punchline to draw from this, but it's interesting to note that animism is considered the original pre-cursor to religion - basically the notion that living beings have spirits.

Animism is the exact opposite - it's the notion that non-living entities (places, weather, water, fire, etc.) have spirits.

 

[rousseau]

In the past few years, among other things, I've studied the North American Indigenous, African Indigenous, as well as Ancient Chinese. One commonality I noticed between the spiritual life of all three groups was ancestor worship. Which got me wondering - was ancestor worship one of the original, universal precursors to modern religion. So I did a bit of searching and came across this interesting article:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4958132/

Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion

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.

Not sure I have any type of moral or punchline to draw from this, but it's interesting to note that animism is considered the original pre-cursor to religion - basically the notion that living beings have spirits.

Animism is the exact opposite - it's the notion that non-living entities (places, weather, water, fire, etc.) have spirits.

Animism is inclusive of non-living entities, but definitely not exclusive of living ones.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Something enabled the animism. That would seem most likely to be the type of thing Sagan alluded to in Dragons of Eden, namely evolved fear and survival behavior, or superstition proper. We're just trying to understand and control the environment. It would take eons before we realized that yelling and howling at the eclipsing moon or burning people alive wasn't changing anything for the better, though such beliefs remain common, probably because people are comforted by feeling "lucky" and in control. The progression through ancestor veneration makes sense.

 

[rousseau]

Something enabled the animism. That would seem most likely to be the type of thing Sagan alluded to in Dragons of Eden, namely evolved fear and survival behavior, or superstition proper. We're just trying to understand and control the environment. It would take eons before we realized that yelling and howling at the eclipsing moon or burning people alive wasn't changing anything for the better, though such beliefs remain common, probably because people are comforted by feeling "lucky" and in control. The progression through ancestor veneration makes sense.

I suspect it can be reduced to how we've evolved to perceive biological life. In evolutionary terms our perception of other living organisms is central to our well-being - you can see this, for example, in mechanisms ingrained in our vision. Sit in nature long enough and you'll find that our vision is very good at spotting living things. As another example, our sense of touch is also very good at sensing potentially dangerous insects.

So it's not just that we've evolved to assume agency, we've evolved to perceive life-forms (and sometimes non life-forms) as real agents - something beyond a conglomeration of atoms. And in a very real sense at least some of these life-forms actually are something more than a conglomeration of atoms.

And in behavioral terms it makes more sense to have reverence for what we perceive as animated - animism - which would lead to more sustainable behavior. In some sense we're still animists, just realist animists.

 

[steve_bank]

Correlation is not causation necessarily. Humans stared out as hunter gatherers. Doesn't mean that is the causation for religion.

There is a culture that keeps the dead around. One culture buries the body until all flesh is gone, recovers the bones, and keeps them in the house.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

In some sense we're still animists, just realist animists.

Very much so. Afterlife belief is re-animism.

I do think it interesting how some cultures do not believe people die. There are eastern religions where a person, generally someone important, is entombed, dead, but his followers expect him to be re-animated. Annunciators were even common practice for a while.

Religion can also be viewed as luxury behavior. We would not have had time and resources to engage in such behavior until we had evolved survival behavior proper. In that sense it is an expression of art.

 

[Tharmas]

I believe animism persists as an element even in monotheistic religions such as the Abrahamic ones, only in those cases the one god is given control over all the creatures, and elements, of the earth:

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.[a] 30 And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. – Matthew 10:29-31

And:

He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’
and to the rain shower, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’ Job 37:6

Or

He brings the clouds to punish people,
or to water his earth and show his love.
14 “Listen to this, Job;
stop and consider God’s wonders.
15 Do you know how God controls the clouds
and makes his lightning flash?
16 Do you know how the clouds hang poised,
those wonders of him who has perfect knowledge? Job 37:13-17

And many other examples too numerous to mention.

 

[Tharmas]

In some sense we're still animists, just realist animists.

Very much so. Afterlife belief is re-animism.

I do think it interesting how some cultures do not believe people die. There are eastern religions where a person, generally someone important, is entombed, dead, but his followers expect him to be re-animated. Annunciators were even common practice for a while.

Religion can also be viewed as luxury behavior. We would not have had time and resources to engage in such behavior until we had evolved survival behavior proper. In that sense it is an expression of art.

Certainly it takes imagination. But I'm not convinced it followed survival behavior. I think it is more a corollary of being able to perceive cause and effect, so it came along with advanced brains and thinking, like one of Gould's "spandrels" ( Spandrel_(biology).

 

[bilby]

Animism is beneficial to the survival of any species of intelligent animal that shares an environment with predators. This goes double for social species. And doesn't require much by way of intelligence - even pigeons are superstitious.

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1948-04299-001

 

[rousseau]

What's also interesting is that it took thousands of years and the rise of science before any world cultures accepted materialism. Very few of us had the wherewithal to deny our religious perceptions without explicit evidence. If that tells us nothing else it's that 'intelligent' is a bit of an optimistic way to describe ourselves.

 

[bilby]

Indeed, the defining feature of humanity isn't our intelligence; It's our arrogance.

I am unsurprised that most of those idiots still haven't worked that out.

 

[fromderinside]

I am surprised that most of these idiots don't care.

 

[4321lynx]

I am surprised that most of these idiots don't care.

Lord forgive them for they know not what they do. Or words to that effect. Anyway, humble arrogance or arrogant humility?

 

[steve_bank]

Animism is a belief in a spirit as part of an object. Today 'animism' is science. That which makes carbon carbon is the Atomic structure.

Animism, spirits, was a way of explaining characteristics of an object. The spit of wolf or tiger, today explained by genetics and neuroscience.

 

[abaddon]

Animism, spirits, was a way of explaining characteristics of an object.

Yes. "Object" is maybe a social construct that wouldn't quite translate into an animist worldview. But I agree with the general point. I think they had their way of explaining why nature's phenomena change, but somehow the same patterns keep repeating and relating in intelligent-seeming ways. Nature works together better than one would expect if it's mindless stuff. The "something" behind it all needed explaining but they hadn't made a materialist lens to use for the explanation. And not because they were idiots but because 1) they hadn't divided reality into qualitative aspects and quantitative aspects (and then eventually relegated the qualitative to "illusory" status) in order for their scientific methodology to "work" at describing and controlling the one remaining half of reality; and 2) they didn't have the same value-assessments about what's intelligent, and what's life, and other not-altogether-fortunate social constructs that moderns have. In sum, their values were different so their worldview was different and so their way of relating with other-than-human nature was different.

It wasn't an ugly worldview, like some others. They saw "living" and "non-living" phenomena as communicative and therefore some of it qualifying for a degree of personhood. They didn't see humans as distinctive from the rest of nature.

 

[Bomb#20]

Indeed, the defining feature of humanity isn't our intelligence; It's our arrogance.

I take it you don't have cats.

 

[Politesse]

This is actually quite an old idea in the anthropology of religion; the idea that animism had been the original form of human religion was first floated by the same person who coined and popularized the term, notable Victorian-era anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor. Subsequent observation tended to bear him out, though; beyond the reach of the missionaries, foraging societies almost always practiced some form of animism, and while the material record is loathe to give one "smoking guns" on religious matters, it is also true that overt indications of theism and its trappings do not go back much further than 10,000 years even in the heartland of that philosophy.

It's worth noting that animism can mean a lot of different things; it is not a unified religion, but rather a very general category of faith, akin theism or atheism. It is very common in the modern world for animist traditions and practices to survive into the present right alongside Christianity and Islam, as practitioners are apt to see "the spirits" as being a categorically different things from God and his angels, or contrarily, to see the Abrahamic Pantheon as merely the most powerful family among a wide family of supernatural beings. Tylor himself believed that animism was a somewhat rational conclusion devised by the ancients to explain common spectral phenomena such as ghost sightings or other seemingly mysterious gases and presences, such as people around the world often report seeing regardless of beliefs and background. Clearly, if you have a sighting of a loved one long after they have died, there must be some manner in which the dead return even if not in physical form.

Animism may be strongly connected to shamanism, another very ancient spiritual practice. While the Tungus word shaman just means "rising up", a reference to a shaman's trances, the local word for a shaman in many languages often refers directly to the diplomatic side of their role, such as the Icelandic "Angaggok": "the master of spirits".

I have a certain amount of sympathy for animism personally, and attempt to treat all things with a certain level of due respect, whether or not they are apparently living. I find that, whatever the ontological truth of the matter, treating the world with the respect due to persons results in living life a better way in any case, and being happier with the decisions I make. I have taken to calling up "my spirits" to help me through my daily tasks, and not much caring what form I should imagine them taking, as my true faith is less in any particular portrayal thereof, but rather a general and more profound faith in the idea that in this universe, help will always provided to those who need and have made themselves worthy of it. It has worked out so far.

 

[steve_bank]

Animism, spirits, was a way of explaining characteristics of an object.

Yes. "Object" is maybe a social construct that wouldn't quite translate into an animist worldview. But I agree with the general point. I think they had their way of explaining why nature's phenomena change, but somehow the same patterns keep repeating and relating in intelligent-seeming ways. Nature works together better than one would expect if it's mindless stuff. The "something" behind it all needed explaining but they hadn't made a materialist lens to use for the explanation. And not because they were idiots but because 1) they hadn't divided reality into qualitative aspects and quantitative aspects (and then eventually relegated the qualitative to "illusory" status) in order for their scientific methodology to "work" at describing and controlling the one remaining half of reality; and 2) they didn't have the same value-assessments about what's intelligent, and what's life, and other not-altogether-fortunate social constructs that moderns have. In sum, their values were different so their worldview was different and so their way of relating with other-than-human nature was different.

It wasn't an ugly worldview, like some others. They saw "living" and "non-living" phenomena as communicative and therefore some of it qualifying for a degree of personhood. They didn't see humans as distinctive from the rest of nature.

A poetic way of looking at things. Nothing wrong with that. We liberally anthropomorphize, assign human characteristics to inanimate objects. My computer is thinking.

 

[rousseau]

Animism, spirits, was a way of explaining characteristics of an object.

Yes. "Object" is maybe a social construct that wouldn't quite translate into an animist worldview. But I agree with the general point. I think they had their way of explaining why nature's phenomena change, but somehow the same patterns keep repeating and relating in intelligent-seeming ways. Nature works together better than one would expect if it's mindless stuff. The "something" behind it all needed explaining but they hadn't made a materialist lens to use for the explanation. And not because they were idiots but because 1) they hadn't divided reality into qualitative aspects and quantitative aspects (and then eventually relegated the qualitative to "illusory" status) in order for their scientific methodology to "work" at describing and controlling the one remaining half of reality; and 2) they didn't have the same value-assessments about what's intelligent, and what's life, and other not-altogether-fortunate social constructs that moderns have. In sum, their values were different so their worldview was different and so their way of relating with other-than-human nature was different.

It wasn't an ugly worldview, like some others. They saw "living" and "non-living" phenomena as communicative and therefore some of it qualifying for a degree of personhood. They didn't see humans as distinctive from the rest of nature.

I wouldn't call people idiots, but my cynicism is showing a bit. In truth we are what we are, should, and will always be. But as I study history and just generally exist in the world it can be difficult to stave off misanthropy.

Besides that I agree with the view you present here. Religion came about in a world that was pretty unstructured, and where knowledge was mostly inaccessible. In that context our religious history makes sense, but I'd say it's still notable how few of us doubted ourselves.

And it's still happening today.