Phys.org: Complex societies gave birth to big gods, not the other way around

“It has been a debate for centuries why humans, unlike other animals, cooperate in large groups of genetically unrelated individuals,” says Seshat director and co-author Peter Turchin from the University of Connecticut and the Complexity Science Hub Vienna. Factors such as agriculture, warfare, or religion have been proposed as main driving forces.
One prominent theory, the big or moralizing gods hypothesis, assumes that religious beliefs were key. According to this theory, people are more likely to cooperate fairly if they believe in gods who will punish them if they don’t. “To our surprise, our data strongly contradict this hypothesis,” says lead author Harvey Whitehouse. “In almost every world region for which we have data, moralizing gods tended to follow, not precede, increases in social complexity.” Even more so, standardized rituals tended on average to appear hundreds of years before gods who cared about human morality.

https://phys.org/news/2019-03-complex-societies-gave-birth-big.amp

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This was discussed here at PS when the Nature paper was published several months ago.

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Hmm do you know how they went about figuring out the timing of these various events? I’ll try to find the paper when I have more time but have some pre-tenure deadlines to meet.

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