Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: The evolution of religious behavior

Anthropologists have repeatedly noted that there has been little theoretical progress in the anthropology of religion over the past fifty years.(1-7) By the 1960s, Geertz(2) had pronounced the field dead. Recently, however, evolutionary researchers have turned their attention toward understanding the selective pressures that have shaped the human capacity for religious thoughts and behaviors, and appear to be resurrecting this long-dormant but important area of research.(8-19) This work, which focuses on ultimate evolutionary explanations, is being complemented by advances in neuropsychology and a growing interest among neuroscientists in how ritual, trance, meditation, and other altered states affect brain functioning and development.(20-26) This latter research is providing critical insights into the evolution of the proximate mechanisms responsible for religious behavior. Here we review these literatures and examine both the proximate mechanisms and ultimate evolutionary processes essential for developing a comprehensive evolutionary explanation of religion.