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Concept
Evolutionary origin of religion
Summary
The evolutionary origin of religion and religious behavior is a field of study related to evolutionary psychology, the origin of language and mythology, and cross-cultural comparison of the anthropology of religion. Some subjects of interest include Neolithic religion, evidence for spirituality or cultic behavior in the Upper Paleolithic, and similarities in great ape behavior.
Religious behavior in animals
Humanity's closest living relatives are common chimpanzees and bonobos. These primates share a common ancestor with humans who lived between six and eight million years ago. It is for this reason that chimpanzees and bonobos are viewed as the best available surrogate for this common ancestor. Barbara King argues that while non-human primates are not religious, they do exhibit some traits that would have been necessary for the evolution of religion. These traits include high intelligence, a capacity for symbolic communication, a sense of social norms, and realization of "self" continuity. There is inconclusive evidence that Homo neanderthalensis may have buried their dead, which would be evidence of mortuary ritual. The use of burial rituals is thought to be evidence of religious activity, but there is no other evidence that religion existed in human culture before humans reached behavioral modernity. Other lines of evidence have revealed that Homo neanderthalensis made cave art, which would require a high level of symbolic thinking paralleling religious thought.
Elephants perform rituals for their dead. They demonstrate long periods of silence and mourning at the point of death; later, elephants return to grave sites and caress the remains. Some evidence suggests that many species grieve death and loss.
In this set of theories, the religious mind is one consequence of a brain that is large enough to formulate religious and philosophical ideas. During human evolution, the hominid brain tripled in size, peaking 500,000 years ago. Much of the brain's expansion took place in the neocortex.
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