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Aliza Winneg

Anth 040H
Final Project
11/6/2014
The Importance of Moralizing Spirits and Ritual in Early Religions

Religion and the cognitive strengths that encourage the belief in the supernatural is a truly
human characteristic. However, there exists much debate among non-adaptionists who believe
that humans had the cerebral capacity for these religious beliefs and that these beliefs have built
on other adaptions in contrast to adaptionists who place emphasis on the cohesive social benefits
of religion (Sanderson 2008). To attempt to understand the impact of religion on human
cognition and group cohesion one must recognize that its discussion in an evolutionary context
has often been avoided due to its sensitive and polarizing nature. This review will first explore
the conditions that arose to foster and create the need for moralizing components and ritualistic
elements in society. Then it will explore the impact of integral aspects of early religion on human
cognition and social cohesion in two sections: Moralizing Gods and Collective Ritual. The
discussion of moralizing gods will explore the characteristics of sprits and ancestors with a
moralizing component and its impact on group cohesiveness, the social pressure that they
provide and instances of taboos and norms bolstered by these spirits that benefitted societies
through resource management. The discussion of collective ritual will explore the impact on
cultural transmission that ritual provides, as well as the dedication, commitment and groupcohesion provided by costly religious ritual. Finally the role of Shamanism will be discussed as a
connecting force between the moralizing gods and spirits and collective ritual.

Moralizing Gods
The rise of religion can be seen in the Upper Paleolithic as hunter gathering groups
exhibited more advanced tool use, more complex hunting strategies and larger group sizes that
led to an increase in specialized social groups and organization (Rossano 2007). There are two
major hypotheses in the explanation of the rise of moralizing or high gods, that of social
stratification and that of increased group population as a whole. According to Swanson as
societies gained more specialization of hierarchical organization in sovereign groups the
existence of a high god in these societies increased in order to maintain order. Swanson found
in a study of 50 preliterate societies from the World Ethnographic Sample that in societies with
two sovereign groups 11 percent contained a high god, in societies with three sovereign
groups 78 percent contained a high god and in groups with four or more sovereign groups
91 percent contained a high god (Sanderson & Roberts 2008).
However, Roes and Raymond suggest that there is a positive correlation between society
size and belief in moralizing gods rather than social stratification. They base this hypothesis on
Alexander (1987) in that humans moved to large group sizes when groups began to compete in
more plentiful environments causing an advantage for larger groups who would in turn persist
against the smaller weaker group. Large groups provided protection, cooperative hunting,
sharing of resources and information. However there are many conflicts and struggles that arise
from the increase in group size. With larger group sizes there are increased instance of violence
and war as well as an increased chance that the group will splinter apart due to internal conflicts.
This provides the need for a moralizing component to keep groups cohesive (Roes & Raymond
2003).
As group population size increased a need arose for a more powerful aspect to control and et up
norms for such a large group of people. The component of a moralizing god, as manifested

through spirits or ancestors provided a tool that could encourage group cohesion and cooperation
(Rossano 2007). A moralizing spirit provides many benefits that arise from its impartial,
omnipresent and everlasting characteristics. Firstly, the moralizing components need to be
unbiased and to not allow uneven profit among group members. This moralizing job needs to go
to an impartial omniscient god who does not hold ulterior motives. The moralizing god also takes
on an immortal aspect so that these rules and norms have greater staying power and can last
through multiple generations through inhibiting an immortal factor (Roes & Raymond 2003).
Finally, the spiritual aspect of a god or an ancestor has an omnipresent view that allows believers
to feel like a belief in a supernatural being could represent how our actions effect each other from
a third party perspective that provides more understanding, cooperation and altruism (Boyer &
Bergstorm 2008).

Another aspect of the supernatural presence that induces group cooperation and inspires
altruism and reciprocity is of the social pressure that a moralizing god provides. Many believe
that if there is someone who is watching them that they will act more honorably.
supernaturalizing social pressure may have been one of the strategies that tipped the balance
against individual selfishness, thus permitting uniquely human levels of cooperation to
emerge(Rossano 2007). The spirits can provide punishments from a third party perspective that
would lightly punish deterrence and deviation from group norms (Rossano 2007). Although
spirits may also provide aspects of punishment they conversely attribute factors of credibility to
community members who may follow collective rituals or commit a charitable act for the their
moralizing god that will add respect and credulity to their person (Henrich 2009).

Spirits and ancestors both provide strict norms, taboo and encourage logical behavior. Spirits
have been found to encourage logical behavior in the study of one aboriginal group who cited the
spirits as the main motivation for their circular movement to find new food sources that
corresponded with the seasons rather than actual food resource availability (Grinde 1998). The
spirits provided a logical component that would provide more motivation and ethos than the
average community member could provide.
Logical norms induced by spiritual support also exhibited itself in the aspect of food
resource management. The Itza Maya in Gualtemala believe that the spirits are intertwined with
all of the creatures and plants of the forest. They believe that these spirits take the role of
protector of these resources. So if someone violates these creatures and mismanages their
resources they must speak to a higher power. This belief may provide greater skills of resource
management that would increase the fitness of the population and enforce norms to control the
population. Spirits also play an important role in the encouragement of resource management for
the Native Americans around the Klameth River who perform rituals to indicate the harvesting
season to deter from one group dominating the others resources. Those who went against these
rituals faced consequences from the spiritual world, which would spell dastardly consequences
for the group. These norms in regards to resource protection that had the increased power of
spiritual authority led to the maintenance of species of fish that populated the river even though
the groups of Native Americans had the capability to consume the entire population. Currently
without these social norms in place (among other reasons), 30 species of salmon in the area are
endangered (Rossano 2007). Moralizing gods and spirits provide an omnipresent force that
enforces group norms and taboos, provides motivation for group altruism and reciprocity and
enforces logical decision-making.

Collective Ritual
Collective ritual is another important aspect in the formation of religion in societies.
Collective ritual, especially those that have a cost attributed to them, help to promote group unity
and commitment while encouraging the cultural transmission of the groups cultures and ideals.
Groups may have incorporated spirits to provide a moralizing and more emotionally invested
aspect to their rituals.
Firstly, collective ritual provides a source for displaying commitment to a group that can be
easily transmitted, especially those rituals that encourage cultural learning and adherence to
beliefs and ideas that increase group unity which are favored by competition (Henrich 2009).
An important aspect of the collective ritual is its ability to be transmitted. This can be
achieved by the rituals repetition and rigid nature but it also an aspect that allows the ritual to
stand out. According to those from the non-adaptive perspective, ritualization arises from the
human minds disposition to retain patterns that grab the attention (through colors, masks,
dances) and that may be associated with invisible danger(Boyer &Bergstorm 2008). Ritualism
retains its power of transmission through counterintuitive aspects that increase the chance of
transmission through retaining memories.
For example, Children have a natural tendency to believe in supernatural beings.
Religion has many counterintuitive aspects that go against the natural order of things (i.e.
talking totems). These violations of the natural order are memorable due to divergence from the
norm, which makes it easier for them to be transmitted. These counterintuitive aspects of
religion are difficult to recreate. Most people if they heard something contradictory to nature
would mentally change the idea to something natural that they were more used to. So these

spiritual and counterintuitive rituals need to be learned, through oral transmission and thus
encouraging religious ritual and that involves group membership (Alcorta & Sosis 2005).

Transmission by ritual also occurs through the emotional and threatening aspect of
religion through costly ritual. Linard and Boyer suggest that rituals are associated with the
cognitive response to a potentially hazardous situation. Collective ritual share aspects that would
naturally ignite a response, although weaker, to a possibly dangerous situation so that the ritual
can stand out and encourage cultural transmission. Rituals activate the hazard-precaution
system by mimicking or having a connection with dangerous cues and signals that would
actually occur in the environment. Rituals are often mandatory and have consequences for
nonparticipation because real life events such as deaths, health and wars with other groups have
become connected with the ritual. A connection is then formed between the danger that is warned
about in the ritual and the ritual heightening the cognitive response to a potential real life
dangerous situation (Linard & Boyer).
This idea of a costly ritual, especially associated with rites of passage and group
initiation rites provides aspects that encourage group cohesion and commitment while
simultaneously encouraging memory and cultural transmission through the emotional power that
surrounds the act. Group cohesion is encouraged through the costly act by its public nature. If
people can show that they have a commitment to a group they will more likely cooperate with
their newly gained credibility. In a study done by Sosis and Ruffle they found that costly ritual
increases commitment to cooperation. In a study done in kibbutz they found that when given a
monetary sum more people contributed to the communal pot if they had gone to more group

rituals (Henrich 2009). Those who had attended the rituals felt a sense of community and would
fear personal scrutiny if they did not donate to the communal pot.
Costly ritual provides a sense of commitment that enhances community. According to
Sosis, costly religious rituals are important because they are hard to fake and encourage
community through commitment to a communal emotional hardship felt by the ritual. Those who
participate in costly ritual and develop strong beliefs through their obvious display of
commitment are less likely to find these rituals as a burden; this display of commitment induces
trust (Sanderson 2008). These bonds of trust provided by costly ritual often hold more
importance due to their emotionally and physically taxing nature. Participating in rituals that
involve costly acts are pertinent to enforcing commitment and have more power than secular
ideas. Secular ideas can be proven untrue easily (are easy to fake) and do not require the same
amount of devotion. Once religious beliefs are committed to, and through the pain of costly act
and ritual this devotion has more staying power, they can encourage group cooperation more
than secular ideas (Henrich 2009).
Costly religious ritual maintains a strong emotional response often elicited through fear
and pain. This provides a greater adherence to group commitment. Religious ritual elicits both
positive and negative stimuli especially through the use of music and rhythm. The fearful
elements of religion, through intense drumming, frightful masks create an emotional response to
danger especially in the cases of rights of passage. Religious objects and rituals are now
intertwined with deep emotional experience and the gods and spirits now have emotional
significance from the communal ritual with a shared experience of emotion and now have more
of a motivational effect (Alcorta & Sosis 2005).

These extremely painful and costly acts can be seen in the ethnographies of communities
in Papua New Guinea. New Guinea Highlands use frightening rituals to gain group commitment
that eventually promotes identity and a more successful group ----- in areas where there are
multiple groups there is increased warfare and with this comes costly rites to prepare boys for
war which encourages cooperation to cause survival (Henrich, 2009). One group, in northern
Papua New Guinea, the Orokaiva display a series of emotionally and physically taxing initiation
rites and rituals for the boys of the community as a rite of passage. The initiation is performed in
various steps. They include isolation, forced avoidance of bathing, being beaten by men dressed
as spirits and immense suffering. The cognitive importance of these rituals is that the memories
will remain with these boys all of their lives and their commitment will be guaranteed due to the
strong emotional connection associated with the events (Whitehouse 2000). The boys will now
feel as though they are fully integrated part of the community and will have learned skill to
increase their chances survival.
Shamanism, one of the oldest aspects of religious activity, provides a link between
intense ritual and cooperation with the spirit world. Winkelman states that shamanism appears
across most hunter-gathering cultures (Winkelman 2000). According to Rossano, shamans are
called prior to important community outings or during a time of strife within the community and
create a sense of unity and protection. The Shaman used their connection to the spiritual world to
garner a sense of ethos. Through their connection to the spirits they can maintain and attach
supernatural pressure to social norms further increasing the cohesiveness of a community
(Rossano 2007).
Moralizing gods and costly religious rituals both encourage group cohesion especially as
groups became larger in population size. The belief in moralizing gods, spirits and ancestors

provided an outside force to provide norms and taboos for a large population while providing
motivation to act altruistically with the belief that something is always watching through social
pressure. Collective ritual, especially costly religious ritual, provided counterintuitive aspects
that allowed for increased cultural transmission as well as encouraged successful group cohesion
through painful often hard to fake public commitments.
The two different perspectives, the adaptionist and the non-adaptionist views, make
finding a concrete and absolute theory for the role of religion difficult. The adaptionists utilize
the evidence of the positive health roles of religion, the universality of the shaman and the high
birth rates associated with religion to support the role of religion in natural selection. On the
other hand scholars such as Pascal Boyer and Scott Atran attest that humans cognitive ability to
recognize counterintuitive elements and to ascribe agency and meaning to things that one does
not understand to support their position that religious aspects came as a by-product of other
cognitive adaptions (Sanderson 2008). For further research to continue both perspectives must
keep the other in mind to create a fuller understanding of religions role in furthering group
cohesion.

Works Cited
Alcorta, C. (2005). Ritual, emotion, and sacred symbols :the evolution of religion as an adaptive
complex. Human Nature : An Interdisciplinary Biosocial Perspective, 16(4), 323-359.
Boyer, P., & Linard, P. (2006). Precaution systems and ritualized behavior. Behavioral and
Brain Sciences, 29, 635-635. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X06009575

Boyer, P. (2008). Evolutionary perspectives on religion. Annual Review Of Anthropology, 37111130

The Biology of Religion: A Darwinian Gospel Bjrn Grinde, Journal of Social and Evolutionary
Systems (21)1:19-28 (1998) JAI Press, Inc.
Henrich, J. (2009). The evolution of costly displays, cooperation and religion :credibility
enhancing displays and their implications for cultural evolution. Evolution And Human
Behavior, 30(4), 244-260.
Roes, F. (2003). Belief in moralizing gods. Evolution And Human Behavior, 24(2), 126-135.
Rossano, M. (2007). Supernaturalizing social life :religion and the evolution of human
cooperation. Human Nature : An Interdisciplinary Biosocial Perspective, 18(3), 272-294.
Stephen K. Sanderson, Adaptation, evolution, and religion, Religion, Volume 38, Issue 2, June
2008, Pages 141-156, ISSN 0048-721X, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2008.01.003.
Sanderson, S. K. (2008). The evolutionary forms of the religious life: a cross-cultural,
quantitative analysis.American Anthropologist, 110(4), 454-466.
Whitehouse, H. (2000). Indigenous Religions of Papua New Guinea. In Arguments and Icons.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Winkelman, M. (2000). Shamanism the neural ecology of consciousness and healing. Westport,
CT: Bergin & Garvey.
Wilson, D. (2002). The View from Evolutionary Biology. In Darwin's Cathedral. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.

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