The neural substrate of religiosity and its emergence
in the archaeological record
Philip D Hawker
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
MSc in Palaeoanthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology of University College
London in 2011
UCL INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY
Note: This Dissertation is an unrevised examination copy for consultation only and it should not
be quoted or cited without the permission of the Director of the Institute
The Theology of Bongwi the Baboon
This is the wisdom of the Ape,
Who yelps beneath the moon‘Tis God who made me in His shape,
He is a Great Baboon.
‘Tis He who tilts the moon askew
And fans the forest trees,
The heavens which are broad and blue
Provide him his trapeze;
He swings with tail divinely bent
Around those azure bars
And munches to his Soul’s content
The kernels of the stars;
And when I die, His loving care
Will raise me from the sod
To learn the perfect mischief there,
The Nimbleness of God.
- Roy Campbel
1
List of contents
Abstract ...……………………………………………….............................................................5
Preface: ……………………………………………......................................................................6
A brief historical background
The paradoxes of religiosity
Costly adherence
Religious behaviour antedates the evolution of anatomically modern humans
Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………..…11
1.0 Neural substrates of religiosity: an overview…..................................................................12
1.1 Genetic predisposition
1.2 Neurotransmitters
1.21 Dopamine
1.22 Seratonin
1.23 Endorphins
1.24 Summary of the role of neurotransmitters
1.3 Cytoarchitectural features: fossil/neuroarchaeological evidence
1.31 Temporal lobes
2.0 The contribution of Developmental psychology to an understanding of religiosity...........19
2.1 Common sense dualism in infants primes the brain for supernatural
concepts
2.2 Children’s belief in gods is a default cognitive stance
2.3 Over developed sense of cause and effect in infants primes brains for God
concepts
2.4 The sense of lacking control, increases illusory pattern perception in adults:
Jennifer Whitson and Adam Galinsky
3.0 The contribution of Evolutionary Psychology to an understanding of religiosity……....22
3.1 Intuitive Psychology (Theory of Mind)
3.2 Thresholds of levels of intensionality
3.3 HADD (Hyperactive Agent Detection Device)
3.4 Minimally Counterintuitive Concepts
4.0 Adaptation or exaptation? ...................................................................................................26
4.1 Existential purpose generator
4.2 Causal explanation for phenomena
4.3 Religious belief is an adaptation to facilitate good physical and psychological
health
4.31 Increased longevity
4.32 Attenuated experience of stress
4.33 Lower incidence of chronic physical ill health
4.34 Religious belief encourages risk-averse behaviour
4.35 Assortative sociality
4.36 Conclusion
4.4 Religious belief as a solution to the free rider problem
4.41 Early prosociality secured by kin-based altruism a function of Darwinian
fitness
4.42 Prosociality secured by non-kin-based altruism as a function of inclusive
fitness
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4.43 Prosociality in early hunter-gatherers: non-kin based reciprocal altruism and
the role of COMT
4.44 Costly signalling as a commitment to practices ensuring group health
outcomes
4.45 Levels of inter-group competition a function of intra-group altruistic
behaviour
4.46 Costly signalling behaviour most effective in a religious context
4.47 Types of costly signal in the archaeological record
4.48 Conclusion
5.0 Archaeological evidence for the presence of religious belief…………………………….39
5.1 Evidence of early ritualistic behaviour ca. 70,000 years ago
5.2 Mortuary practices
5.21 Middle Palaeolithic & Neanderthal burials
5.22 Burials of anatomically modern humans
5.3 Shamanism in Franco-Cantabrian parietal imagery in the Upper
Palaeolithic
5.4 Parietal imagery exhibiting costly anatomical signalling
5.5 Anthropomorphous figurines
5.51 Pre Upper Palaeolithic evidence
5.52 Gravettian and Solutrean anthropomorphous figurines
5.53 Magdalenian anthropomorphous figurines
5.54 Neolithic figurines
5.6 Conclusion
6.0 Fossil evidence……………………………………………………………………………..56
6.1 Increased cranial capacity
6.2 Increase in EQ
6.3 Increased size of neocortex
6.4 Increase in the levels of intensionality
7.0 Discussion ………………………………………………………………………………...61
7.1 Distributed nature of religious cognition
7.2 Costly signalling does not support adaptationist argument
7.3 costly signalling underlies the pervasiveness of Palaeolithic religiosity
7.4 Distributed nature of religious cognition undermines the neurotheological
programme
7.5 Weaknesses in argument
7.6 Limitations of analysis
7.7 Tentative conclusion which would be strengthened by further research
8.0 Summary and Conclusion …………………………………………………………..........69
Bibliography
Appendices
3
List of Figures
Fig. 1 Overview of thesis
Fig. 2 Composite fMRI scan activation data (in red) shows brain sites affected by COMT gene
type during a working memory task
Fig. 3 The Reward System: Dopamine and Serotonin pathways in the brain (rodensor.com)
Fig. 4 Robin Dunbar’s Thresholds of intensionality in the Homo lineage
Fig. 5 The Löwenmensch figurine from Stadel im Hohlenstein
Fig. 6 The operation of Hamilton’s Rule
Fig. 7 The so-called “Python Stone” from Tsodilo, Botswana ca. 70,000ya
Fig.8 The so-called “Python Stone” illuminated by night
Fig. 9 Spearheads excavated from Tsodilo
Fig. 10 The so-called “bear skull altar” at Chauvet
Fig.11 Jean Clottes at the so-called “bear skull altar” at Chauvet
Fig.12 Neanderthal burial at Kebarah
Fig.13 Deliberate burial of an anatomically modern human ca. 90,000–100,000 B.P
Fig. 14 Mortuary practices correlated with levels of intensionality (adapted from Stringer, 2011)
Fig. 15 “The Sorcerer” from Chauvet (c. 30,000 BP)
Fig. 16 Depiction of Shaman: Trois Freres, France, (upper Palaeolithic) ca. 13,000 BC
Fig. 17 Distribution of hand prints featuring amputated fingers at Grotte de Gargas
Fig.18 The Berekhat Ram Figurine: a false dawn?
Fig. 19 Gravettian and Solutrian figurines and find sites
Fig. 20 Late Magdalenian carved figurines and site locations
Fig. 21 Necessary and sufficient conditions for effective costly signalling practice and examples
of their signature in the archaeological record
Fig. 22 Evolutionary trajectory of gross cranial capacity in the human phylogeny
Fig. 23 Evolved human cranial morphology illustrating, expansion and growth of the neocortex
Fig. 24 Brain mass as a percentage of body mass
Fig. 25 Summary of research questions arising from this dissertation.
Fig. 26 Overview of integration of disciplines in an explanation of the significance of the
artefactual record in terms of costly signalling
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Abstract: I will attempt to a) identify the neural correlates of theistic religiosity b) speculate on
the selection pressures which facilitated the expression of supernatural agents in the context of
costly signalling theory c) present the data which serve to illustrate its signature in the
archaeological record.
I shall, for the purposes of this dissertation, adopt the very narrow operational definition of
religiosity which refers to propositional claims which refer to supernatural agents customarily
characterised as gods or ancestors.
a)
I shall discuss three putative neural substrates: genetic preconditions; neurotransmitters
and cytoarchitectural features, focusing on the role of neurotransmitters, in particular, dopamine
and its inhibitor, catechol-O-methyltransferase. These seem critical in explaining the role of
supernatural agency in early hunter gather groups.
b)
I shall attempt an overview of adaptive explanations for theistic belief in the literature
before elaborating what I am convinced is the most plausible explanation which is its role in
facilitating prosociality to cope with increased group size & external threats. This is facilitated
by research suggesting that belief in gods is a default cognitive stance.
c)
I will present archaeological and fossil evidence which situates the emergence of
religiosity chronologically and within the framework of costly signalling theory supported by
ethnographic evidence.
Overview of the main thesis
Inhibition of
dopamine
receptors
Makes possible
deferred
gratification
Enables costly
signalling
(McNamara,
P., 2006)
Stimulated by
interinter-group
Conflict
(Bowles, S., 2006)
Helps solve
freefree-rider
problem
Leads to parochial
altruism
Reinforced by theistic
Beliefs/ancestor worship
(McKay, R., et al, 2011)
Fig. 1 Overview of thesis
5
Preface
A brief historical background
The pedigree of attempts to establish the existence of God from scrutinising the contents of the
human mind is long (Anselm of Canterbury, 1077-1078; Descartes, 1641) but by the 18th century
the ontological argument was being discredited by the work of Immanuel Kant (Kant, 1781). The
recent popularity of so-called Neurotheology can be seen as an attempt to restock the theistic
armoury in response to its depletion with the loss of the “classical” arguments for the existence
of God. For the “neurotheologian”, neuroscience has been recruited to fulfil the task that
philosophy has been unable to do.
However, the results of any programme which attempts to establish such a causal relation
between the neurological data and the ontological status of theistic propositions cannot be used
to help prove or disprove the existence of putative gods. Many researchers in the field have been
at pains to drawn the same conclusion: (Fingelkurts & Fingelkurts, 2009; Saver and Rabin,
1997).
Methodology
In addition to identifying the neural substrate of religiosity, I shall evaluate data drawn from
research in developmental psychology which suggests that a teleological view of the natural
world and a superstitious/theistic default state of mind which has a bearing in the emergence of
religiosity in early hominins The persistence of a belief in life after death which underpins belief
in supernatural agents is likewise revealed to be a default cognitive state. Much research by
evolutionary psychologists demonstrates that so called “common sense dualism”, a “hyperactive
agent detection device”, an innate theory of mind and other related features of intuitive
psychology have primed the brain/mind of early modern humans for a belief in gods.
I shall briefly review the more plausible anthropological explanations for the emergence of
religiosity, but I shall place the greatest weight on costly signalling theory which strongly
6
suggests that, by enlisting the sacred in sanctions in facilitating prosocial behaviour, it constitutes
an effective solution to the free rider problem faced by early human populations.
I shall seek to demonstrate that the neural substrate of theistic cognition is distributed and not
localised, and therefore unlikely to have been selected for. As Brown succinctly puts it,
“…religiousness is clearly not like language and music with respect to specific behavioural
outcomes.” (Brown, 2006, 232)
Even if I am successful in identifying the neural substrate of religiosity, these features alone
reveal little about the selection pressures which brought them about; there is, nevertheless, an
observable archaeological residue of religious practices which can stand as proxy for the theistic
religious beliefs of early modern humans: plausibly religious practices include deliberate burial
belying a belief in life after death ,sometimes accompanied by grave goods; imputed religious
symbolism in the portable art of the Upper Palaeolithic and typified by the so-called “Venus
figurines”. Much has been made of the Franco-Cantabrian parietal “cave art” of the Upper
Palaeolithic and the depiction of shamans and shamanistic practices though I am sceptical of the
heuristic value of this ethnographic analogy. I shall deal with these in section 5.
The paradoxes of religiosity
Religious adherence demands costly signals of commitment which are often highly inimical to
the reproductive fitness of the practitioner; there is a prima facie inconsistency with the
operation of natural selection. Secondly, it would seem that the evolution of anatomically
modern humans in sub-Saharan Africa predates by as much as one millennium the unambiguous
occurrences of religious artefacts in the archaeological record. If the biological preconditions for
human religiosity are a product of the genome established at this earlier date, how is the delay in
its emergence in the archaeological record to be explained?
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Costly adherence
The widespread nature of religious belief was attested to by Darwin (Darwin, 1871) and as
Bulbulia has mischievously put it, “God-mongering is a panhuman tendency.” (Bulbulia, 2004,
658) Its costliness both to the individual adherent and the group to which he or she belongs is
delineated well by Bulbulia: ”…misperceiving reality as phantom infested, frequent prostrations
before icons, the sacrifice of livestock, repetitive terrifying or painful rituals, investment in costly
objects and architecture, celibacy, religious violence and non-reciprocal altruism, to name a
few…” (Bulbulia, 2004, 655) Costly Signalling Theory, however, as I hope to show in section 4
below, demonstrates how benefits to individual fitness might be secured by just such costly
behaviour.
It would appear, prima facie, that religious beliefs are at odds with our prevailing every-day
human cognitive stance. As Atran says, “From an evolutionary standpoint, the reasons for why
religion should not exist are patent: …it is unrelentingly counterfactual and even
counterintuitive.” (Atran, 2007, 421)
Religious behaviour antedates the evolution of anatomically modern humans
That religiosity is deeply rooted in prehistory is attested to by – if contested - ritual burials from
the Middle Palaeolithic (Smirnov, 1989, 199) such as those of Neanderthals at Shanidar and,
arguably, the earlier inhumations of Homo heidelbergensis at Atapuerca. But as Hawkes cautions
us, while it is always hard to draw inferences about behaviour from artefactual data alone,
“…unaided inference from the material remains to spiritual life is the hardest of all” (Hawkes,
1954, 161-162) Donald explains succinctly why such inferences are likely to be so contentious:
“Symbolic artefacts…rarely encode the conventions governing their use” (Donald, 1998,
184).While climbing the ladder of inference, this is the rung on which we have the least secure
purchase. However, these reservations not withstanding, Grűn and Stringer et al have argued
cogently that determinations derived from U-series and ESR analyses of bones from Israel has
established that the “oldest known symbolic burials are those of early modern humans at Skhul
8
and Qafzeh.” And that “the best age estimate lies between 100 and 135 ka.”(Grün and Stringer
et al., 2005, 316)
These early dates would suggest that characteristically religious behaviour emerged very recently
in the archaeological record while the anatomically modern humans are recorded from ca.
200,000ya. Renfrew presents the difficulty well:” The problem for the neuroscientist and the
evolutionary archaeologist is to understand how (religious behaviour) has come about on so
short a time frame, (i.e. in the archaeologically recent past) when the human genome has been
established for much longer…” (Renfrew, 2008, 2041)
Archaeology has, with varying degrees of plausibility, seen chronologically patterned data in the
archaeological record. Insoll (Insoll, 2004, 45) summarises well how the evolutionary process
has been recruited by the earlier literature to serve an explanatory theory of staged development
from the first evidence of religiosity to the contemporary religious landscape of the major world
religions. Shamanism was associated with the hunter gatherers of the Pleistocene, and animal
imagery was abundant testimony to the importance of these quarry of Cro Magnon European
hunters; the Neolithic revolution gave rise to increased levels of reverence for the ancestors who
were associated with the land which was now subject to familial ownership and embodied the
cycles of seasonality and fertility; the increasing social stratification associated with sedentism
saw the emergence of a priestly caste, an increasing emphasis on the value of sacrifice and the
centralised control of resources; finally, the world religions are seen as emerging from the
development of literacy giving rise to what Whitehouse has termed the “doctrinal mode” of
religiosity (Whitehouse, 2004). This neat and tidy chronology correlating food resource
strategies and ideology appealed to the evolutionary processualists and the Marxist framework
adopted by archaeologists like Childe but this sequencing of stages of religiosity from the
Pleistocene through the Holocene was not supported by the archaeology which evidenced a
mismatch between putative religious iconography and these resource acquisition strategies; the
9
progression from animism through polytheism to monotheism is likewise not a function of time
or social complexity.
10
Acknowledgements
Dr. Fiona Coward, Post Doctoral Researcher, Institute of Archaeology, University College
London (First Supervisor who kindly made herself available to advise at several stages of
drafting this dissertation)
Dr. James Steele Director, AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity, Institute of
Archaeology, Reader in Comparative Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, University College
London (Second Supervisor who kindly agreed to discuss the neurological substrate of
religiosity)
Dr. David Wengrow, Reader in Comparative Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, University
College London (who kindly fielded my questions concerning counterintuitive beliefs)
Dr. Andrew Garrard, Senior Lecturer, Institute of Archaeology, University College London,
MSc Palaeoanthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology co-ordinator (who kindly made himself
available at all stages of the drafting of this dissertation to answer general questions)
Dr. Patrick McNamara, Director, Evolutionary Neurobehavior Laboratory Assistant Professor,
Boston University School of Medicine, Department of Neurology (who kindly answered my
questions on his research into the role of dopamine inhibition and religiosity)
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1.0 Neural substrates of religiosity: an overview
There would appear to be three biological levels of organisation of the neural substrate
underlying any human behaviour: underlying genetic determinants, a range of neurotransmitters
and specific neural pathways in the brain which – in this case - bear on theistic cognition. It will
become evident that the role of the reward system and its successful inhibition is central; it is this
feature which facilitates the expression of costly signals of commitment to prosocial behaviour
underpinned by theistic beliefs.
1.1 Genetic predisposition
Genetic studies of religious behavioural traits seem to suggest that genes which code for
monoamine neurotransmitters are highly heritable. Much work has been done in analysing the
role they play in eliciting states associated with religiosity since the Minnesota Study of Identical
Twins Reared Apart (Bouchard et al, 1990; Stallings et al 1996; D’Onoforio et al, 1999). Hamer
has identified a gene (VMAT2) coding for monoamine neurotransmitters which he claims to be
“…associated with the self-transcendence scale of spirituality” (Hammer, 2004, 11) although
Zimmer has argued cogently that VMAT2 performs an entirely secular prophylactic function
(Zimmer, 2004, 111). The work of Comings et al (Comings et al, 2000) has been used to support
the case for another genetic component to “self transcendence”: the DRD4 gene which codes for
the dopamine D4 receptor though his sampling methodology has attracted much criticism. The
critical role of the dopaminergic system in rewarding religious behaviour which engages the
prefrontal cortex is testified to by several researchers (e.g. McNamara, 2002) while comparative
studies examining both dopamine and serotonin point to their critical role in innervating areas of
the prefrontal cortex (Brodman’s areas 32 and 9) in humans and apes (Raghanti, et al, 2008)
It should not be a startling conclusion that genes have been identified which code for
neurotransmitters critical to so-called spiritual states of mind associated with religious
experience, but this observation alone does not support the adaptationist argument. As Koenig
and Bouchard point out, “Demonstrating that it (religiousness) is a heritable trait, does not
12
prove it is an adaptation.” (Koenig and Bouchard, 2006, 32) I will discuss the implications for
the adaptationist argument in section 4 below.
If it makes sense to speak of genetic determinants of religiosity, then the COMT gene, which
codes for the enzyme catechol-O-methyltransferase, might be said to be more critical in the early
evolution of religious behaviour in early modern humans. McNamara reports that the critical
mutation in the COMT gene which is expressed in the most effective inhibition of dopaminergic
activity “appears to be a unique human mutation because it has not been found in apes,
suggesting that it may be a factor in the evolution of the human prefrontal cortex and thereby of
human consciousness more generally.” (McNamara, 2006). The salience I will later give to
costly signalling theory relies heavily on work done by researchers on the COMT gene and will
be presented in a more detailed discussion of the role of this dopamine inhibitor in section 4.43
below.
1.2 Neurotransmitters
1.21 Dopamine
Dopamine has long been implicated in heightened arousal levels in several brain regions (Van
Rossum, 1967). Imbalance in dopamine levels have been correlated with Parkinson’s disease
(Butler et al 2004): it has been highly correlated with reduced levels of religiosity when depleted,
and highly correlated with schizophrenia when raised. The activation of dopaminergic pathways
in religious practices has been demonstrated to reinforce such practices and has been held to
contribute to the dependency and elevated mood associated with them. Andrew Newberg’s
research confirms the critical role that these neurotransmitters play in religious states (Newberg,
2010).
Other studies report the key role of this neurotransmitter in fixing repetitive religious behaviour
via the reward system. Schjødt et al (Schjødt et al,2008) report that studies of praying activities
of a Danish Christian group reveals the engagement of the ventral striatum, specifically the,
13
nucleus accumbens, in activating the dopaminergic reward system. The significance of this
region being engaged lies in the role the striatum is understood to play in fixing reward-related
learning. The authors conclude that both the dorsal striatum and the ventral striatum are
implicated.
McNamara has also drawn attention to the role that the reward system plays in prayer whereby
“activation… is both intrinsically rewarding and necessary for (the) acquisition of many of the
behaviours that religion seeks to foster…” (McNamara, 2002, 143)
However, it is the inhibition of the dopamine receptors at sites in the prefrontal cortex which is
of greater significance in making possible the costly signalling of the agent’s predisposition to
engage in altruistic actions. Altruistic behaviour was facilitated once the gene coding for COMT
had become fixed in the human genome. Religious beliefs would have ensured that cooperative
behaviour was selected for and uncooperative behaviour subject to sanction. The Composite fMRI
scan in Figure 2 illustrates well, the location of the sites affected.
Fig. 2 Composite fMRI scan activation data (in red) shows brain sites affected by COMT gene
type during a working memory task (clockwise from upper left: right lateral, left lateral, right
medial, left medial). Source: National Institute of Health news release Tuesday, May 29, 2001.
(Retrieved 08/05/2011)
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1.22 Serotonin
The role of serotonin in regulating mood has long been understood. It is now clear that serotonin
pathways are recruited in religious states, in particular, the personality trait of “selftranscendence”. “A role for the serotonin system in relation to spiritual experiences is supported
by observations of drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, N,N-dimethyltryptamine, mescaline, and 3,4methylenedioxymethamphetamine that are known to cause perturbations of the serotonin system
in several brain regions.” (Borg et al, 2003, 1967) Figure 3 illustrates the neural pathways
involved in both the dopamine and serotonin innervation of cortical areas.
Fig.3 The Reward System: Dopamine and Serotonin pathways in the brain (rodensor.com) Note
particularly the dopaminergic pathway from the ventral tegmental area to the frontal lobes.
1.23 Endorphins
15
Several researchers have identified the presence of heightened endorphin levels as critical in
reinforcing group bonds in a religious context. Robin Dunbar’s work suggests that Karl Marx’s
dictum that “religion …is the opium of the people” (Marx, 1844) may not have been purely
metaphorical. His central claim is that religious behaviour performs a similar function to
grooming activities in primates and is mediated by similar biological mechanisms being
activated by opioid receptors. Just as language is effective in social grooming in members whose
group size exceeds that in which individual physical one-on-one grooming is practicable, so
collective religious behaviours cause the release of endorphins which are critical in developing
group bonds; at an individual level, it constitutes an effective reinforcement mechanism in
securing successful alliance-building behaviour. He further shows that when this activity is
synchronised, the volume of endorphins released is vastly increased. (Cohen, et al, 2010, 106108) vf
1.24 Summary of the role of neurotransmitters
The work of Way and Lieberman suggests that there is, “a robust cross-national correlation
between the relative frequency of variants in (central neurotransmitter systems, particularly the
serotonin (5-HTTLPR, MAOA-uVNTR) and opioid (OPRM1 A118G) genes and the relative
degree of individualism–collectivism” (Way and Lieberman, 2010, 203) in contemporary
culturally and geographically diffuse population groups. This provides an explanatory
framework for the integrated functionality of both genetic determinants and group-level
expression of those determinants of religiosity; in doing so they combine both Dunbar’s insight
into the role of endorphins in collective religious behaviour and a plausible explanation of the
genetic mechanism which explains the distribution of such behaviour. The crucial role of the
reward system and – as will become clear below- its inhibition, in overcoming the free rider
problem will be central to this dissertation. I would expect the role of oxytocin to be a critical
factor in securing the trust which underlies delayed reciprocal altruism but there have been few
studies which have examined the role of this neurotransmitter in such behaviours, exceptions
being that of De Dreu et al, 2010, and Israel et al, 2008 who point to the possible role of oxytocin
16
and vasopressin in social behaviour associated with music and altruism. Raised levels of
oxytocin were also shown to be implicated in altruistically generous “anonymous one-shot
interactions” in a study by Zac et al. (Zac, et al, 200).
1.3 Cytoarchitectural features: processing of executive functions and intensionality in frontal
lobes
The proportion of the total cranial capacity devoted to executive function in the frontal lobes
would presumably have needed to cross some threshold before actions could be planned with a
view to securing prosocial goals. Furthermore, such goals would also have to have been executed
in such a way as to ensure the acknowledgement and approbation of other group members to
have been effective. Fourth level intensionality, necessary to incorporate the collective
attribution of god’s understanding of the motives and predicted responses of those affected by
actions issuing from such altruistic intent, could likewise only be entertained once a threshold
prefrontal volume had been crossed. The capacity to generate effective, costly, religiously
sanctioned signalling, presupposes the prior development of a suite of behaviours which are
executed by pathways in the prefrontal lobes; these would
include, evaluating alternative
actions, predicting likely effects of the alternative actions (specifically evaluating their impact on
the inclusive fitness of the agent) and face recognition (to identify past co-operators and
defectors). Critically, regions of the right dorsolateral and orbito-frontal cortices enervated by
the dopaminergic reward pathways were shown to be recruited during “intentional and private
religious practices” in findings reported by Beauregard & Paquette (Beauregard & Paquette,
2006) and Azari (Azari et al, 2001); its effective inhibition at sites in this region by the enzyme
catechol-O-methyltransferase facilitates the expression of costly signals which leave a
characteristic signature in the archaeological record. This process will be clarified in section 4.4
below. Other regions of the brain especially the temporal lobes have been associated with
heightened self-reported levels of religiosity and the parietal lobes have been the focus of
d’Aquili and Newberg’s research into so-called “self transcendence” states associated with
meditative experience. But as these features of religiosity are only tangentially associated with
17
theistic belief, I will not be discussing them here. For similar reasons I shall not dwell on
Persinger’s research on the role of the temporal lobes in religious experience.
In summary, the significance of the genetic component of characteristically religious cognition
and behaviours has been demonstrated and the critical role of the role of the reward system, at
sites in the prefrontal cortex and the mechanism for its inhibition has been identified.
18
2.0 The contribution of developmental psychology to an understanding of
religiosity
A belief in the survival of the mind/soul after death is widespread and is a central feature of all
formalised religions with a literary tradition. That such beliefs were already prevalent in
prehistory is an inference drawn from several excavated mortuary sites the evidence for which I
present in section 5.2 below. Here I present data from developmental psychology which strongly
suggests that, “…belief in supernatural agents pirates the brains mental inference systems that
are designed to reason about everyday intentional (living) agents.” (Bering, 2006a, 128)
2.1 Common sense dualism in infants primes the brain for supernatural concepts
Several factors have worked to predispose the human mind to believe in life after death and so
populate the Palaeolithic theological landscape with ancestors: our inability to conceive (with or
without accompanying mental imagery) of our own death is what he calls the “simulation
constraint” hypothesis - the relevance of such constraints for ancestor worship is clear; “offline
social reasoning” which makes possible a belief in the continuing existence of others even
though they are neither visible nor communicatively accessible. This results in the predilection to
believe that the afterlife is somehow a place. (Bering, 2006 b, 456) That such beliefs were
primed by the human mind/brain imply that, “developmental mechanisms underlie intuitive
accounts of dead agents’ minds.”(Bering and Bjorklund, 2004, 217) and it is not the result of
acculturation.
2.2 Children’s belief in gods is a default cognitive stance
Barrett’s “preparedness hypothesis” suggests that there is “a certain conceptual bias that makes
acquiring God concepts particularly natural” among children, though conceding that the extent
to which such capacities were realised was a function of other socio/cultural variables. (Barrett,
2003, 310) Furthermore, this incipient theism of preschoolers was not found to be a product of
extrapolation from prior ascriptions of god-like characteristics to adults. The work of Olivera
19
Petrovitch concluded that even children not exposed to the cultural priming of a belief in a
creator God nonetheless believe in the existence of such a God, “which suggest that there are
cognitive universals in a number of domains of human knowledge” (Petrovitch, 2007, 360).
2.3 Over developed sense of cause and effect in infants primes brains for god concept
Deborah Kelemen and her colleagues found that very young toddlers have a predilection to
describe artifacts in terms of their possession of teleofunctional capacities. (Kelemen, 2007) This
cognitive bias persists in pre-schoolers who are as predisposed to offer a functional explanation
for artifacts as for natural phenomena. (Kelemen and Di Yanni, 2005a, Kelemen and Di Yanni,
2005b) This bias may persist into adulthood and is confirmed by studies of Altzheimers patients
whose causal, explanatory framework is compromised by the onset of the disease. Lombroso et
al pointedly add, “…it is unknown whether a widespread preference for teleology is ever truly
outgrown”. (Lombroso, et al, 2007, 999)
2.4 The sense of lacking control, increases illusory pattern perception in adults
What may prove to be one of the most powerful explanatory theories for explaining the
frequency and prevalence of superstitious belief comes from what - at first blush - would seem
the most unlikely of fields: behavioural economics. Whitson and Galinski (Whitson and
Galinski, 2008) strongly suggests a statistically significant positive correlation between the
tendency to see illusory patterns in randomly generated data and the debilitating intensity of an
individual’s sense of lack of control. The evolutionary value of pattern recognition is self evident
and a number of studies have reported the significance of this variable in determining levels of
both physical and psychological well-being (Klein, et al, 1976; Cohen, et al, 1991). Galinsky and
Whitson’s work suggests that this strategy is effective in reducing anxiety, which would be of
evolutionary benefit in enhancing the efficacy of subsequent efforts to reassert the individual’s
control over the environment, counteracting the enervating effect following a sense of individual
impotence. More specifically, “belief in a controlling religious deity may serve as an especially
attractive resource for restoring a sense of externally controlled order when personal control
20
cannot protect one from the anxiety of a random and uncertain world.” (Kay, et al, 2010, 44)
Michael Shermer draws similar conclusions from his review of the work of Vyse and Heltzer
(Vyse, 1997) but states it more boldly :”Those patterns have to be given an identity, and for
thousands of years many of those identities were called gods” (Shermer, 2000, 62)
In summary, research in developmental psychology has demonstrated that a belief in
supernatural agents is facilitated by the default cognitive stance that gods exist. This and the fact
that we are primed to believe that the ontological status of persons is independent of their being
perceived, prepares us for theism and the plausibility of ancestor worship.
21
3.0 The contribution of Evolutionary Psychology to an understanding of
religiosity
3.1 Intuitive Psychology (Theory of Mind)
The ability to attribute mental states and processes to others on the basis of inferences drawn
from facial and bodily cues is a precondition for effective social interaction. The socially
debilitating effects of such a deficit are well documented in autism and schizophrenia patients.
The significance of the frontal lobes in processing information about the intentions of others and
their states of mind subsequent to interaction with us (in addition to the predicting of the likely
responses of others in response to our future actions) is critical for social engagement with
others, all of which is conducive to maximising inclusive fitness. The importance of recognizing
the hierarchical position of other group members and exhibiting behaviour designed to forge
alliances to secure resources led to the early characterisation of this suit of behaviours as issuing
from what was termed the Machiavellian mind. If Mithen is correct that attempting to ascertain
and assuage or ingratiate oneself with gods is a misapplication of social intelligence then
interacting with gods who are seen as able to punish or reward behaviours identified as defecting
or cooperating behaviours respectively is explicable.
3.2 Intensionality
Subsequent studies have confirmed that the volume of the orbital pre frontal cortex has a linear
relationship with levels of intensionality (Powell, et al, 2010) More specifically, while for most
purpose three levels of intensionality are habitually used in modern human interactions, religious
cognition imposes a fourth embedded layer to accommodate the “mind of god” as described in
section 1.3 above: “For a supernatural-based religion to have any force in making us toe the
social line, I have to believe that you suppose that there are supernatural beings who can be
made to understand that you and I desire that things should happen in a particular way.”
(Dunbar, 2003, 177) As figure 4 below shows, Dunbar has demonstrated persuasively that the
threshold for fourth level intensionality was crossed only with the advent of Homo sapiens.
22
Fig.4 Robin Dunbar’s Thresholds of intensionality in the Homo lineage (Dunbar 2003)
3.3 HADD (Hyperactive Agent Detection Device)
Stewart Guthrie was the first researcher to suggest that the human mind was biased to overattribute agency, “where there was some uncertainty about the provenance of an unexpected
phenomenon.” (Guthrie, 1980) but as in most things, David Hume had presaged much of the 20th
century psychology of religiosity in the 18th. In 1757 he wrote about what Boyer has since called
the “hypertrophy of social intelligence”: “We find human faces in the moon, armies in the
clouds; and by natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe malice
and good-will to everything that hurts or pleases us.”(Hume, 1757) The seemingly innate human
propensity to infer the presence of agents which might impact on the inclusive fitness of the
individual has come to be called the Hyper Active Agent Detection Device (HADD). The agency
may constitute a threat, for, example, a predator, or an opportunity, for example, the timely
arrival of a caregiver or a potential mate for a reproductively fertile individual. The evolutionary
advantage to being hypersensitive to such agency is obvious: a false positive will likely be in
some measure distressing but a false negative may be fatal. In the absence of evidence that the
agent is either human or in some other way natural, the inference is habitually drawn that it is
23
supernatural. The human predisposition to seek patterns in randomly arranged natural
phenomena is discussed in section 2.5 above and must work to compound the activation of the
HADD.
3.4 Minimally Counterintuitive Concepts
Some attempts to explain the “stickiness” of supernatural concepts has involved the notion of the
Meme (Blackmore, 1999; Dawkins, 1976; Dennett, 2006) but as I don’t feel a case can be made
that the principle of evolution through natural selection is substrate neutral, I shall not devote any
space to a consideration of the concept in this context. A more cogent explanation supported by
experimental empirical data is that put forward by Pascal Boyer (Boyer, 2001) based on the
modular view of human cognition closely associated with the work of Jerry Fodor (Fodor, 1983).
Boyer demonstrated that counter intuitive concepts which violated expectations and which were
embedded in narratives which were for the most part intuitive were more readily retained than
those which did not. Dr. Wengrow (Wengrow, 2011) has criticised Boyer for underestimating
the significance of institutional and technological factors in explaining the epidemiology of
counterintuitive concepts which he sees as explaining the traction that monstrous iconography
gained after the Neolithic revolution but not before it. While his paper provides a valuable
reminder that explanations for the epidemiology of such concepts is incomplete without looking
at the social and technological causal factors thrown up by the Neolithic revolution, I think he
misrepresents the notion of minimally counterintuitive beliefs as developed by Boyer which I
believe does illuminate the cognitive fluidity of anatomically modern humans in entertaining
counterintuitive concepts that violate the expectations set up by the cognitive domains elucidated
by Mithen. Figure 4 below illustrates the kind of cognitive fluidity embodied in the blending of
animal and human forms, (and possibly also displaying violation of expectations concerning folk
psychology and natural history in the manipulating of the material used). Therianthropic imagery
from Chauvet and Trois Freres (and discussed in the context of shamanism in section 5.3)
likewise display this blending of traits from animal and human forms and is included as Figures
14 and 15 below. That this is what Boyer had in mind, when he speaks of counterintuitive
24
concepts, however, is doubtful; such counterintuitive images alluded to by Wengrow are not
embedded in any intuitive context as demanded by Boyer (but in the absence of a literate
tradition how would we know?). Dr Wengrow (Institute of Archaeology, UCL) kindly agreed to
meet to discuss his paper last term, and I took the opportunity of outlining my objections to his
criticisms of Boyer and these are appended as appendix 1.
Fig. 5 The Löwenmensch figurine from Stadel im Hohlenstein
In summary, research in evolutionary psychology has allowed me to isolate several mechanisms
including inherited folk psychology, our understanding of intensionality, our hyperactive
propensity to detect agency and the memorability of minimally counterintuitive concepts further
facilitate our predisposition to believe in supernatural agency.
25
4.0 Adaptation or exaptation?
Researchers, who have argued for an adaptationist explanation of religiosity, have focused on a
number of mechanisms which facilitate inclusive fitness. Bulbulia, discussing the claims for such
evolutionary adaptedness, summarises the array of explanations given in the literature:
“enhanced solidarity and co-ordination among the faithful (the cohesive function), an answer
book to life’s riddles, an existential purpose generator, a means for providing hope and solace to
the suffering, an adaptation for inter-group warfare, or for morality, and various combinations
thereof…” (Bulbulia, 2004, 656) My aim is to discuss those theories which are salient in the
literature and focus on costly signalling theory as the most consistent with the working of
“natural selection to solve problems that our ancestors faced during our species’ evolutionary
history.” (Cosmides and Tooby, 1997, 5) I shall attempt to argue that there is no plausible
“neurotheological” explanation for a widespread belief in gods but that the evidence strongly
supports the exaptationist position. That the neural substrate of religiosity has been selected for
in response to distinctly non-religious pressures is cited in support of the exaptationist argument.
4.1 Existential purpose generator
Questions which ask about the meaning of life which have been answered by some form of
religious response have been as enduring a feature of human history as the brevity of the
religions which have so self-confidently offered spurious solutions. The surface grammar of
some interrogative utterances lends them a prima facie credibility whereas they do not, in fact,
function as genuine questions. They are examples rather, of what Gilbert Ryle calls a category
mistake (Ryle, 1949). Because it makes sense to ask, “What is the meaning of this sign?” and
“What is the purpose of this process/component/feature etc.?” it seems plausible – if mistaken to
ask
questions
where
the
predicate
includes
the
word
“
life”. The answer to such questions has often been contingent on the putative existence of
supernatural deities of one kind or another. (Park, 2005) While it may not be a rational question,
it is still a frequently asked one and one to which a belief in God or gods can provide a
psychologically - if not logically – satisfying answer. Any answer which is predicated on the
26
prior assumption that a god exists, is only as satisfying as the logical force of that
epistemologically prior demonstration of the god’s existence. Such a demonstration is entirely
lacking.
4.2 Causal explanation for phenomena
This approach has been most closely associated with the work of Lewis Wolpert (Wolpert,
2006). He argues that the selection pressure that drove encephalization was the need to
understand phenomena in terms of causes and effects. He cites the characteristically human
propensity for tool-making as evidence for this contention. Belief in gods, he argues, was a
misapplication of this drive to attribute causality to the, frequently dangerous and seemingly
inexplicable, ancestral environment of early humans. This is not a plausible explanation: it is
,as Atran would say, “mind-blind” ignoring the role of natural selection in priming the human
mind for theistic beliefs; it is at odds with the observations that heightened religiosity is often a
feature of cultures which enjoy high levels of scientific sophistication such as the USA where far
from declining in the face of scientific progress, religious beliefs are increasingly widespread.
4.3 Religious belief is an adaptation to facilitate good physical and psychological health
Several studies have reported a positive correlation between religiosity and physical and
psychological health, and in view of its salience in Bulbulia’s CST approach which is highly
plausible, I will deal with the salubrious argument at length here. The strength of this correlation
has lead a number of medical practitioners to urge the incorporation of the patient’s
religious/spiritual beliefs into clinical interventions (Cadge, et al, 2009) That active religious
observance and symptomatic pathology are inversely related, is likewise attested to in the
literature (Hannay, 2006)
4.31 Increased longevity
Several studies have reported a high correlation between increased longevity and religious
observance (Schnall, et al,, 2010; Matthews et al, 1998, 123; Hummer et al, 1999)
27
4.32 Attenuated experience of stress
It has long been understood that religious beliefs can play a powerful role in ameliorating stress.
Pargament detailed the mechanisms by which this religiously based coping strategy is effected
(Pargament, 2000). Research by Inzlicht et al, suggests that the anterior cingulate cortex,
normally activated in the experience of anxiety, is much attenuated in electroencephalographic
neural reactivity recorded in subjects undertaking the Stroop task leading him to conclude that,
“religious conviction provides a framework for understanding and acting within ones
environment, thereby acting as a buffer against anxiety and minimizing the experience of
error.”(Inzlicht, 2009, 385) These findings are supported by other studies (Ano and
Vasconcelles, 2004, 477; Maselko, et al, 2008, 1009)
4.33 Lower incidence of chronic physical ill health
A causal relationship between religious observance and physical health has long been accepted.
Typical in this regard is Levin and Schiller’s wide ranging review of the literature which
revealed a high correlation between physical wellbeing and religiosity: in particular,
“cardiovascular disease, hypertension and stroke, colitis and enteritis, general health status,
general mortality, cancer of the uterine corpus and cervix, all other non-uterine cancers,
morbidity and mortality in the clergy, and cancer in India.” (Levin and Schiller, 1987, 9) In a
review of the literature bearing on the correlation of religious belief (measured by religious
attendance) and health outcomes, (Levin and Vanderpool, 1987) it was concluded that 81% of
studies had revealed this correlation. Furthermore, this correlation held across a wide range of
pathologies from cardiovascular disease to cancer. These authors found in a later study that
religious observance was also positively correlated with lower blood pressure (Levin and
Vanderpool, 1989). A more cautious note is sounded by research conducted by Powell, et al,
who concluded that while the “evidence fails to support a link between depth of religiousness
and physical health”, they did suggest that “church/service attendance protects healthy people
against death” (Powell, et al, 2003, 36) Several studies report a positive correlation between
patient religiosity and the recovery process. (Oxman, et al, 1995)
28
4.34 Religious belief encourages risk-averse behaviour
Not only is risk averse behaviour correlated with religious observance but studies have also
shown that even among those whose practices can compromise their health status, religiosity can
result in a diminution of the associated risks (Matthews, et al, 1998; Bahr and Hoffman, 1998;
Button et al, 2010, 1619)
4.35 Assortative sociality
Research by Fincher and Thornhill suggests that the number of religions practiced in any given
climatic zone is highly correlated with the frequency of pathogens present in the area leading
them to conclude that, “religion manifests from evolved behavioural strategies for the avoidance
and management of infectious disease.” (Fincher and Thornhill, 2008, 2587) More precisely,
they concluded that religious diversity decreased the further you travelled from the tropics.
Supporting evidence is provided by Murray et al, who claim to have found a negative correlation
between the tendency of cultures to enforce conformity and the prevalence of infectious
pathogens present in that area over which that culture prevails. (Murray, et al, 2011)
4.36 Conclusion
While the data does suggest that religiosity is positively correlated with desirable health
outcomes in some groups, it is often weak and can be explained by the therapeutic affect that
such social support networks provide rather than the efficacy of intersessionary prayer. The
prophylactic role of religious belief can frequently be explained by recourse to the placebo
effect.
4.4 Religious belief as a solution to the free rider problem
Religion has long been seen as exercising what Talcott Parsons called a tension management
function (Parsons, Bales and Shils, 1953); it is an effective mechanism for resolving intra-group
conflict. A more nuanced approach has been taken by more recent research which suggests that
theistic belief plays a critical role in providing a solution to the free rider problem.
29
4.41 Early prosociality secured by kin-based altruism a function of Darwinian fitness
An otherwise solitary individual gains many advantages by being a member of a group including
greater access to and defence of resources (critically including both energetic resources and a
larger pool of potential mates) enhanced security and sources of support (e.g. non-kin
“grandmothering” reducing infant mortality, and vigilance conducive to enhanced collective
security). Group living makes many demands of an individual attendant upon the greatly
increased need for cooperative behaviour. Cooperative behaviour involving some form of
altruism is more intuitively comprehensible when such sacrifices are made on behalf of offspring
or other individuals to whom the benefactor is closely related. “Selection can favor altruism
toward close relatives because recent common descent provides a cue of genetic similarity”
(Boyd, 2006, 1555) However there has been some criticism of the principle that the propensity
for altruistic behaviour is not unambiguously a function of genetic relatedness e.g. West et al,
2001.
4.42 Prosociality secured by non- kin-based altruism as a function of inclusive fitness
Within groups of increasing size, however, members are more distantly related to each other yet
the demand for cooperation does not lessen but tends to increase. Herein lays the problem, as
Atran makes clear, “Commitment falls off precipitously as genetic difference increases between
individuals.” (Atran, 2002, 119) Hamilton’s Rule (Hamilton, 1964) explains how this
commitment to perform altruistic acts in the service of cooperation where a more distant kinship
relationship subsists between the benefactor and the recipient. Even if an action impairs an
individual’s “Darwinian fitness”, it may be conducive to that individual’s “inclusive fitness”
where the beneficiaries are more distantly related as illustrated in the transaction between an
“agent” and”recipient” in fig 5 below.
30
Fig.6 The operation of Hamilton’s Rule:
: r = the genetic relatedness of the agent
to the recipient, B = the reproductive advantage conferred on the recipient and C = the
reproductive cost to the agent of the act
“A key feature of inclusive fitness is that, as defined, it describes the components of reproductive
success which an actor can influence, and therefore which they could be appearing to
maximise.” (West, et al, 2010, 3) Providing costly signals which serve to demonstrate a
predisposition to cooperate rather than to defect in social transactions is an example of just such
a maximisation strategy.
4.43 Prosociality in early hunter-gatherers: non-kin based reciprocal altruism and the role of
COMT
However, the degree of genetic relatedness of the members of a group is likely to be inversely
proportional to the size of the group: increasing group size entails that the members are
increasingly likely to be only distantly related to most other members of the group while the
demands for the expression of altruistic actions increases and with it the urgency to detect freeriders.
Given that group living confers a reproductive advantages of its members, how is prosociality to
be secured between members of the group who were not conjoined by sanguinity? Peter Singer
has written persuasively of the innateness of the tendency to expand the circle of the recipients of
our altruism beyond immediate kin. (Singer, 1981) The mechanism by which reciprocal altruism
31
operates has been well understood since Robert Trivers’ ground-breaking article in
1971.(Trivers, 1971) These costs which are incurred in order to evince a preparedness to behave
cooperatively, can range from the relatively minor inconveniences of spending time and effort in
practices which have no direct benefit to the practitioner; personal disfigurement; various levels
of personal discomfort including high personal economic costs; behaviour which compromises
the physical wellbeing or reproductive fitness of the individual, and even life threatening and
self-sacrificing practices which can confer a benefit on surviving genetically related members of
the group. The reward system which functions to reinforce behaviour which is generally
pleasurable must, however, be inhibited in order to effectively defer the gratification which
costly signalling demands. I draw heavily on the work of Patrick McNamara and colleagues at
Boston who have demonstrated the critical role than the enzyme catechol-O-methyltransferase
has in securing the inhibition of the dopamine pathway that enervates the frontal lobes.
(McNamara, 2006)
Costly signalling is designed to secure a commitment to perform altruistic practices. These are
defined as, “…behaviours that involve strategic costs to the individual displaying them, costs
that extend beyond the baseline costs that all behavioural actions entail, and are therefore hard
to fake by individuals not able to bear the relevant cost.” (McNamara, 2006, 193) The
temptation to defect rather than cooperate is, in part, a function of the perceived levels of
relatedness among members of the population but it becomes increasingly important to be able to
detect free riders as the genetic relatedness of group members decreases. Detecting defection
becomes increasingly important when there are those who will embrace the dictum attributed to
Marx that, “Sincerity is the key to success; if you can fake that you’ve got it made”. (Reilly
1998, 137) (Groucho’s letters are a rich source of insight in so many fields.) The preparedness to
display costly signals demonstrates the commitment of that individual to the group, resolves the
free-rider problem which is so inimical to successful group cooperative behaviour be that a
hunting expedition, the coordination necessitated by inter-group hostility, or the trustworthiness
of an agent in honouring the promise made in the course of interpersonal social transactions.
32
My contention is that the sequence of events is as follows. The reward system, particularly the
dopaminergic pathways which are normally activated when impulsive behaviour is satisfied,
must be inhibited by the individual if he or she is to demonstrate their ability to , as McNamara
says, “,inhibit over a long period of time the kinds of free-rider behavioural strategies that
would exclude them from participation in the cooperative group.” (McNamara 2006, 194) This
inhibitory effect is achieved by the action of catechol-O-methyltransferase which methylates
released dopamine as part of its metabolism to homovanilic acid. This activity takes place in the
frontal lobes. It is the public demonstration of costly signals underpinned by religiosity which
enables the individual to claim membership of the group of co-operators to which he or she
wishes to belong. What the proximal causes of such inhibition are, I am still uncertain, but that
appropriate practices are taught by the host community is implied by his remarks that the
candidate group member gains admittance by “learning to inhibit current appetitive or
consumatory responses”. (McNamara 2006, 197, my emphasis) This raises the intriguing, but at
this stage highly speculative, possibility that the walls of Chauvet are testimony to such tutelage.
4.44 Costly signalling as a commitment to practices ensuring group health outcomes
Bulbulia (Bulbulia, 2006) has made a cogent argument for a version of the CST that sees the
primary function of costly signalling as expressing a hard-to-fake, commitment to signals of
health which is underpinned by socially-shared religious/supernatural beliefs. A discussion of
Bulbulia would take me too far from my concern to establish the case for CST qua CST, but I
flag this approach up as a significantly nuanced version of the CST hypothesis which is also
potentially testable but alas, not by a significant set of archaeological data. I will only remark
that these findings are lent plausibility in the light of the established correlation with health
adumbrated in section 4.3 above and my observations on the shaman’s role as healer in section
5.3 below.
33
4.45 Levels of inter-group competition a function of intra-group altruistic behaviour
Groups of early modern humans inhabiting the Environment of Ancestral Adaptedness would
have been differentially predisposed genetically to practice non-kin based altruistic behaviour
and those populations in which the appropriate alleles were selected would be more successful in
attaining group goals than those groups in which they weren’t. Something like this was hinted at
by Darwin in “The Descent of Man”, who maintained that a tribe whose members, “…were
always ready to give aid to each other and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would
be victorious over most other tribes…” (Darwin, 1981, 166) Supporting data is provided by
researchers, such as Samuel Bowles, who have claimed to identify data in the ethnographic
record which is applicable to the demographic structure of modern humans at the critical period
in our prehistory. (Bowles, 2006)
4.46 Costly signalling behaviour most effective in a religious context
The moral argument for a belief in the existence of God has always been one of the most popular
and that moral actions are those approved of by the gods has always exercised a potent
fascination. This is in spite of the fact that it was discredited by Plato writing in 5th century BC
Athens. He demonstrated that – in spite of a widely held belief to the contrary - attempting to
draw inferences about morally relevant behaviour from the belief that a God exists such that he
rewards certain behaviours and proscribes others, is logical fallacious. Plato’s eponymous hero
of the dialogue Euthyphro, asserts that right conduct is defined thus: “…what all the gods love is
pious and holy, and the opposite which they all hate is impious”. (Plato, 1970, 46, 9e) Plato’s
Socrates (Euthyphro’s interlocutor) asks for the grounds for this assertion: “…I should wish to
understand …whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy
because it is loved by the gods.” (Plato, 1970, 46, 10a) The point here being that if the answer is
the former then the statement that “x is right because god determines that it is”, becomes a
semantically vacuous apriori truth (god commands as good, those things which god commands
as good); if the latter, then it is an aposteriori truth but the inconvenient corollary is that
presumably god is using some criterion other than his dictat to determine the rightness or
34
wrongness of any action. In spite of the logical fallacy of the moral argument, which would not
have been available to the hunter gatherers of the Palaeolithic, that cooperative behaviour was
favoured by the gods would have gained considerable traction. There appear to be many reasons
why moral values are usually underpinned by religious sanctions; clearly this is likely to have
been most effective if the notion of “fictive kin” could be recruited. Genetic relatedness is an
effective constraint on the temptation to defect in social transactions and just such a notion is a
characteristic of religiosity. The kinds of cooperative actions demanded by the group to which an
individual belongs because are more likely to be forthcoming if there is a widespread belief in a
kinship relation subsisting between biologically unrelated individuals. Empirical data exists
which supports the contention that prosociality and its concomitant behaviour of costly
punishment of defectors is more effective when religiously primed. McKay concludes that:
“religions harness the by-products of genetically inherited cognitive mechanisms in ways that
enhance the survival prospects of their adherents” (McKay et al, 2011, 1858) Shariff and
Norenzayan have published studies that support these conclusions identifying “religion as a
facilitator of the emergence of early large-scale societies of cooperators.” (Shariff and
Norenzayan, 803, 2007) Dunbar has demonstrated the effectiveness of collective religious
behaviour in overcoming the free rider problem by triggering the release of endorphins and thus
reinforcing group bonding behaviour. Empirical support for this function of religious behaviour
first identified by Rappaport (Rappaport, 1999) is provided by a study into nineteenth century
communes in America which concluded that “… communes that imposed costlier requirements
survived longer than less demanding communes and whether costly requirements and religiosity
interact to promote cooperation” (Sosis and Bressler, 2003, 212); theistic priming in religious
ritual was found to be highly correlated with levels of cooperation in Israeli Kibbutzim by Sosis
and Ruffle. (Sosis and Ruffle, 2003) Chris Stringer has suggested that intensified levels of intragroup conflict for resources and mates was a function of increased density of larger human
groups and that the friction engendered by such competition could “have driven…changes
favouring cooperative and even sacrificial behaviours within the conflicting groups” and that
35
“the development of religion may have provided an important means” of maintaining
equilibrium. (Stringer, 2011, 221)
4.47 Types of costly signal in the archaeological record
Richard Sosis (Sosis, 2006) sees costly signals as being one of three kinds: rituals, badges and
bans. Only the first is likely to leave an enduring signature in the archaeological record. This
tripartite division is helpful in setting the parameters of my dissertation. While bans are critical
to modern world religions as proxies for commitment, they are unlikely to leave a trace in the
archaeological record of the earliest expressions of religiosity. For example, while it is possible
to argue that dietary bans, might leave an anomalous profile in the faunal remains of a
Palaeolithic group that practiced such a ban, it is very unlikely that proscribed behaviour of other
kinds could be inferred from the material record of early modern humans. I am unaware of any
attempts to draw such inferences from either fossil or artefactual remains. Likewise, badges are
unlikely to constitute a significant archaeological presence. However, body decoration using
ochre and shell beads may be evidence of such ritual and has been reported from several sites
from the Middle Stone Age in Africa (e.g. MacKay and Welz, 2008; Jacobs and Roberts, 2009;
see further references in section 5.0 below) but while they clearly embody some symbolic
function we cannot know if this was religious or carried a very secular meaning. (eg the
therapeutic purposes of tattoos found on ӧtzi the so called “Iceman”)
I shall therefore focus my research on the first type, for the purposes of this paper. Rituals
typically involve objects and votive offerings are perhaps the archetypical vestiges of costly
rituals. That they were materially costly is indubitable, the energetic and emotional costs and the
costs they exacted in human suffering and increased mortality is harder to divine. Atran makes
explicit the causal connection between the religiously inspired sacrificial act and the social role it
has in discouraging defection and act in the interests of the group: “Religious offerings always
involve non-recuperable costs” (material and human)…Why? Because human representations of
agency and intention include representations of false belief and deception, human society is
36
forever under threat of moral defection. Simple consent among individuals seldom, if ever,
successfully sustains cooperation among large numbers of people over long periods of time.
Emotionally hard to fake and materially costly displays of devotion to supernatural agents
signals sincere willingness to cooperate with the community of believers.” (Atran, 2002, 114)
Offerings may be rendered “non-recuperable” by being thrown into deep water, broken or burnt
or measured in the time spent on an activity which has among its opportunity costs the
compromising of reproductive fitness. It is in just this state that such objects as diverse as
Gravettian and Neolithic statuettes, the images on the walls at Lascaux and Chauvet, to the Iron
Age Battersea shield; wherever objects have been put beyond use either by design or by
destruction. The chart in Fig. 20 below correlates the necessary and sufficient conditions for
effective costly signalling and illustrates the range of artefactual and fossil data it leaves in the
archaeological record.
Limited inter-group migration would have ensured that the genetic composition of such groups
would have been biologically homogeneous and facilitated the widespread acceptance of “fictive
kin” applicable to those group members less closely related. As such, it could be expected to
constitute a mechanism which secured the “objective” of inclusive fitness and therefore
Hamilton’s Rule would still apply. CST provides a powerful theoretical framework which
integrates the neurology with the archaeological and anthropological data. If this approach is
correct, it satisfies all the objectives delineated in the opening paragraph of my abstract and will
support my conclusion that much artefactual evidence is best explained as arising from the
engagement in culturally determined costly signalling, much of it guaranteed by the watchful eye
of ”fictive gods”. Sharif and Norenzayan endorse the conclusions of Bowles alluded to in section
4.45 above, that cooperative behaviour would have been facilitated by a widespread belief in
gods and that these groups would most likely have been more successful than those which lacked
such a widespread belief: “ancestral societies with culturally widespread God concepts would
have outcompeted societies without such concepts, given the cooperative advantage of believing
groups” (Shariff and Norenzayan, 808, 2007) Stringer reaches much the same conclusion:
37
”computer simulations have shown that in many situations of conflict between hunter-gatherer
groups, beliefs that encourage self-sacrifice, sometimes including death on behalf of the group,
can actually flourish culturally and genetically.” (Stringer, 2011, 223)
4.48 Conclusion
The emergence of costly signalling theory (CST) presents a powerful and coherent explanatory
framework which integrates data bearing on the neurochemistry of the reward system, and its
inhibition, (McNamara, 2006) with behaviours which facilitate the diffusion of prosociality in a
population (Axelrod, 1984) and in particular, religious behaviours. It also holds out the prospect
of integrating the neurological data with the archaeological data by identifying the signature
detectable in the ritual material culture of the late Pleistocene and early Holocene by such ritual
behaviours I discuss below in section 5.
In summary, the grounds for believing theistic religious belief an adaptation are strongest when
the critical importance of evolutionary pressures for resolving the free rider problem in early
human groups is fully understood. This is not group selection: the benefits bestowed by
cooperative behaviour confer a fitness advantage on the individual which possesses the
appropriate alleles relative to the selfish behaviour of members of early human groups who
lacked them. I am still inclined to believe that the evidence points to the theistic religious
cognition under-pinning such Palaeolithic prosociality is an exaptation.
38
5.0 Archaeological evidence for the presence of religious belief
I first propose to allude briefly to artefacts from the Late Stone Age in Africa which have been
held to embody symbolic ritual religious behaviour. I shall then attempt an evaluation of the
European Upper Palaeolithic data which includes parietal cave imagery and mortuary practices,
Gravettian and Solutrian anthropomorphic mobiliary sculpture and briefly mention costly
signalling practices from the Late Holocene. Since McBrearty and Brooks’ seminal paper in
2000, (McBrearty and Brooks, 2000), the origins of human symbolic behaviour have been firmly
located in sub-Saharan Africa in the Middle Stone Age. There is much artefactual evidence from
sites such as Blombos Cave and Still Bay in southern Africa which suggests that symbolic
behaviour as exemplified by the use of red ochre and shell beads was already present in the
MSA. Iron rich hematite blades have been reported from Pinnacle Point in South Africa and
have been dated to 165,00ya (Minkel, 2008) while inscribed red ochre has been retrieved from
Blombos cave and dated to 75,000ya (Henshilwood, et al, 2002). Perforated N. kraussianus hell
beads have been recovered from Blombos dating from 75,000ya,, Nassarius gibbosulus
shellbeads dating from 82,00ya have been reported from Grotte des Pigeons in Morocco
(Bouzouggara, et al, 2007) and also from Es-Skhul (Israel) and Oued Djebbana (Algeria) dated
to 100,000 to 135,000 years ago. (Vanhaeren, et al, 2006), ostrich shell beads from the
Loiyangalani River valley, Tanzania (Knight, 2004) Textiles too could be expected to have been
a prominent feature of shamanic ritualistic practices if the ethnographic record is a guide. That
such beliefs were instrumental in producing the artefacts that have been recovered is, however, at
least highly likely in that they were produced by anatomically (and a fortiori neurologically)
modern humans although there is little evidence of unambiguously symbolic behaviour which
could be said to issue from a belief in supernatural entities.
5.1 Evidence of early ritualistic behaviour ca. 70,000 years ago
When so much so-called modern human behaviour can be found in Africa in the MSA, we might
be forgiven for feeling optimistic that we will find some evidence of religious ritualistic
behaviour here too. Unfortunately the evidence is very tenuous. The so-called “python stone”
39
from Tsodilo in Botswana, received a great deal of attention when the report was published
(figures 6 and 7). Dating from 70,000 years ago, the authors claim that the stone represents a
python snake which they hold to be central to a ritual practised by the ancestors of the San who
currently inhabit the area. I don’t find their claim plausible for several reasons. The strata from
which they claim the tools used to indent the “skin” of the python were recovered, is not securely
dated; it is not at all obvious that the stone resembles a snake and were it not for the fact that the
python is accorded a significant place in present-day San religious belief, it is difficult to see
how such an interpretation could have been made. Although the stone spearheads found at the
site (fig 8) exhibit a colour consistent with their having been selected for ritualistic purposes and
might well have originated from some distance away, we can never know what ritualistic
purpose they served. There is no indication of the system used for dating the spearheads
themselves. This is critical to the interpretation of the site as they are used to establish the date of
the “python stone” itself and to attribute religious ritual significance to it.
Fig. 7 The so-called “python stone” from
Tsodilo, Botswana. ca.70,000 ya
www.afrol.com/articles/23093
(Science Daily, retrieved Nov. 30, 2006)
Fig.8 The “Python Stone”
illuminated at night.
40
Fig.9 Spearheads excavated from Tsodilo, knapped from stone
transported from hundreds of kilometres distant from the site
The Cave at Chauvet is well known for the parietal imagery found there but the so-called “bear
skull altar” is claimed to be diagnostic of human symbolic ritualistic behaviour. That the stone
on which the skull rested functioned as an “altar” seems an unwarranted assumption as well as
starkly anachronistic. Zach Zorich, writing more soberly in Archaeology, notes that many Cave
bear remains were found at Chauvet, but confesses,” Why this one was placed at the edge of a
large stone block remains a mystery.” (Zorich, 2011)
Fig. 10 The so-called “bear skull altar” at Chauvet
(www.bradshawfoundation.com/clottes)
41
Fig. 11 Jean Clottes at the so-called “bear skull altar” at Chauvet
5.2 Mortuary practices
That ancestors continue, in some sense, to exists in order to monitor and “police” the social
behaviour of their ancestors is prevalent in modern day human populations and was widespread
in populations of behaviourally modern humans in the past. Evidence for belief in some form of
life after death has been sought from human inhumations but this association is, however, often
highly contestable. Interment with or without grave goods of some kind does not constitute either
a necessary or sufficient condition of belief in an afterlife (Ucko, 1969). However, it does seem
to me that such goods do lend support to the prevalence of such a belief but Ucko’s is correct to
caution against over reliance on mortuary practices alone to support any contention that a belief
in life after death was widespread in the absence of any corroborating evidence. I can find no
references in the literature to unambiguously deliberate burials before the Middle Palaeolithic.
5.21 Middle Palaeolithic & Neanderthal burials
There is abundant evidence of the practice of deliberate interment among Neanderthal
populations. Evidence for elaborate preparation of the corpse and grave goods is less compelling.
Stringer, however, is prepared to concede that such burials are imbued with ritual symbolic
significance: “…special rocks or tools seem to have been placed with the bodies, as tributes or
perhaps even in anticipation of an after life.” (Stringer, 2011, 89) I am inclined to agree with
Pettitt who concludes that while “no convincing example of grave goods is known from
Neanderthals…it seems that at least in some Neanderthal groups the dead body was explored
and treated in socially meaningful ways.” (Pettit, 2002, 18) Neanderthal mortuary practices seem
rather to constitute caching.
42
Fig.12 Neanderthal burial at Kebara, (Kebara 2) ca. 60, 000 BP
piclib.nhm.ac.uk/piclib/www/image.php?img=85721
5.22 Burials of anatomically modern humans
Burials in anatomically modern humans are less ambiguously ritual interments both in the
manner of the burial and the presence of grave goods. Although Skhul 5 burial is cited by
Stringer as the earliest symbolic burial dating from ca. 115,000 years ago, I agree with Mellars
who argues that the Qafzeh burial (ca. 92,000 years ago) presents the earliest evidence of:
“unmistakably intentional grave offerings”; (the presence of) “a number of deliberately
perforated seashell ornaments, together with large quantities of used and apparently heattreated fragments of red ochre” (Mellars, 2006, 9384). Such interments is suggestive of what
many developmental psychologists have called “common sense dualism” and identified as “an
inevitable by product of self-consciousness” (Bering, 2008, 34) Also some belief in an after life
can reasonably be inferred from the treatment of the corpse which in a foetal or recumbent
position (as at Kebara and Qafzeh respectively) clearly mimics postures adopted in sleeping.
43
Fig.13 Burial of an anatomically modern human (skeleton at the Qafzeh Cave (Israel),
accompanied by a large deer antler and dated to ca. 90,000 – 100,000 B.P. (Mellars, 2006)
An intriguing application of Dunbar’s levels of intensionality to mortuary practices is made by
Stringer. He draws heavily on Pettit’s analysis here. Just as thresholds of increasing levels of
intensionality are inferred from the enlargement of the prefrontal cortex throughout the
Pleistocene, so methods of interment are suggestive of the increasing sophistication of these
levels. Figure 13 below indicates the way in which Stringer sees these mortuary practices as
corollaries of the threshold levels of intensionality.
Species
Chimpanzee
Attitude to dead
Interest in body of
deceased
Deposition of corpse
Intensionality
“I believe that you are dead”
Mortuary practice
No attempt to move
or bury corpse
Caching of corpse
“I know that you must be
deposited in a specific place”
Reverential
“Because of your role, you
Full burial in special
treatment of corpse
must be disposed of in this
location
way , by this method, at this
accompanied by
place, as recognized by our
ritual and symbolic
social rules”
objects
Fig 14 mortuary practices correlated with threshold levels of intensionality
(adapted from Stringer, 2011, 212)
(Heidelbergensis?)
Neanderthal
Anatomically
Modern Human
5.3 Shamanism in Franco-Cantabrian parietal imagery in the Upper Palaeolithic
Explanations of the religious significance of the Franco-Cantabrian parietal imagery in the Upper
Palaeolithic have customarily stressed the central role of the shaman as an intermediary between
44
the world of the living and that of the dead. Therianthropic imagery, for example, is usually
interpreted as depicting shamanic practices which are held to be identical to those of their
contemporary hunter gatherer counterparts which are well documented in the ethnographic
record. However, there are several reasons why any attempt to explain the iconographical
significance of European Palaeolithic cave imagery as analogous to the San or !Kung is flawed. I
give fuller reasons for my scepticism below as appendix 2. It is more plausible that they
exercised a role on a par with Jain ascetics identified by David Sloane Wilson as enforcing
prosociality
and
the
shaman’s
intervention
would
clearly
satisfiy
the role of an agency imposing a plausible pattern and causal explanation on otherwise random
events that compromise human well-being consistent with Whitson and Galinsky’s research
alluded to above in section 2.5 above.
Fig.15 The “Sorcerer” from Chauvet (c. 30,000 BP)
www.bradshawfoundation.com/clottes
45
Fig. 16 Depiction of Shaman: Trois Freres, France, (upper Palaeolithic) ca. 13,000 BC
faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/Myth/Sorcerer.html
For all of the reasons adumbrated in Appendix 2, I am very sceptical of any explanation of
Franco-Cantabrian cave imagery which is exhausted by reference only to its depiction of
shamanistic practices. My concern in this section has been to offer a plausible answer to the
question, “Why were the caves painted at all?” not to attempt an evaluation of the competing
explanation of their meanings for the Upper Palaeolithic people who painted them. The evidence
is consistent with numerous hypotheses. It is beyond my brief to assess the merits of the theories
that have included the following: expressing hunting magic (Henri Breuil, 1952); embodying
dyadic and gender symbolism (Leroi-Gourhan, 1968 and Laming-Emperaire, 1962); calendrical
symbolism (Marshack, 1991); shamanism (Lewis Williams and Jean Clottes, 1998). Likewise,
the nonrepresentational shapes which have traditionally been attributed to shamanic entopic
experiences have recently been reinterpreted by von Petzinger who has made a detailed study of
the distribution and frequency of such non-figurative geometric images in Palaeolithic cave sites
and concluded that they could plausibly have functioned as a proto-pictographic system of
symbolic signs (Ravilous, 2010) This finding is at odds with the long-standing theory that such
imagery issued from entopic experience. I am sceptical of von Perzinger’s explanation as it
seems self-evident to me that it is a precondition of communicative signs that, that which was
symbolically represented by them, should be in the public domain and interpersonal not refer to
46
private and personal experience which could not be coded for in this way. I am prepared to
concede, however, that there is some likelihood of some of these images depicting some kind of
ritualistic behaviour. The less ambitious explanation for the production of cave imagery which
limits itself to the practice of costly signals of commitment by the individual to the group
outlined above in section 4.47 at least has the merit of not recruiting assumptions that are
unsupported by the data. The creation of images would have been time consuming both in the
acquisition of raw materials and in their use in creating the images; the opportunity costs
sustained would likely have been great as no hunting or other resources would have been
acquired while the men (and the assumption made is that they
were usually men) were engaged
in painting; the danger and discomfort in reaching the locations deep within the caves would
have been very stressful.
5.4 Parietal imagery exhibiting costly anatomical signalling
It is not for nothing that CST is sometimes known as the “handicap approach” (Bliege Bird and
Alden-Smith, 2004) It is relevant to my argument that there are frequent depictions of mutilated
hands at Chauvet and at other Upper Palaeolithic cave sites such as Grotte de Gargas in France.
There are several strands of supporting evidence: the high proportion of hand depictions which
show evidence of mutilation (of 231 hands, 144 were missing digits at Gargas); the digits were
more likely to have been amputated than lost through disease such as frostbite (which is in any
event, rarely recorded amongst Eskimo who inhabit a similar climate to that inhabited by the
Upper Palaeolithic people whose hands are depicted at sites such as Chauvet and Gargas) and the
fact that thumbs are amputated probably has more to do with the its critical importance in
manipulating, repairing and servicing artefacts involved in resource acquisition rather than their
being enervated with a richer blood supply to ward off frostbite ; finger bones which were
clearly amputated have been found at Gargas embedded in clay (Barrière, 1976); some
researchers have suggested the loss of digits was the result of diseases such as Raynaud's disease,
Ainhum's disease, or even leprosy(e.g. Sahly, 1969) but it is not explained why such high
incidents of these pathologies should afflict the painters, or if it did, why this should have
47
privileged them in being able to give their handicap such publicity. Fig 16 below shows the
frequency of hand images featuring amputated fingers at the site of Grotte de Gargas. The
Bradshaw Foundation web site raises the possibility that what appear to be amputated fingers
may be the result of bending back the finger in order to convey some kind of code. But there is
no attempt to explain what this behaviour may have been code for or what grounds there are for
believing this to be true. The site does go on to concede that “it is also possible that the
amputation of fingers at the joints was part of shamanic initiation rituals at certain times during
the Upper Palaeolithic.” Finger mutilation, practiced by the Khoekhoe of southern Africa is
cited as supporting ethnographic evidence. The matter could be conceivably settled by the
positioning of the “fracture”. If the amputations occur invariably at the point of flexion at the
first knuckle, then the amputation argument is much weakened. The case for mutilation enjoyed
growing support (e.g. Hooper, 1980) and Janssens cites Weinert and Casteret (Casteret, 1951)
who marshalled a large amount of ethnographic evidence to support their contention “that these
are cases of sacrificial offerings.” (Jansenns, 1957)
Fig. 17 Frequency of hand prints featuring amputated fingers at Grotte de Gargas
(Leroi- Gourhan, 1967)
48
5.5 Anthropomorphous figurines
Many recent researchers have bemoaned the fact that theories about the cultural significance of
the sculpted anthropomorphous figurines of the Gravettian and Solutrian periods, and the more
recent Magdellanian, in Europe have been of a one-size-fits-all type (Hansen, 2001). Too little
attention has been paid to regional variation and the significance of the diversity of materials
used. The ludicrous sobriquet of “Venus” is patently inappropriate in view of the low proportion
of figurines which exhibit the typically voluptuously proportioned feminine form of their
classical namesake. That they all performed the same function is likewise an assumption we are
not entitled to make.
5.51 Middle Palaeolithic evidence
I cannot see in the The Berekhat Ram Figurine, (Fig.17) the glimmerings of anthropomorphic
sculpture as Goren-Inbar and Peltz would have us believe (Goren-Inbar and Peltz, 1995). I am
convinced of the arguments of Noble and Davidson (Noble and Davidson, 1996) that the
resemblance a female form is a result of taphonomic rather than anthropogenic factors. D’Errico
and Nowell quote Noble and Davidson dismissively – but I think mistakenly – that the
“Berekhat Ram object was formed by human agency rather than by natural forces . . . hence we
cannot say that it was a thing made to resemble anything’ (Noble and Davidson, 1996, 75 quoted
in D’Errico and Nowell, 2000, 127).
Fig. 18 The Berekhat Ram Figurine: a false dawn?
D’Errico, F. and A. Nowell, 2000, 124
49
5.52 Gravettian and Solutrian anthropomorphous figurines
A great deal of Palaeolithic (and Neolithic) figurative sculpture is either an unambiguous
depiction of aspects of the female sexuality or such a depiction can reasonably be inferred from the
artefact. Marija Gimbutas has developed an influential theory of the original purpose of such
artefacts: that they are expressions of a mother goddess religion which issued from the fertility. This
is not a hypothesis which enjoys as much consensus as it once did and for several reasons: the
diversity of the figurines stylistically and in materials used does not suggest a single explanation of
this kind. Bailey’s dismissal of Gimbutas (Bailey, 2005, 16) as lacking any support for her twin
contentions that women exercised a dominant position in what she claimed was a matriarchal
society seems to me to be fatal to the mother goddess theory. Unambiguously anthropomorphic
figurines do not emerge until the Gravettian in Europe ca. 28,000-22,000ya. It is not central to my
dissertation question to evaluate the competing theories which have sought to explain the cultural
meaning of these figurines beyond establishing that their fabrication entailed an enormous
expenditure of time and effort and that the key to their meaning must lie in the costliness of their
production. That this costliness can be calibrated with reference to group commitment underpinned
by religiosity is a hypothesis that has not yet been adequately tested. It seems incontestable that
there is a preponderance of female rather than male depictions and there is prominence accorded to
secondary sexual characteristics in many of them. This supports the view that they embody fertility
symbolism of some kind. There is enormous diversity, both in the materials used, the sexual
characteristics foregrounded and the stylistic variety displayed in the depiction of hair, body posture
and fabric “worn”. It is highly likely that the craftsmen were motivated by as wide a range of
intentions in crafting them.
50
Gravettian and Solutrean “Venus
figurines”
So-called “Venus of Willendorf” ca. 24,00022,000ya (Germany)
Venus of Brassempouy
Ca. 25,000 ya (France)
Dolni Věstonice
figurine ca. 28,000
31,000ya (Czech
Republic)
Fig.19 Gravettian and Solutrian anthropomorphous figurines and find sites
5.53 Magdalenian anthropomorphous figurines
Figurines continued to be produced throughout the Magdalenian and while the range of materials
from which they were made increases, it seems entirely plausible that while they seem to display
a more stylised form, they were produced for similar reasons to the previous Gravettian and
Solutrian anthropomorphous figurines.
51
Late Magdalenian Carved Venus
figurines and Late Magdalenian sites
Female figurines of stone, bone and
ivory from various Late Magdalenian
sites.
Antiquity Publications, Ltd, published in Fiedorczuk et al. 2007
The Lady of Monruz. Jet pendant
representing a feminine figure, Monruz
(Neuchâtel). Magdalenian, ca. 13000
B.C
Fig. 20 Late Magdalenian carved anthropomorphous figurines and site locations
5.54 Neolithic figurines
Figurine production persisted into the Neolithic and it has been argued that the fertility of
domesticated crops and animals gave added impetus to production. Although fertility was not a
characteristic preoccupation of the Neolithic: it was a difference in degree rather than of kind
from the hunter gatherer groups which preceded it relying as they did on a regular harvest and
fecund livestock. Most plausibly, some researchers have argued that the patterns of distribution
and exchange throughout both this and the preceding periods reflects their use as mediating
inter-group rivalries and alliances. (Chapman, 2001) Population growth and dispersals at this
period would likely have resulted in greater contact between hitherto isolated groups and
increased the urgency of, and scope for, such costly signals.
5.6 Summary of the archaeological evidence
52
In short, I have tried to argue that the data supports an explanation for a great deal of the
artefactual record for which costly signalling theory is central; this does not commit me to any of
the competing theories which have sought to explain the cultural meaning of the FrancoCantabrian cave imagery or the Upper Palaeolithic from Europe where the main weight of the
interpretation of such artefacts falls upon ethnographic evidence. I am sceptical of such a
program. An account of the significance of Franco-Cantabrian cave imagery which is consistent
with its production as a type of costly signal is possible however. The representational imagery is
still viewed through the prism of the earliest theories of so-called “cave art” even though the artfor-arts-sake hypothesis was discredited nearly a century ago. The images were not produced to
satisfy the aesthetic of contemporary viewers but the motivation for their production is best
sought in the act of production itself. The manner of their production is inconsistent with the
intention to present images which are to be viewed in the same way as Michelangelo’s Sistine
Chapel ceiling in Rome or Giotto’s frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua: the images
display little respect for perspective or proportion, sequences of images are rarely connected by
any coherent narrative form and the surface of the walls of the caves themselves are palimpsests
of superimposed images which is hardly consistent with the imputed intention to depict an
individual subject or a scene composed by a collection of subjects (e.g. the “herd” of horses at
Chauvet). These characteristics are however what you would expect if the act of production was
more important that the product. The philosopher J.L. Austin coined the phrase “performative
utterance” to differentiate speech acts which did something in the speaking of them from those
speech acts which could be said to describe something by speaking (Austin, 1962, 5-6) He gives
as examples of the former linguistic formulae appropriate to naming (e.g. at baptism or launch
ceremonies), bequeathing and proposing a bet (in the contexts of the writing of a will and
speculating on an uncertain outcome respectively). In an analogous way, costly signalling theory
predicts that the meaning of parietal imagery, anthropomorphic three dimensional objects and all
the many other costly artefacts is the very act of production itself: it is a “performative
depiction”. Their value lay in the act of enduring the danger and discomfort of entering the
depths of the caves, investing time and effort in creating the images and incurring the
53
opportunity costs to inclusive fitness which such acts entailed for those whose hands held the
charcoal and ochre. The table contained in Fig 20 below is designed to illustrate the range of
signals and the preconditions for their effective expression.
Criteria
Mortality
Cost must be non- Death followed by
recuperable
interment and or
ritual cannibalism
Types of costly signal
Mutilation or
Aquatic
disfigurement
deposition of
votive offerings
Irremediable
Hydrologically
mutilation or
secure deposition
disfigurement
Sacrifice must be Impracticability of
hard to fake
feigning death
Fabrication/destruction
of ritual object
Ritualistic
compromising of the
integrity of the object
and/or time consuming
fabrication of object
(e.g. elaborately
decorated/
carved/sculpted or by
breaking/ smashing/
defacing etc., once
produced)
Integrity of object not
restorable by repair
Disability incurred
subject to daily
communal visibility
Sacrifice must be Total
loss
of Anatomical feature
of high value
reproductive fitness
critical for human
reproductive fitness
Deep riverine or
lacustrine
locations
Precious
metal/mineral or
otherwise high
status objects
Sacrifice must be Publically observable Proof of disability
publically
context of death
incurred (e.g. missing
observable
finger from painted
hand on cave wall)
Location must
admit of mass
observation
(aquatic refection
supports belief
that gods are also
observers)
Votive offerings Late Palaeolithic and
deposited in water Neolithic
(especially iron
age weaponry)
High opportunity costs
incurred by expending
high levels of
time/effort/
concentration on
production of
sacrificial object
Fabrication process
must be subject to high
public visibility
of fossil remains, of Parietal “art”
human burials and
evidence of ritual
non-nutritional
cannibalism
(Iron
Age bog-bodies?)
Fig. 21 Necessary and sufficient conditions for effective costly signalling practice and examples
signature in the archaeological record
Examples
Fossil/
artefactual
evidence
of
their
The currencies in which the costs of signalling are borne are many. They include the parietal
imagery discussed above, the amorphous figurines of the Upper Palaeolithic, the shattered
Neolithic figurines, the votive deposits of high status goods and weaponry in the Iron Age and,
one can surmise, a great deal of perishable food resources leaving no trace in the archaeological
record. It is also relevant here to ask if the so-called Iron Age bog bodies from northern Europe
54
are best explained as the ultimate costly signal. Although beyond my brief, complex societies
record the practice of valuable offerings to the gods in exchange for their beneficence and
preservation of the moral order
6.0 Fossil evidence
55
Fossil evidence which has a bearing on the growth of religiosity is of four kinds Firstly, the
tempo of the increase in cranial capacity since Australopithecus afarensis which is demonstrated
by fig. 21; secondly, cranial remains demonstrate the trend of an increase in size of the neo
cortex in the hominin clade (fig.22); thirdly, Fig. 23 illustrates the trajectory of the
encephalization quotient calculated from hominid fossils differentiated by taxon (and including
Pan) As it is a ratio of cranial capacity to body size, it is likely to be diagnostically more
significant of cognitive capacity than simple cranial capacity expressed in cubic
centimetres/millilitres; and fourthly, thresholds representing step changes in the levels of
intensionality reached over the same time frame as revealed by Robin Dunbar are included as
Fig.4. I will discuss these data sets in this sequence. Many of the metrics used here to illustrate
the increasing cognitive capacity of hominids have been criticised on the grounds that endocasts
have been more unreliable than assumed. Wiliam Kimbel summarises these problems well in his
review of a recent work on brain evolution in hominoids: “Plagued by poor preservation tiny
sample sizes, and the conspiracy of the meninges (the protective tissues sandwiched between the
brain and the inner surface of the brain case) to veil cerebral surface detail, endocasts are the
Rorschach tests of palaeoanthropology…” (Kimbel, 2005, 387) However, the graphs are
included here to demonstrate the general trajectory only.
6.1 Increased cranial capacity
The timing and tempo of the upward trajectory of cranial capacity calculated in cubic
centimetres is clearly indicated in Fig. 20 below. Aiello and Wheeler’s “expensive tissue
hypothesis” explains the mechanism that drove the two dramatic increases in brain expansion,
the first “around two million years ago from Australopithecines to H. erectus” and the “second
was a little more than half a million years ago, when Homo erectus became H. heidelbergensis”
(Wrangham, 2010, 113-114). Some researchers have cast doubt on attempts to date punctuational
events in the evolution of the brain (Schoeneman, 2006) but the evidence that step changes
occurred, at approximately these times and involving these species does seem persuasive. That
religiosity presupposes a minimum cranial capacity seems clear, what that threshold is, is not.
56
Nor is it clear that H. heidelbergensis had no concept of the supernatural bearing in mind that
some specimens had a cranial capacity well within the range of modern humans. When the fossil
data is evaluated in conjunction with the artefactual record, it would seem reasonable to suppose
that a minimum cranial capacity is a necessary condition for thinking religiously if not sufficient.
Most researchers agree that the threshold for relevant cognitive processing could only have been
reached with the advent of anatomically modern humans ca. 200,000 years ago.
Fig.22 Evolutionary trajectory of gross cranial capacity in the human
phylogeny (adapted from Aiello and Wheeler, 1995)
6.2 Increased size of neocortex
The pre-frontal, parietal and temporal lobes have all been implicated in religious thinking and
their expansion is well illustrated in Fig. 21 below. Religious (and non-religious) cognition has
been shown to engage the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (Harris, 2009); the temporal lobes have
for long been associated with hyper religiosity and several authors (e.g. Persinger, 1987) have
claimed to have identified this region of the brain as primarily implicated in heightened religious
states. These claims have been contested on the grounds that the frontal lobes have also to be
recruited in order to generate and manipulate concepts of agency both of the devotee and of the
divine (Atran, 2002, 186). I have alluded to the central role of the prefrontal cortex in religiously
sanctioned costly signalling behaviour in section 1.3 above.
57
Fig. 23 Evolved human cranial morphology illustrating the expansion and growth of the
neocortex. Note particularly the trajectory of the expanding frontal lobes.
(A) Pan troglodytes, chimpanzee, modern
(B) Australopithecus africanus, STS 5, 2.6 My
(C) Australopithecus africanus, STS 71, 2.5 My
(D) Homo habilis, KNM-ER 1813, 1.9 My
(E) Homo habilis, OH24, 1.8 My
(F) Homo rudolfensis, KNM-ER 1470, 1.8 My
(G) Homo erectus, Dmanisi cranium D2700, 1.75 My
(H) Homo ergaster (early H. erectus), KNM-ER 3733, 1.75 My
(I) Homo heidelbergensis, "Rhodesia man," 300,000 - 125,000 y
(J) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, La Ferrassie 1, 70,000 y
(K) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, La Chappelle-aux-Saints, 60,000 y
(L) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, Le Moustier, 45,000 y
(M) Homo sapiens sapiens, Cro-Magnon I, 30,000 y
(N) Homo sapiens sapiens, modern
6.3 Increase in brain mass to body mass ratio
Figure 24 below illustrates the trajectory and the tempo of step changes in the human clade. An
increase of from 0.5% to nearly 2.5% is recorded from Australopithicines to anatomically
modern humans. What is particularly striking is that, as Kappelman puts it “The most dramatic
changes occur with the appearance of modern Homo sapiens at about 100,000 years ago and
include a decrease in body mass and an increase in relative brain size that appears to have been
driven by selection for smaller body mass.” (Kappelman, 1996, 243)
58
Figure 24 Brain mass as a percentage of body mass
6.4 Increase in the levels of intensionality
Robin Dunbar’s comparative studies of primates and his extrapolation results to early hominins
(Fig.4) indicate that the ability to entertain levels of intensionality is largely a function of the size
of the frontal lobes. As I indicated in section 3.2 above, fourth level intensionality which
includes that of God in relation to the intentions of agents vis-à-vis the other members of the
group seems only to have been achieved by anatomically modern humans.
In summary, the fossil record reveals the trajectories of brain size, neocortex volume and levels
of intensionality explain why theistic religious cognition leaves no signature in the
59
archaeological record until thresholds were crossed with the advent of anatomically modern
humans.
60
7.0 Discussion
7.1 Distributed nature of religious cognition
Neural correlates of religiosity exist but, as I hope I have shown, are neural networks evolved to
accomplish very secular objectives but recruited to serve some very religious causes. Darwin
himself seemed to suggest that the emotional states and cognitive processes associated with
religiosity were highly distributed: ”The feeling of religious devotion is a highly complex one,
consisting of love, complete submission to an exalted and mysterious superior, a strong sense of
dependence, fear, reverence, gratitude, hope for the future, and perhaps other elements”
(Darwin, 1981, 68)
That the neural substrate recruited in religiosity is distributed and not localised is what would be
predicted if it is the case that religiosity is an exaptation, not an adaptation. Structures co-opted
for processes involving a religious content were originally evolved for other purposes. As Barrett
and Lanman aptly put it, “Religion springs naturally from the way ordinary human cognitive
systems interact with ordinary human social and natural environments.”(Barrett and Lanman,
2008, 110) Boyer outlines these cognitive systems which, “…deal with detection and
representation of animacy and agency, social exchange, moral intuitions, precaution against
natural hazards and understanding of misfortune.” (Boyer, 2003, 119) McNamara is himself
inclined to the view that the health benefits of religious belief do indeed justify what he calls a
biocultural adaptation. (Harris and McNamara, 2008) Echoing Bowles, the authors also
concluded that “…religiousness promoted healing in some individuals in ancestral
populations… (and)… promoted outgroup antagonisms in ancestral populations” (Harris and
McNamara, 2008, 79) I have tried to show that the human mind/brain was not adapted to gain
access to the, speciously, numinous. I remain persuaded of the case.
7.2 Costly signalling does not support an adaptationist argument
Costly signalling theory provides a sound theoretical bridge which links the neurological with
the archaeological: whether it is the time consuming sculpting of European Upper Palaeolithic
61
figurines; the enduring of the opportunity costs attendant on the dangerous practice of producing
parietal cave imagery; the materially costly votive offerings of the Early Holocene and the often
extravagant sacrifices of early complex societies. It offers an insight into the motivation behind
the energetically expensive behaviour of the Shamanic acolyte, as well as all manner of
behaviours which have not left a trace in the archaeological record while leaving a vivid
impression on the mind of the ethnographer of San !Kung and Australian aborigines. While I am
reluctant to see any credibility in the adaptationist case, I am not so certain that some version of
co-evolution might not turn out to be the case.
7. 3 costly signalling underlies the pervasiveness of Palaeolithic religiosity
The distinction casually drawn between the sacred and the profane by twentieth century
anthropologists and archaeologists seems increasingly spurious when applied to the preliterate
religious traditions of hunter gatherers of the Palaeolithic. All the sub-systems beloved of the
New Archaeology seem to have been imbued with religious beliefs; to say that the concept of
religiosity bleeds profusely into the other sub systems of subsistence, kinship, social structure
and so on, is an understatement – religiosity was positively haemophiliac.
Whitehead’s
distinction between imagistic and doctrinal modes of religiosity recruiting different memory
networks might map onto the religiosity of preliterate and complex societies respectively.
(Whitehouse, 2004; Whitehouse and McCauley, 2005)
7.4 Distributed nature of religious cognition undermines the neurotheological programme
The distributed nature of neurological features recruited for religious purposes has implications
for theist apologetics: a so-called God module does not exist therefore His existence cannot be
inferred from such a module.
7.5 Weaknesses in argument
I am painfully aware that this chain of argumentation has more than its fair share of weak links.
Some might argue that my operational definition of religiosity is bordering on parody as it
62
ignores the powerful effect it exercises on the expression of an individual’s ethical values, sense
of selfhood and relationship to the world into which were are – without consultation – thrown;
my depiction of the causal connection between the role of dopamine inhibitors and altruistic
behaviour will probably turn out to be too simplistic :many neurotransmitters are likely to be
recruited in religious behaviour. In a personal communication, McNamara, who is in the
forefront of research into neurotransmitters and religiosity, has encouraged me in my belief that
though the reward system is critical: “production of costly signals likely depends on many
neurotransmitters
but
I
agree
that
dopamine
is
central”
(Pers.
com.)
Prosociality is not underpinned solely by religious beliefs, practices and priests (kinship and nonreligious mechanisms which serve to reinforce “fictive kin” are significant but have no place in
this paper). I have tried to provide what seems the most plausible explanation for much of the
evidence in the archaeological record of ritual behaviour that can plausibly be attributed to
religiously underpinned, costly signalling practices. Finally, it must be acknowledged that it is
often impossible to distinguish between religiously sanctioned costly signals and non-religious
ones in the archaeological record. I have tried to be methodologically conservative in making
such attributions.
7.6 Limitations of analysis
It should be acknowledged that I have not sought a definitive answer to the question, “What are
the causes of religiosity and what unambiguously situates it palaeoarchaeologically.” There is no
single point in time or place that religiosity could reasonably be said to emerge. Durkheim,
writing at the turn of the twentieth century was prescient in this matter (as in so much else) when
he wrote that, “like any human institution, religion begins nowhere” (Durkheim, [1912], 2001,
9). However, perhaps he was a little too pessimistic. He hadn’t had the benefit of reading
McBrearty and Brooks’ groundbreaking paper on symbolic behaviour in Middle Stone Age
Africa (McBrearty and Brooks, 2000). As a sub-set of symbolic behaviours, we should not be
surprised to find archaeological evidence for religious practices in sub-Saharan Africa
contemporaneous with the Howeisons Poort and Still Bay industries. However, the dating of
63
such artefactual remains is a good deal more secure than attempts to explain the behavioural
context in which such remains were imbedded. I have attempted an explanation of why costly
signalling practices were conducted but I have not speculated on what the culturally determined
meanings of these practices and associated artefacts were. The following scenario seems broadly
correct and is suggested by the foregoing analysis. The increasing frequency of theistically
underpinned costly signalling in helping to solve the free rider problem seems to be correlated
with demographic variables of population density and post-African dispersal patterns which
seems to have been contemporaneous with the explosion of symbolism in the Upper Palaeolithic:
Hamilton’s Rule would have been less effective in securing reciprocal altruism when early
human group sizes had exceeded thresholds at which the members of early human groups could
rely upon their genetic relatedness to ensure co-operative behaviour and the disinclination to
defect in social transactions. It is a hypothesis which has yet to be tested but which is entirely
consistent with all data bearing on the emergence of religiosity in the archaeological record and
current estimates of population distribution patterns in the Palaeolithic. I believe my attempt to
provide some kind of chronology is plausible and merits further research and it is in the light of
this aspiration that I hope this paper will be judged. Finally, I am all too aware that-in spite of the
erroneous claims of the post-processualists that twenty-first century eyes can see the cultural
attributions of the Palaeolithic minds that lie behind them: our understanding of much of the
meaning of the symbolism of the past is for ever beyond our grasp. It is often those who study
the distant past who are most reluctant to accept the irretrievability of much of it. Our ability to
generate analogies to explain the past too often places a burden on prehistory that it cannot bear.
7.7 Tentative conclusion would be strengthened by further research:
7.71 To what extent is the incidence of costly signalling a function of the intensity of climatic and
social stress in the Palaeolithic?
If I am right, that religiously sanctioned costly signals are a mechanism for addressing the free
rider problem, then the theory would predict that the incidence of costly signals would be
64
positively correlated with periods of social stress when pressures to demonstrate costly signals of
group commitment would be greater. I am not aware of any studies which have sought to
establish such a correlation in the context of prehistory. The theory predicts a causal relationship
between the incidence of the kind of artefacts discussed in section 4.47 above and what would be
predicted if the producers were motivated by an intention to demonstrate a propensity to
reciprocal altruism through costly signalling as a result of higher levels of stress arising from
environmental, inter or intra-group conflict. Bowles’ work clearly points to inter-group conflict
as one determinant of such gestures of preparedness to produce altruistic behaviour. The
fabrication of costly time-consuming “artistic” endeavours and the practice of ritual
disfigurement etc. are likely to be highly correlated with such periods and anecdotal evidence
supports this linkage in prehistory as it does also for the incidence of such practices in complex
societies. What may turn out to be of greater significance is the demographic impact of
sedentism in the Neolithic if Verhoeven is correct (Verhoeven, 2004)
7.72 How highly correlated is the preparedness/demand to produce costly signals of cooperation
with other indices of the perceived reproductive fitness of the producers? Is there a demographic
profile unique to costly signallers?
The age and gender profiles of the fabricators of religiously sanctioned costly signals may be
instructive; preparedness to signal cooperation is likely to be highly correlated with other indices
of perceived reproductive fitness. Disentangling the artefactual evidence for costly signalling as
a non-indexical sign of group commitment from other functions of such signals such as signals
of reproductive fitness, demonstrations of status of individuals in groups structured
hierarchically, proofs of provenance and demonstrations of entitlement to group membership
rights is likely to be difficult, but would seem to be required if religiously inspired signals of
altruism are to be unambiguously identified in the archaeological record from background
cultural “noise”.
65
7.73 What determined the effectiveness of such costly signals (used as indices of predictably
cooperative behaviour) by individuals to other group members in the Palaeolithic?
I should like to see research which examines the effectiveness of the range of costly signals
which were used as indices of predictably cooperative behaviour by individuals to other group
members. Cox et al have demonstrated that the ability to recall the identity of those who have
and who have not cooperated in previous encounters is crucial in determining who and who not
to engage with, in such social transactions in the future: “In an isolated prisoner’s dilemma
game, unconditional defection is an evolutionarily stable strategy (Axelrod 1984). In the
repeated game, when strategies (strategists- sic?) are able to use past experience of previous
rounds, cooperation sometimes prevails.” (Cox et al, 1999, 370) Costly material signals
broadcast with considerable visual publicity or made in a manner calculated to render the agent
readily identifiable as a result of conspicuous body modification are two effective means of
ensuring that, as Cox et al suggest, “…cooperation can be sustained in large groups when there
are sufficient interactions on each round and players are able to base future play on their
observations of other players’ past actions.” (My emphasis) (Cox et al 369, 1999) There is
considerable supporting ethnographic evidence that such body modification functions in this way
(E.g. the lower lip plate-insertions of Mursi women in Ethiopia and the practice of circumcision
etc.,) Expensive expenditure of time or effort in a highly visible public domain constitutes much
of the evidence for costly signalling frequently underwritten by the activities of supernatural
agents whose omniscience permits them a more accurate assessment of the supplicants sincerity
than the human witnesses possess.
7.74 Were fragmented figurines apportioned to neighbouring settlements in the locality of the
site of fragmentation as a costly signal of commitment to inter-group not simply intragroup
cooperation?
There is evidence that fragmented figurines in the Neolithic were deliberately apportioned to
neighbouring settlements in the locality of the site of fragmentation. (Chapman, 2001) This
66
raises the intriguing possibility that their distribution was a costly signal of commitment to intergroup not simply intragroup cooperation.
7.75 Are religiously sanctioned costly signals a function of the demographic changes in the
composition and size of human groups after the dispersal from Africa?
An answer to the question “Why does evidence for theistic religiosity only emerge in the
archaeological record so long after the human genome had become fixed?” may be answered by
the demographic profile of early human groups. Only once Homo sapiens had left Africa, would
group size increase to the point where mechanisms needed to obviate the temptation to defect in
social transactions by members who were either very distantly related or entirely unrelated to the
majority of the group become necessary. Is Dunbar’s number pertinent here? It seems plausible
that costly altruistic signalling underpinned by the sanction of theism coevolved with the
associated social grooming function of language. Religious beliefs which centred on gods or
omnipotent ancestors, and for which the human brain is primed, were likely to have been readily
adopted by groups in excess of ca. 150 members. (Dunbar, 1993) These research questions and
issues of methodology are listed below in figure 26.
67
Research Questions
2
3
Religiously sanctioned CS Religiously
Propensity of
and periods of social stress
sanctioned
CS early human
correlated
with groups
to
indices of inclusive thrive as a
fitness
function
of
religiously
sanctioned CS
1
Research
Topic
Research
Question
Were periods of social stress
(when
pressures
to
demonstrate costly signals of
group commitment would be
greater) highly correlated
with the incidence of
religiously sanctioned CS in
the
Palaeolithic?
How
significant a causal factor
was the demographic impact
of sedentism with the onset
of the Neolithic?
How
highly
correlated was the
preparedness
to
signal cooperation
through religiously
sanctioned CS, with
other indices of
fitness?
How effective
were
such
costly signals
as indices of
predictably
cooperative
behaviour by
individuals to
other group
members in
the
Palaeolithic?
Research
Methodology
Identify
proxies
for
Palaeoclimatic
and
Palaeodemographic causes
of social stress (e.g. dietary
indicators such as dental
enamel
hypoplasia/ostiopathology/s
keletal isotopic profile). Map
spatio-temporal distribution
of proxies onto spatiotemporal
distribution
patterns
of
religiously
sanctioned CS data.
1. Can Palaeoclimatic and
Palaeodemographic factors
be
unambiguously
differentiated?
Is
it
necessary to differentiate
them?
2. Is it necessary to
distinguish proximal/ distal
and endogenous/ exogenous
causes?
2. Are there proxies for
palaeodemographic
contributory factors to social
stress?
Determine age and
gender profile of
makers of religiously
sanctioned CS in
Upper Palaeolithic
Identify
population
centres which
produced
religiously
sanctioned CS
and
those
which did not.
Did
they
prosper
differentially?
Anticipated
Problems
1.
Does
the Identifying
archaeological
unambiguous
record permit such proxies in the
attributions?
material
record
of
2.
How
much “prospering”
reliance would I groups would
have to place on be
ethnographic
problematic
analogy? I would be
reluctant to do this.
4
Incidence of
figurine
fragmentation
in
Upper
Palaeolithic
correlated
with
intergroup
cooperation
Were
fragmented
figurines
apportioned to
neighbouring
settlements as
a costly signal
of
commitment
to inter-group
not
simply
intra-group
cooperation?
Identify
distribution
patterns
of
fragmented
figurines and
correlate with
other indices
of cooperation
between
neighbouring
groups
5
Religiously
sanctioned
CS to solve
free
rider
problem as a
function of
the African
dispersal
Is religiously
sanctioned
CS, to solve
free
rider
problem, a
product
of
the African
diaspora post
dispersal?
Measure the
incidence
and
distribution
patterns of
religiously
sanctioned
CS
in
Palaeolithic
1. Does data
exist to enable
the
identification
of
such
distribution
patterns?
How can the
probable
degree
of
genetic
relatedness
of
early
human
groups
2. What “other before and
indices
of after
the
cooperation
African
between
dispersal be
neighbouring
established?
groups” in the
Palaeolithic
are available?
Fig. 25 Summary of research questions arising from this dissertation.
68
8.0 Summary and Conclusion
It is not my intention to argue in this dissertation that all artefactual evidence of ritual religious
behaviour is the product of costly signalling, nor, even more modestly, that most of it is. I am
suggesting that more of it might be than has hitherto been conceded. There is some dissonance
between what I had hoped to achieve when I started this dissertation and what the constraints of
theory and evidence permitted me to do: it was my intention to argue that the identification of the
inhibition of the reward system in the pre frontal lobes would be sufficient to explain its critical
role in the expression of altruistic behaviour; having established the status of altruistic behaviour
as a proxy of a public observable commitment to intra-group prosociality. I have tried to explain
how this behaviour might have been selected for in that costly signalling likely emerged as a
mechanism for resolving the free rider problem; I then tried to argue that such selection pressures
for cooperative behaviour and its regulation were recruited by a religiosity which served to
underpin it, but which was subverted to serve quite extraneous purposes. The foregoing
formulation might appear to be a nod in the direction of group selection. This is emphatically not
the case. That selection pressures operating at the individual level may well be seen as operating
at the level of the group is well explained by Plotkin: “traits that favour the group (may) have
higher fitness value for the ultimate survival of individuals in the group than traits that favour
the individual at the expense of the group” (Plotkin, 1997, 229) my emphasis. This process was
facilitated by those features of human developmental psychology which suggest the human mind
is strongly predisposed to believe in gods and the supernatural. Further support for this process
of the suborning of psychological predispositions, is provided by the role religiosity plays in
harnessing the predilection of human cognition for, among other things, minimally
counterintuitive representations, high levels of intensionality and a well developed hyperactive
agent detection device. The archaeological record is, in part, the residue of ancestral costly
signalling behaviour. Much of the archaeological evidence for ritual behaviour is most profitably
to be interpreted as costly signals of the predisposition of those responsible for the creation of
such artefacts to behave in a way which is consistent with what is understood to be the welfare of
the group to whom the fabricator of the artefact belongs. I have attempted to integrate the
69
archaeological and neurological data using costly signalling theory and in doing so I have tried to
realise this programme’s objectives by integrating both Palaeolithic archaeology and
Palaeoanthropology. The diagram below is intended to illustrate this programme.
Neuro-biology
Fixation of COMT gene which codes for catechol-O-methyltransferase
Inhibition of dopamine reward system making altruistic actions possible
Psychology
Beliefs in omniscient Gods (and ancestral
proxies) militates against defection in
social transactions-reinforcing the propensity
to cooperate and not to defect.
Anthropology
Costly signals are an indication of
sincere commitment to the group and
a preparedness to practice reciprocal
altruism
Archaeology
Artefactual record of costly signals (e.g. Parietal imagery, inhumation (later with grave goods) and
Palaeolithic/Neolithic figurines, Iron Age votive offerings etc.)
Fig. 26 Overview of integration of disciplines in an explanation of the
significance of the artefactual record in terms of costly signalling
I have tried to demonstrate that the neural substrate of religiosity is distributed and operates on a
number of levels of functionality: genetic, neurochemical and the gross morphological features
of the brain. Amongst these I have focused on the activation and inhibition of the dopamine
pathway as this regulates the effectiveness of behaviours which favour prosociality. As such, it
would have favoured those individuals who were predisposed to reciprocate altruistic acts rather
than defect in social transactions. My overview of the archaeological record suggests it is moist
effectively expressed within a religious context and I have attempted to indicate those features of
70
the archaeological and fossil record which evidence such behaviours. These would be expected
to constitute a critical part of that repertoire of “cultural buffering” behaviours which gave
modern humans an adaptive advantage in the European Upper Palaeolithic (Stringer, 2011) and
which was not shared with the relatively, and fatally, disadvantaged Neanderthals (Henke and
Tattersall, 2007).
Although Dr McNamara supports my general programme, he has warned of the difficulty
involved: “I think you are right to think that CST might be capable of integrating the
archaeologic and neurologic data (but) it will be a hard road to do that.” (Pers. Com.) This
dissertation marks only the beginning of the journey along this road, much work would need to
be done to establish the role of all the neurotransmitters involved and the extent to which costly
signalling explains the significance of the archaeological data I have discussed here.
What I have tried to argue, is that a human default belief in gods was recruited to address the free
rider problem in early human groups which had reached a size such that perceived genetic
relatedness was no longer effective in deterring defection and rewarding cooperation. McNamara
has indicated the enormous significance of this biological event in human evolution for the
prosociality of humanity:
“It may be that in the distant evolutionary past when the mutation that led
to the COMT polymorphism regulating aminergic, particularly
dopaminergic activity in the frontal lobes, our ancestors began to find that
it was unusually easy to feel inclined to affiliate and cooperate with
others.” (McNamara, 2006, 198)
Now that the true significance of the role of COMT in securing prosociality is understood,
further light will thrown on the origin of prosocial-man and the role religion has played in his
prehistory.
71
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Appendix 1 Copy of my criticisms of Dr Wengrow’s paper
Criticisms of Dr Wengrow’s paper*
1. You suggest Boyer’s explanation for the “stickiness” of counterintuitive concepts should be
born out by a significant distribution of monsters in the archaeological record, but is this a
misrepresentation of Boyer? Boyer talks about minimally counterintuitive concepts, not multiply
counterintuitive concepts which monsters embodying several species drawn from the domain of
“folk biology” would be. You admit that your definition admits of “blending elements from two
or more species” but is this what Boyer has in mind? Nowhere in your paper do you qualify the
notion of counterintuitive concepts with “minimally”.
2. Boyer does not argue that being counterintuitive is both necessary and sufficient for the
concept to gain cultural traction; if his claim is that it is only necessary for a concept to be
minimally counter-intuitive, then his claim is not inconsistent with the archaeological evidence
that different combinations/permutations are discontinuously present in the artefactual record
(both chronologically and geographically) This leaves open the operating of just those
“technological and institutional” variables you discuss in your paper. Boyer does though seem to
be maintaining that these other variables are psychological rather than material, and in this
respect, your paper has proved, for me, a valuable corrective to Boyer’s rather narrow range of
exclusively psychological causal factors in explaining the epidemiology of religious
representations.
In Religion Explained he says, “the (cultural concepts) that we find
widespread in many different cultures and at different times probably have some transmission
advantage, relative to several different mental dispositions.”(my emphasis) (Boyer, P. Religion
Explained, 2002, Vintage, London, 57)
3. One of your main criticisms of Boyer is that there is so little evidence of composite imagery
dating from the prehistoric / pre-urban/ pre-elite period which is not what would be predicted if
counterintuitive representations are a function of pan-human cognitive biases. Is this contention
not undermined by the fact that you have already conceded earlier in the paper that taphonomic
bias can be held responsible for this distortion of our understanding? You quote Napier
sympathetically in this regard on p.4
4. Am I correct in seeing the possibility of incorporating your approach into Stephen Shennan’s
published work† on the demographic determinants of cultural diffusion?
5. Boyer discusses the memorability of counterintuitive beliefs as embedded components of
narratives not as isolated phenomenon. Scott Atran would seem to acknowledge this where he
asks why, if counterintuitive beliefs are so memorable, they are not more ubiquitous: ”An answer
to this puzzle may lie in examining the memorability of an entire set of beliefs as a single unit
of transmission rather than individual beliefs”(my emphasis) (Atran, 2002, “In Gods We Trust”,
101,Oxford, OUP)
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*Wengrow, D., 2011, “Cognition, materiality and monsters: the cultural transmission of counterintuitive forms in Bronze Age societies”, Journal of Material Culture”, 16 (2) 1-9
† Powell, A., et al, 2009, “Late Pleistocene Demography and the Appearance of Modern Human
Behavior”, Science, Vol. 324, 1298-1301
Appendix 2: Limitations of Shaminstic explanation for Palaeolithic “cave art”
Firstly, the argument from analogy is not sound. The argument that you can infer the narrative
significance of imagery in places like Chauvet from similar images in San rock art in Africa
relies on the premise that practices familiar to present day San, for example, were identical to
those depicted in South African rock art. This identity would have to be established
independently of the evidence for the historic practices of the San but this data is not available to
us for Franco Cantabrian Palaeolithic imagery whereas it is corroborating evidence (oral
tradition and artefactual) for those who study south African rock art or Australian aboriginal art.
This argument from analogy is logically flawed. Steadman who is typical of those who champion
this analogous approach concedes at one point that, “Without knowledge of present day Bushmen
religion and ritual, the rich detail of the rock art images would certainly be lost to us.”
(Steadman, 2009, 86) yet seems unwilling to infer the logically entailed corollary that because
we have no comparable data from the descendants of the Chauvet cave image makers, we are not
in a position to make claims about their religion and ritual. The fact that he is able to speculate
about the narrative significance of San and Aboriginal rock art is because the ethnographic data
is available to him from those descended from the very people responsible for the imagery; this
is not the case with similar attempts to interpret the narrative significance of Franco-Cantabrian
rock images. Any information from the present day inhabitants of the Franco-Cantabrian region
would have absolutely no bearing on those images for reasons largely consequent from the
genetic unrelatedness of the latter with the former; they are not the same people nor were the
practices of the image makers of Chauvet transmitted to the ancestors of the present day
inhabitants of the region.
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Secondly, not only are the present day inhabitants of Australian and South African descended
from those who created the rock art, these present day descendants inhabit a similar ecological
niche to that of their forebears which makes such any interpretation they offer more likely to be
the case than not. The image makers of Chauvet and the present day inhabitants of the FrancoCantabrian region do not.
Thirdly, how likely is it that such radically different ecosystems would give rise to identical
ritual practices? The twentieth century tribesmen inhabiting desert/savannah ecology in southern
Africa are decidedly not occupying a niche identical to that of the Palaeolithic hunter gatherers in
the ice age ecology of the European Palaeolithic.
Fourthly, the ethnographic evidence drawn from South Africa and Australia is provided by
peoples (who for several reasons) we are entitled to believe are intimately familiar with the
religious and ritual significance of the creators of the rock art of the past; they practice those
same rituals. This continuity is entirely absent in putative European parallels.
Fifthly, the proportion of Franco-Cantabrian imagery devoted to scenes which have been held to
embody shamanistic practice is very small indeed. This is unlikely to be the case if the main
motivation of the Cro-Magnon cave painters was to record shamanistic practices.
Anthropomorphic imagery is rare, even when entopic images are included as being typically
anthropogenic in origin. If such imagery served shamanistic purposes this proportion would
surely be much greater. As well as constituting a very small proportion of the total images, their
depiction is often cursory and lacking the same attention to detail which depictions of animals
seemed to merit. Jean Clottes himself concedes that, “They deliberately chose to represent vague
humans, with few details or deformed features.” (bradshawfoundation.com/clottes.page4/php).
Finally, those caves which do contain anthropomorphic imagery and have the strongest claim to
represent shamanistic practices occur in spaces where there is very little evidence of
85
congregating humanity. In view of the very public context in which shamanistic activity take
place, these small and relatively unfrequented locations are not what would be predicted for
spaces that are centres of such activity. That the locations of these images are problematic for
any theory which emphasises the role of shamans in an explanation of Palaeolithic “cave art”, is
recognised by researchers such as Rossano, who finds it, “…intriguing how frequently cave
artists intentionally selected tiny, tight, difficult-to-reach recesses for their work.” (Rossano,
2007, 108) The calculated affect on the audience having observed the trance state of the socalled shaman seems critical to its effective functioning but evidence of this is absent in the
locations chosen to depict such rituals.
Countable text (- Abstract, Figs, Acknowledgements, Bibliography and Appendices) =
16499 words
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