Abstract
This paper examines three ancient traits of religion whose origins likely date back to the Upper Paleolithic: ancestor worship, shamanism, and the belief in natural and animal spirits. Evidence for the emergence of these traits coincides with evidence for a dramatic advance in human social cooperation. It is argued that these traits played a role in the evolution of human cooperation through the mechanism of social scrutiny. Social scrutiny is an effective means of reducing individualism and enhancing prosocial behavior. Religion’s most ancient traits represent an extension of the human social world into the supernatural, thus reinforcing within-group cooperation by means of ever-vigilant spiritual monitors. Believing that the spirits were always watching may have helped reduce the number of non-cooperators within a group while reinforcing group behavioral norms, thus allowing humanlike levels of cooperation to emerge.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alexander, R. (1987). The biology of moral systems. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Alcorta, C. S., & Sosis, R. (2006). Ritual, emotion, and sacred symbols: The evolution of religion as an adaptive complex. Human Nature, 17, 323–359.
Alvard, M. S. (1994). Conservation by native peoples: Prey choice in a depleted habitat. Human Nature, 5, 127–154.
Atran, S. (2002). In gods we trust. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Atran, S., Medin, D., Lynch, E., Vapnarsky, V., Ucan Ek’, E., Coley, J., et al. (2002). Folkecology, cultural epidemiology, and the spirit of the commons: A garden experiment in the Maya Lowlands, 1991–2001. Current Anthropology, 43, 421–450.
Atran, S., Medin, D., Ross, N., Lynch, E., Coley, J., Ucan Ek’, E., et al. (1999). Folkecology and commons management in the Maya Lowlands. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 96, 7598–7603.
Bahn, P., & Vertut, J. (1988). Images of the ice age. Leicester: Windward.
Balée, W. (1999). Siriono. In R. B. Lee & R. Daly (Eds.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers (pp. 105–109). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Balter, M. (2000). Paintings in Italian cave may be oldest yet. Science, 290, 419–421.
Barrett, J. L. (1998). Theological correctness: Cognitive constraints and the study of religion. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 11, 325–339.
Barrett, J. L. (2000). Exploring the natural foundations of religion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 29–34.
Barrett, J. L., & Keil, F. C. (1996). Anthropomorphism and God concepts: Conceptualizing a non-natural entity. Cognitive Psychology, 31, 219–247.
Barrett, J. L., Richert, R., & Driesenga, A. (2001). God’s beliefs versus mother’s: The development of non-human agent concepts. Child Development, 72, 50–65.
Baumeister, R. F., & Tice, D. M. (1984). Role of self-presentation and choice in cognitive dissonance under forced compliance: Necessary or sufficient causes? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 5–13.
Beatty, A. (1999). Varieties of Javanese religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Begouen, R., & Clottes, J. (1986–1987). Le grand felin des trois-freres. Antiquites Nationales, 18–19, 109–113.
Bering, J. (2002). Intuitive conceptions of dead agents’ minds: The natural foundations of afterlife beliefs as phenomenological boundary. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2, 263–308.
Bering, J. (2004). The evolutionary history of an illusion: Religious causal beliefs in children and adults. In B. J. Ellis & D. F. Bjorklund (Eds.), Origins of the social mind (pp. 411–437). New York: Guilford Press.
Berndt, R. M., & Berndt, C. N. (1964). The world of the first Australians. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bingham, P. M. (1999). Human uniqueness: A general theory. Quarterly Review of Biology, 74, 133–169.
Bird-David, N. (1999). Nayaka. In: R. B. Lee & R. Daly (Eds.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers (pp. 257–260). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Boehm, C. (1999). Hierarchy in the forest. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Boehm, C. (2000). Conflict and the evolution of social control. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7, 79–101.
Boyd, R., Gintis, H., Bowles, S., & Richerson, P. J. (2003). The evolution of altruistic punishment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 100, 3531–3535.
Boyer, P. (2001). Religion explained. New York: Basic Books.
Brightman, R. A. (1993). Grateful prey: Rock cree human–animal relationships. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bruce, S. (2001). God is dead: Secularization in the west. London: Blackwell.
Bunting, R. (1997). The pacific raincoast: Environment and culture in an American Eden, 1770–1900. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.
Burch, E. S., & Csonka, Y. (1999). Caribou Inuit. In R. B. Lee & R. Daly (Eds.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers (pp. 56–60). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burnham, T., & Hare, B. (2007). Engineering human cooperation: Does involuntary neural activation increase public goods contributions in adult humans? Human Nature, doi:10.1007/s12110-007-9012-2.
Buss, A. H. (1980). Self-consciousness and social anxiety. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
Butzer, K. W. (1971). Environment and archaeology. Chicago: Aldine Atherton.
Calvin, W. H. (1993). The unitary hypothesis: A common neural circuitry for novel manipulations, language, plan-ahead, and throwing. In K. R. Gibson & T. Ingold (Eds.), Tools, language, and cognition in human evolution (pp. 230–250). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Campbell, J. (1983). The way of animal powers. Historical atlas of world mythology (vol. 1). San Francisco: Harper and Row.
Chauvet, J., Deschamps, E. B., & Hillaire, C. (1995). La grotte chauvet. Paris: Seuil.
Clottes, J. (1992). L’archaeologie des grottes ornees. La Recherche, 239(23), 52–61.
Clottes, J., & Lewis-Williams, D. (1998). The shamans of prehistory: Trance and magic in painted caves. New York: Abrams Press.
Cohen, D., & Vandello, J. (2001). Honor and “faking” honorability. In R. Nesse (Ed.), Evolution and the capacity for commitment (pp. 163–185). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Conklin, B. A. (2001). Consuming grief: Compassionate cannibalism in an amazonian society. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Connors, S. M. (2000). Ecology and religion in karuk orientations toward the land. In G. Harvey (Ed.), Indigenous religions (pp. 139–151). London: Cassell.
Dahlberg, A. A., & Carbonell, V. M. (1961). The dentition of the magdalenian female from Cap Blanc, France. Man, 61, 49–50.
Davenport, D., & Jochim, M. A. (1988). The scene in the shaft at lascaux. Antiquity, 62, 558–562.
de Beaune, S. (1995). Les hommes au temps de lascaux. Paris: Hachette.
de Beaune, S. (1998). Chamanisme et prehistoire. L’Homme, 147, 203–219.
de Waal, F. B. M., & Luttrell, L. M. (1988). Mechanisms of social reciprocity in three primate species: Symmetrical relationship characteristics or cognition? Ethology and Sociobiology, 9, 101–118.
Dickson, B. (1990). The dawn of belief. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Diener, E., & Srull, T. K. (1979). Self-awareness, psychological perspective, and self-reinforcement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 413–423.
Dowson, T., & Porr, M. (2001). Special objects–special creatures: Shamanic imagery and aurignacian art. In N. Price (Ed.), The archaeology of shamanism (pp. 165–177). London: Routledge.
Dugatkin, L. A. (2001). Subjective commitment in nonhumans: What should we be looking for, and where should we be looking? In R. Nesse (Ed.), Evolution and the capacity for commitment (pp. 120–137). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Dugatkin, L. A., & Wilson, D. S. (1993). Fish behaviour, partner choice experiments and cognitive ethology. Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, 3, 368–372.
Dunbar, R. (1988). Primate social systems. London: Croom Helm.
Durkheim, É. (1965). The elementary forms of the religious life. New York: Free Press. Trans. by Joseph Ward Swain (Originally published in 1912).
Duval, S. (1976). Conformity on a visual task as a function of personal novelty on attitudinal dimensions and being reminded of the object status of self. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 12, 87–98.
Eder, J. F. (1999). Batak. In R. B. Lee & R. Daly (Eds.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers (pp. 294–297). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eliade, M. (1972). Shamism: Archaic techniques of ecstasy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Eliade, M., & Couliano, I. P. (1991). The eliade guide to world religions. San Francisco: Harper Collins.
Engelmann, D., & Fischbacher, U. (2002). Indirect reciprocity and strategic reputation building in an experimental helping game. Working Paper 132, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics. University of Zurich.
Evans, E. M. (2001). Cognitive and contextual factors in the emergence of diverse belief systems: Creation versus evolution. Cognitive Psychology, 42, 217–266.
Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2003). The nature of human altruism. Nature, 425, 785–791.
Fehr, E., & Gächter, S. (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature, 415, 137–140.
Fehr, E., & Tyran, J.-R. (1996). Institutions and reciprocal fairness. Nordic Journal of Political Economy, 67, 133–144.
Fehr, E., Fischbacher, U., & Gächter, S. (2002). Strong reciprocity, human cooperation, and the enforcement of social norms. Human Nature, 13, 1–25.
Field, M. J. (1961). Religion and medicine of the Ga People. London: Oxford University Press.
Fortes, M. (1959). Oedipus and job in west Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Freedman, M. (1965). Lineage organization in Southeastern China. New York: Athone Press.
Freedman, M. (1970). Ritual aspects of Chinese kinship and marriage. In M. Freedman (Ed.), Family and kinship in Chinese society (pp. 164–179). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Freeman, L. G., & Echegaray, G. (1981). El Juyo: A 14,000-year-old sanctuary from Northern Spain. History of Religions, 21, 1–19.
Frontinus, S. J. (1961). De aquae ductu urbis Romae. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Trans. by Charles Bennett.
Gardner, P. M. (1999). Paliyan. In R. B. Lee & R. Daly (Eds.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers (pp. 261–264). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gintis, H. (2000). Strong reciprocity and human sociality. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 206, 169–179.
Guenther, M. (1999). From totemism to shamanism: Hunter–gatherer contributions to world mythology and spirituality. In R. B. Lee & R. Daly (Eds.), Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers (pp. 426–433). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gurven, M., Allen-Arave, W., Hill, K., & Hurtado, M. (2000). It’s a wonderful life: Signally generosity among the ache of Paraguay. Evolution and Human Behavior, 21, 263–282.
Guthrie, S. E. (1993). Faces in the clouds. New York: Oxford University Press.
Halifax, J. (1982). Shaman: The wounded healer. London: Thames and Hudson.
Hallowell, A. I. (1975). Ojibwa ontology, behavior, and world view. In D. Tedlock & B. Tedlock (Eds.), Teachings from the American earth (pp. 141–178). New York: Liveright.
Hardman, C. E. (2000). Rites of passage among the Lohorung Rai of East Nepal. In G. Harvey (Ed.), Indigenous religions (pp. 204–218). London: Cassell.
Harvey, G. (2000). Indigenous religions. London: Cassell.
Hawkes, K., & Bird, R. B. (2002). Showing off, handicap signaling, and the evolution of men’s work. Evolutionary Anthropology, 11, 58–67.
Hayden, B. (2003). Shamans, sorcerers, and saints. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Books.
Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Fehr, E., Gintis, H., et al. (2001). In search of Homo economicus: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies. American Economic Review, 91, 73–78.
Horton, R. (1960). A definition of religion and its uses. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 90, 201–226.
Howells, W. (1948). The heathens: Primitive man and his religion. New York: Doubleday.
Hume, L. (2000). The dreaming in contemporary aboriginal Australia. In G. Harvey (Ed.), Indigenous religions (pp. 125–138). London: Cassell.
Hultkrantz, A. (1967). The religions of the American Indians. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hultkrantz, A. (1973). A definition of shamanism. Temenos, 9, 25–37.
Hultkrantz, A. (1994). Religion and environment among the Saami. In T. Irimoto & T. Yamada (Eds.), Circumpolar religion and ecology (pp. 347–374). Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.
Iizuka, T. (1995). The kingdom of earth and wood: The San’nai Maruyama site. Japan: Jomon Film Production Company.
Irons, W. (2001). Religion as a hard-to-fake sign of commitment. In R. Nesse (Ed.), Evolution and the capacity for commitment (pp. 292–309). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Jang, S. J., & Johnson, B. R. (2001). Neighborhood disorder, individual religiosity and adolescent use of illicit drugs: A test of multilevel hypotheses. Criminology, 39, 109–143.
Keesling, R. (1982). Kwaio religion: The living and the dead in a Solomon Island society. New York: Columbia University Press.
Keil, F. C. (1979). Semantic and conceptual development: An ontological perspective. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Kelemen, D. (2003). British and American children’s preferences for teleo-functional explanations of the natural world. Cognition, 88, 201–221.
Kelemen, D. (2004). Are children “intuitive theists”? Reasoning about purpose and design in nature. Psychological Science, 15, 295–301.
Kirkpatrick, L. (1997). A longitudinal study of changes in religious belief and behavior as a function of individual differences in adult attachment style. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 36, 207–217.
Kirkpatrick, L. (1998). God as a substitute attachment figure. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 961–973.
Klass, M. (1995). Ordered universes: Approaches to the anthropology of religion. Boulder: Westview Press.
Kleck, R. E., Vaughn, R. C., Cartwright-Smith, J., Vaughn, K. B., Colby, C. Z., & Lanzetta, J. T. (1976). Effects of being observed on expressive, subjective, and physiological responses to painful stimuli. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43, 1211–1218.
Klima, B. (1988). A triple burial from the upper Paleolithic of Dolni Vestonice, Czechoslovakia. Journal of Human Evolution, 16, 831–835.
Kuper, H. (1961). An African aristocracy: Rank among the Swazi. London: Oxford University Press.
Lansing, J. S. (1991). Priests and programmers: Technologies of power in the engineered landscape of Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Larsson, L. (1987–1988). A construction for ceremonial activities from the late Mesolithic. Archaeological Institute Papers 7. Lund: University of Lund.
Larsson, M. (1985–1986). Bredasten: An early ertelolle site with a dwelling structure in South Scania. Archaeological Institute Papers 6. Lund: University of Lund.
Laurendeau, M., & Pinard, A. (1962). Causal thinking in the child. New York: International Universities Press.
Lee, R. B. (1979). The !Kung San: Men, women, and work in a foraging society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lee, R. B., & Daly, R. (1999). Introduction: Foragers and others. In R. B. Lee & R. Daly (Eds.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers (pp. 1–22). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lee, R. B., & Daly, R. (Eds.) (1999). The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Leroi-Gourhan, A. (1968). The evolution of paleolithic art. Scientific American, 218, 58–70.
Lett, J. (1999). Science, religion, and anthropology. In S. D. Glazier (Ed.), Anthropology of religion (pp. 103–120). Westport: Praeger.
Lewis-Williams, J. D. (1986). Cognitive and optical illusions in san rock art. Current Anthropology, 27, 171–177.
Lewis-Williams, J. D. (2002). The mind in the cave. London: Thames and Hudson.
Lewis-Williams, J. D., & Dowson, T. (1988). The signs of the times: Entoptic phenomena in upper paleolithic art. Current Anthropology, 29, 201–245.
Lohmann, R. I. (2003a). The supernatural is everywhere: Defining qualities of religion in Melanesia and beyond. Anthropological Forum, 13, 175–185.
Lohmann, R. I. (2003b). Turning in the belly: Insights on religious conversion from New Guinea gut feelings. In A. Buckser & S. D. Glazier (Eds.), The anthropology of religious conversion (pp. 109–121). New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Lommel, A. (1967). Shamanism: The beginning of art. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Mellars, P. (1996). The neanderthal legacy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
McBrearty, S., & Brooks, A. (2000). The revolution that wasn’t: A new interpretation of the origin of human behavior. Journal of Human Evolution, 39, 453–463.
Merrill, R. M., Salazar, R. D., & Gardner, N. W. (2001). Relationship between family religiosity and drug use behavior among youth. Social Behavior and Personality, 29, 347–358.
Milinski, M., Semmann, D., & Krambeck, H.-J. (2002). Reputation helps solve the tragedy of the commons. Nature, 415, 424–426.
Miller, W. (1990). Bloodtaking and peacemaking: Feud, law, and society in Saga Iceland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Nelson, R. (1993). Searching for the lost arrow: Physical and spiritual ecology in the hunter’s world. In S. R. Kellert & E. O. Wilson (Eds.), The biophilia hypothesis (pp. 201–228). Washington, DC: Island Press.
Nilsson, M. P. (1950). The Minoan–Mycenaean religion and its survival in Greek religion. New York: Biblo and Tannen.
Nowak, M. A., & Sigmund, K. (1998). Evolution of indirect reciprocity by image scoring. Nature, 393, 573–577.
Oberg, K. (1973). The social economy of the tlinglit Indians. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
O’Shea, J., & Zvelebil, M. (1984). Oleneostrovski mogilnik: Reconstructing the social and economic organization of prehistoric foragers in Northern Russia. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 3, 1–40.
Owens, D., & Hayden, B. (1997). Prehistoric rites of passage: A comparative study of transegalitarian hunter–gatherers. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 16, 121–161.
Parrinder, G. (1976). African traditional religions. Westport: Greenwood Press.
Piaget, J. (1933). Children’s philosophies. In C. Murchison (Ed.), A handbook of child psychology (pp. 534–547). Worchester: Clark University Press.
Platvoet, J. G. (1993). African traditional religions in the religious history of humankind. Journal for the Study of Religion, 6, 29–48.
Price, T. D., & Brown, J. A. (1985). Prehistoric hunter–gatherers: The emergence of cultural complexity. Orlando: Academic Press.
Radin, P. (1937). Primitive religion. New York: Viking.
Rappaport, R. A. (1968). Pigs for the ancestors. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Rappaport, R. A. (1999). Ritual and religion and the making of humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rasmussen, K. (1929). The intellectual culture of the Iglulik Eskimos. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske.
Reichel-Dolmatoff, G. (1978). Drug-induced optical sensations and their relationship applied to art among some Columbian Indians. In M. Greenhalgh & V. Megaw (Eds.), Art and society (pp. 289–304). London: Duckworth.
Richerson, P., & Boyd, R. (1998). The evolution of human ultra-sociality. In I. Eibl-Eibisfeldt & F. Salter (Eds.), Indoctrinability, ideology, and warfare: Evolutionary perspectives (pp. 71–95). New York: Berghahn Books.
Roes, F. L., & Raymond, M. (2003). Belief in moralizing gods. Evolution and Human Behavior, 24, 126–135.
Roth, A. E., Prasnikar, V., Okuno-Fujiwara, M., & Zamir, S. (1991). Bargaining and market behavior in Jerusalem, Ljubljana, Pittsburgh, and Tokyo: An experimental study. American Economic Review, 81, 1068–1095.
Saler, B. (1977). Supernatural as a western category. Ethos, 5, 31–52.
Sandarupa, S. (1996). Life and death in Toraja. Ujung Pandang: Tiga Taurus Ujung Pandang.
Saski, H., & Nagasaki, H. (1989). The mental distance: Its differences in educational circumstances. Journal of Human Development, 25, 1–10.
Sawada, M. (2001). Rethinking methods and concepts of anthropological studies of African pygmies’ world view: The creator—god and the dead. African Study Monographs, 27(Suppl), 29–42.
Scheel, D., & Packer, C. (1991). Group hunting behavior of lions: A search for cooperation. Animal Behavior, 41, 711–722.
Sethi, R., & Somanathan, E. (1996). The evolution of social norms in common property resource use. American Economic Review, 86, 766–788.
Smuts, B. B., Cheney, D. L., Seyfarth, R. M., Wrangham, R. W., & Struhsaker, T. T. (1987). Primate societies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sober, E., & Wilson, D. S. (1998). Unto others: The evolution and psychology of unselfish behaviors. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Sosis, R. (2000). Religion and intragroup cooperation: Preliminary results of a comparative analysis of utopian communities. Cross-Cultural Research, 34, 71–88.
Sosis, R., & Bressler, E. (2003). Cooperation and commune longevity: A test of the costly signaling theory of religion. Cross-Cultural Research, 37, 211–239.
Srejovic, D., & Babovic, L. (1983). Umetnost lepenskog vira. Belgrade: Izdavachi Zavod.
Srejovic, D., & Letica, Z. (1978). Vlasac: A mesolithic settlement in the iron gates. Monographs of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 62. Belgrade: Department of Historical Sciences 5.
Stearman, A. M. (1994). Only slaves climb trees: Revisiting the myth of the ecologically noble savage in Amazonia. Human Nature, 5, 339–357.
Sterelny, K. (1996). The return of the group. Philosophy of Science, 63, 562–584.
Sterelny, K. (2003). Thought in a hostile world: The evolution of human cognition. London: Blackwell.
Stolle, D. (2001). Clubs and congregations: The benefits of joining an association. In K. S. Cook (Ed.), Trust in society (pp. 202–244). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Swezey, S., & Heizer, R. (1993). Ritual management of salmonid fish resources in california. In T. C. Blackburn & K. Anderson (Eds.), Before the wilderness (pp. 299–327). Menlo Park: Ballena Press.
Tice, D. M. (1992). Self-concept change and self-presentation: The looking glass self is also a magnifying glass. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 435–451.
Townsend, J. B. (1999). Shamanism. In S. D. Glazier (Ed.), Anthropology of religion (pp. 429–469). Westport: Praeger.
van Lawick-Goodall, J. (1968). The behavior of free-living chimpanzees in the gombe stream reserve. Animal Behavior Monographs, 1, 161–311.
Van Der Sluys, C. M. I. (1999). Jahai. In R. B. Lee & R. Daly (Eds.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers (pp. 307–311). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vandiver, P., Soffer, O., Klima, B., & Svoboda, J. (1989). The origins of ceramic technology at Dolni Vsetonice, Czechoslovakia. Science, 246, 1004.
Vanhaerena, M., & d’Errico, F. (2005). Grave goods from the saint-germain-la-riverere burial: Evidence for social inequality in the upper paleolithic. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 24, 117–134.
Vergote, A. (1969). The religious man. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.
Vitebsky, P. (1993). Dialogues with the dead: The discussion of mortality among the sora of Eastern India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vitebsky, P. (2000). Shamanism. In G. Harvey (Ed.), Indigenous religions (pp. 55–67). London: Cassell.
Walker, W. H. (2001). Ritual technology in an extranatural world. In M. B. Schiffer (Ed.), Anthropological perspectives on technology (pp. 87–106). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
de Waal Malefijt, A. (1968). Religion and culture. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press.
Wedekind, C., & Milinski, M. (2000). Cooperation through image scoring in humans. Science, 288, 850–852.
Westergaard, G. C., Liv, C., Haynie, M. K., & Suomi, S. J. (2000). A comparative study of aimed throwing by monkeys and humans. Neuropsychologia, 38, 1511–1517.
White, R. (1993). Technological and social dimensions of “aurignacian age” body ornaments across Europe. In H. Knecht, A. Pike-Tay & R. White (Eds.), Before Lascaux (pp. 277–299). Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Wilkinson, G. S. (1984). Reciprocal food sharing in the vampire bat. Nature, 308, 181–184.
Wilson, D. S. (2002). Darwin’s cathedral. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Winkelman, M. (1990). Shamans and other “magico-religious” healers: A cross-cultural study of their origins, nature, and social transformation. Ethos, 18, 308–352.
Woodward, M. R. (2000). Gifts for the sky people: Animal sacrifice, head hunting and power among the Naga of Burma and Assam. In G. Harvey (Ed.), Indigenous religions (pp. 219–229). London: Cassell.
Worl, R. (1999). Inupiat. In R. B. Lee & R. Daly (Eds.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers (pp. 61–65). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Dr. Jane Lancaster, James Myers, and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful critiques of the manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rossano, M.J. Supernaturalizing Social Life. Hum Nat 18, 272–294 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-007-9002-4
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-007-9002-4