"Which Came First, Vengeful Gods or Complex Civilizations?" Topic
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Tango01 | 30 Aug 2019 3:08 p.m. PST |
"One of the mysteries of human development is how we were able to create tight-knit civilizations and densely packed urban areas without plunging into utter anarchy. Smiting, researchers believed, might have helped with that. It's been hypothesized that the development of religion, whether through "moralizing high gods" or "broad supernatural punishment" enforced a code of behavior that kept most people in line and obedient, allowing for the emergence of early complex civilizations. But new research indicates it's the other way around. Prosocial religious practices—which put the emphasize on behavior toward humans, not just sacrifices to the gods—don't appear until civilizations are already complex. That suggests they're not a cause of civilization, but rather a result of it. "It's not the main driver of social complexity as some theories had predicted," says Oxford anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse, one of the lead authors of the paper, which appears in the journal Nature…" Main page link Amicalement Armand |
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