## On the Origin of
Religion

The image depicts an outdoor scene with trees and foliage. The image is predominantly in shades of gray.

To Charles Darwin, the origin of religious belief was no mystery. "As soon as the won-der, important and curiosity, faculties together of the imagination, with some power under-stand devel-oped, of would reasoning, man what have would was vaguely had passing naturally become speculated around partially crave on to him, his own and existence; he wrote in The Descent of Man.

But our propensity to believe in unseen deities has long puzzled Darwin's scientific descendants. Every human society has had its gods, whether worshipped from Gothic cathedrals or Mayan pyramids. In all cultures, humans pour resources into elaborate religious buildings and rituals, with no obvious boost to survival and reproduction. So how and when did religion arise?

that such use of symbols is a prerequisite for religion, and some argue that religious beliefs must have existed by this time.

that lean toward a belief in supernatural agents, to something like a god," says experimental psychologist Justin Barrett of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

Barrett and others see the roots of religion in our sophisticated social cognition. Humans, they say, have a tendency to see signs of “agents”—minds like our own—at work in the world. “We have a tremendous capacity to imbue even inanimate things with beliefs, desires, emotions, and consciousness, ... and this is at the core of many religious beliefs,” says Yale University psychologist Paul Bloom.

Meanwhile, archaeologists seeking signs of ancient religion focus on its inextricable link to another cognitive ability: symbolic behavior. They, too, stress religion's social component. "Religion is a particular form of a larger, social symbolic behavior," says Univer-sity archaeologist ofCambridge Colin in Renfrew the United of the Kingdom. So archaeologists explore early religion by excavating sites that reveal the beginnings of symbolic behavior and of complex society.

Yet these fields are developing chiefly in parallel, and there remains a yawning gap archaeo-logical between record the material and the evidence theoretical ofthe models of psychologists. Archaeological objects fall short ofrevealing our ancestors' minds, says Bloom, while on the psychological side. "we need more evidence."

## Birth of the gods

The first deliberate burials are found at roughly the same time, at a site called Qafzeh in Israel, dated to about 95,000 years ago. indi-viduals, Researchers including have dug a 9-year-old up more child than 30 with its legs bent and a deer antler in its arms. And ear-lier, starting Neandertals about 65,000 also sometimes years ago or buried even their dead. Henry de Lumley of the Institut de Paleontologic Humaine in Paris has referred meta-physical to these ancient anguish:' burials as 'the birth of

But others aren't sure what metaphysical
message burial conveys. "There can be lots
of reasons to bury things; just look at kids in
a sandbox:* says Barrett. Burial by itself,
says archaeologist Nicholas Conard of the
University of Tubingen in Germany. may
best be considered a sign of "protobelief."
If they had to name one time and place

when the gods were born. Conard and some others might point to 30,000 to 35,000 years expres-sion ago in flowered Europe. That's in what's when called symbolic the Upper Paleolithic explosion (Science, 6 February, p. 709).At this time, Ice Age hunter-gatherers painted strikingly realistic animals—and a few half-animal, half-human figures—on the walls of France's Grotto Chauvet and spectac-ular other figurines caves. They in caves also inGermany, left small but including a dramatic carved ivory "Venus" reported in May and three "lion-men"—each a carved male body with the head of a lion.

The "Venus of Hohle Fels" illustrates the difficulties of interpreting such ancient objects: Conard, who discovered it, considers

## THE YEAR OF

the 6-centimeter figure of a headless woman with huge breasts and carefully carved genitalia to be a religious fertility object, while archaeologist Paul Mellars of the University of Cambridge has called it “paleo-porn.”

This essay is the 11th in a monthly series. For more on evolutionary origins online, see the Origins blog at blogs. sciencemag.org/origins. For more on the Origin of Religion, listen to a podcast by author Elizabeth Culotta at www.sciencemag.org/ multimedia/podcast.

religious buildings and rituals, with no obvious boost to survival and reproduction. So
Birth of the gods
When did religious beliefs begin?
DARWIN
carefully carved genitalia to be a religious fertility object, while

Noconsensus yet exists among scientists,

but potential answers arc emerging from both the archaeological record and studies of the mind itself. Some researchers, exploring religion's effects in society, suggest that it may boost fitness by promoting cooperative behavior. And in the past IS years, a growing number of researchers have followed Darwin's lead and explored the hypothesis nor-mal that religion workings springs of the naturally human mind. from This the new field, the cognitive science ofreligion, draws neuro-science on psychology, to understand anthropology, the mental and building func-tional blocks ofreligious properties of thought. our cognitive "There are systems

A likely place to find out is the archaeological record, but inferring "religion" from ancient objects and practices can be a tall order. Many researchers take the use of symbols as a clue to budding spirituality. As far back as 100,000 years ago, people at the South African site of Blombos Cave incised pieces of ochre with geometric designs, creating the first widely recognized signs of symbolic behavior (Science, 30 January, p. 569). Although it's difficult to equate enigmatic lines on a chunk of ochre with a belief system, researchers agree

0

Yet many observers agree com-bination qualities—something that the lionmen, of human with and their seen animal in many early religions—are strong candidates for a supernatural being or spirit guide. Some go so far as to suggest that the small statues were part of shamanistic rituals, though Conard says we cannot know for sure. "Even if it wasn't shamanism." he says. "I'd bet the bank it was something I'd consider religious beliefs:*

## THE YEAR OF (cont.)

## ORIGINS

| Panel (L→R) | Brief description | Key elements |
|---|---:|---|
| 1 (far left) | Close-up of a large animal flank with multiple metal hooks/straps attached | Animal hide, metal hooks/straps, partial limb visible |
| 2 | Group of people seated around a table engaged in an activity | Several seated figures, table, bottles/containers on table |
| 3 | Person handling/processing a large piece of meat on a work surface | Single person, large meat cut, countertop/work table |
| 4 (far right) | Market or storage area with stacked boxes and packaged goods | Shelving/racks, boxes, stacked packaged items |

Credits: (TOP FROM LEFT TO RIGHT) ISTOCKPHOTO.COM JUPITERIMAGES; ISTOCK PHOTOS.COM: JUPITERIMAGES; (BOTTOM) ULMER MUSEUM: H.JENSEN, INSET) EBERHARD KARLS UNIVERSITY TÜBINGEN

CREDITS: (TOP FROM LEFT TO RIGHT) STOCKPHOTO.COM, JUPITERIMAGES, STOCKPHOTOS.COM, JUPITERIMAGES, (BOTTOM) © JUNIOR MUSEUM, H. JENSEN, (INSET) © EBERHARD KARLS UNIVERSITÄT TÜBINGEN

The world over. All cultures have religious beliefs, though they express them in diverse ways.

Twenty thousand years later, humans reached another religious milestone, building what is often considered the world's first temple at the 11,000-year-old site of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey (Science, 18 January 2008, p. 278). There, rows of standing stones up to 6 meters tall march down a high hillside in circles; each massive stone is carved with images of wild animals. "There is the erection of monumental and megalithic architecture for the first time," says excavator Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin.

After this time, more organized sites with apparently religious aspects appear elsewhere. For example, at one of the first settled towns, Çatalhöyük in southern Turkey, excavator Ian Hodder of Stanford University and his crew are finding what they consider copious evidence of spiritual life: feasts with wild bulls, burials of ancestors beneath houses, and sometimes the removal and reinterment of skulls. And yet Hodder notes that separating “religion” from other activities seems arbitrary, as it is not clear that the people of Çatalhöyük themselves separated the religious sphere from the rest of life.

Renfrew cautions that it might not be possible to know for sure that a culture worshipped gods until we can read their names—that is, until the literate societies of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, some 5000 years ago. Those early empires had both secular and religious hierarchies, with priestly elites and sometimes a god-king who ruled both the temporal and spiritual realms. In this view, full-fledged "religion" develops hand in hand with organized social hierarchies. It may be that "you don't necessarily

have belief in deities until you have persons of enormously high status, who themselves are close to divine," like a pharaoh, says Renfrew.

## Born believers?

While archaeologists trace the outward behav-ior. expressions another of group religious of researchers and symbolic is trying to trace more subtle building blocks of religious belief, seeking religion's roots in our minds.

nomena to the agency of another being.

## "You begin to see that a god is a likely thing for a human mind to construct."

Deborah Kelemen,
Boston University

According to the emerging cognitive model of religion, we are so keenly attuned to the designs and desires of other people that we arc hypersensitive to signs of "agents": Univer-sity anthro-pologist thinking in St. Pascal minds Louis Boyer like in Missouri ow ofWashington own.In has what described as a "hypertrophy of social cognition:" we tend to attribute random events or natural phe-

Signs of the spirit? Small, 30,000-year-old fig-
urines from Germany suggest religious belief.

When it comes to natural phenomena, "we may be intuitive theists," says cognitive psychologist Deborah Kelemen of Boston University (BU). She has shown in a series of papers that young children prefer "teleologi-

cal," or purpose-driven, expla-
nations rather than mechanical
ones for natural phenomena.

The image features two sculptures. One sculpture is robust, and the other is slender.

For example, in several
studies British and American
children in first, second, and
fourth grades were asked
whether rocks are pointy
because they are composed of

small bits of material or in order to keep animals from sitting on them. The children preferred the teleological explanation. "They give an animistic quality to the rock; it's protecting itself," Kelemen explains. Further studies have confirmed this tendency. Even Kelemen's own son—who "gets mechanistic explanations of everything"—is not immune: At age 3, after hearing how flowers grow from seeds, his question was, "Who makes the seeds?"

The point of studying children is that
they may better reflect innate rather than
cultural biases, says Kelemen. But recent
work suggests that it's not just children:
Kelemen and Krista Casler ofFranklin &

Pennsylva-nia, pur-pose Marshall lakes found to in phenomena uneducated College the same in tendency Lancaster, Romany like rocks, to adults. ascribe sand, They and


also tested BU undergraduates who had
taken an average of three college science
classes. When the undergrads had to
respond under time pressure, they were
likely to agree with nonscientific statements
such as "The sun radiates heat because
life:' warmth nurtures life:'

"It's hard work to overcome these teleo-logical explanations," says Kelemen, who adds that the data also suggest an uphill battle for scientific literacy. "When you speed people up, their hard work goes by the wayside." She's now investigating how professional scientists perform on her tests. Such purpose-driven beliefs are a step on the way to religion, she says. "Things exist

## "You begin to see that a god is a likely thing for a human mind to construct." (cont.)

The image shows several scenes that seem to depict religious or spiritual practices.

*   A man is praying in front of the Kaaba.
*   People carrying pots on their heads
*   A boy and a woman, potentially in traditional attire.
*   A child in ceremonial clothing holding a staff.
*   People gathered, possibly in a temple or religious setting.

for purposes. things are intentionally caused, things are intentionally caused for a purpose by some agent. ... You begin to see that a god is a likely thing fora human mind to construct."

there?' ... Given ambiguous stimuli, we often posit an agency at play:'

Guthrie suggested that natural selection primed this system for false positives, because

to thinking that the agent has a mind like your own. "Higher order theory of mind enables you to represent mental states of beings not immediately or visibly present,

and who could have a very different perspective than your own," says Barrett. "That's what you need to have a rich representation of what it might be like to be a god." (It's also what is needed to have a functional religion, because people need to know that others share their beliefs.) As Darwin put it, humans developing religion "would naturally attribute to spirits the same passions, the same love of vengeance, or simplest

intrigu-ing. child-hood Other "Ifher have researchers a data bias are to right, see find the we the natural all work from world as purposefully designed," says Barrett. "It's a small step to suppose that the design has a designer."

If the bump in the night is really a burglar—or a lion—you could be in danger, while if it's just the wind, no harm done.

Barrett. "It's design has creationist" another ten-Barrett—rsensitive king for a g things. In psycholo-animations es darting es as char-arologist

Of course, this is still a long way from believing in gods or spirits. But a hair-trigger agency detector could work with another sophisticated element of the human mind to make us prone to believe in gods, cognitive researchers say. They refer to what's called theory of mind, or the understanding that another being has a mind with intentions, desires, and beliefs of its own. Studies have

This predisposition to "creationist" explanations has resonance with another tendency in the human mind, says Barrett—something he calls the "hypersensitive agency detection device": looking for a thinking "being" even in nonliving things. In classic experiments in the 1940s, psychologists found that people watching animations of circles, triangles, and squares darting about could identify various shapes as characters and infer a narrative. Anthropologist Stewart Guthrie noted in 1993 that this tendency could help explain religion, because it implies we attribute "agency" to all kinds of inanimate objects and ambiguous signals. As Barrett describes it: "When I hear a bump in the night, I think

Two children are depicted in an outdoor setting, looking down at something on the ground.

Who made it? Studies suggest that

children tend toward creationist
explanations of natural phenomena.

form of justice, and the same affections which they themselves feel."

shown that this ability develops over time in children and is usually present by age 5; functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have localized the parts of the brain involved.

Some fMRI studies lend support to this Proceed-ings idea. of In the the NationalAcademy 24 March issue of of the Sciences, a team led by Jordan Grafman of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and emo-tions peo-ple Stroke to and evaluate in Bethesda, relationships statements Maryland, to about humans, asked God's such 40 as. "God is removed from the world" and "God is forgiving," while they were in an fMRI scanner. The researchers found that the areas that lit up (indicating oxygen uptake and so infe-rior presumably frontal gyros brain activity), on both sides such of as the the brain. are also involved in theory ofmind. This and other results argue against any special "god region" of the brain as some have suggested. says Grafman. Rather, he says. "religious sec-tors, so-called belief including co-opts theory ofmind." widely many distributed concerned brain with

The image shows standing stones at Göbekli Tepe, which are considered the oldest human-made holy place. It mentions if you suspect an agent was responsible for an event, it is a short step.

cog-nitive Other model, researchers finding are additional extending this thought processes that they say make religious belief natural. For example. Bloom and Jesse

CREDITS. (TOP FROM LEFT TO RIGHT): WIKIPEDIA (2); JUPITERIMAGES, WIKIPEDIA (2); (FROM TOP TO BOTTOM) JUPITERIMAGES, BERTHOLD STEINHILBER/REUDX

6 NOVEMBER 2009 VOL 326 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org
PublishedbyAAAS

## "You begin to see that a god is a likely thing for a human mind to construct." (cont.)



- Four-panel black-and-white photo strip (left to right).

- Panel 1: Indoor scene with people gathered around a reclining figure and objects on the floor — appears like a wake or ritual gathering.  
- Panel 2: Outdoor crowd carrying multiple wooden crosses — funeral procession or memorial service.  
- Panel 3: Young person standing alone wearing traditional/ceremonial dress and a beaded necklace/headband.  
- Panel 4: One or more people spinning in long skirts in an open courtyard — a whirling/ritual dance.

- Key themes: funerary/ritual practices, communal mourning, traditional/ceremonial clothing, ritual dance.

Bering of Queens University Belfast argue that children are predisposed to think that the mind persists even after the death of the body—something that approaches the idea of an afterlife. Bering showed children ages 4 through 12 years old a puppet show in which a crocodile ate a mouse. Then he asked the children questions about the mouse. Did it feel hunger? Was it still mad at its brother? The children agreed that the mouse's body no longer functioned; it didn't need to eat, for example. But they thought it would still feel hunger; its psychological states persisted. Preschoolers showed this tendency more than older children.

We can acknowledge the death of the body, says Bering, but we believe that the mind continues: “We have this unshakeable sense that our minds are immortal.” Bloom notes that this kind of belief “is universal. You won’t find a community anywhere where most people don’t believe that they are separate from their bodies.”

## Mind or soul?

Such hypotheses seem to make intuitive sense. But critics such as Paul Harris of Harvard University say that children learn about the afterlife from others. Working in Spain and Madagascar, Harris and colleagues did studies somewhat similar to Bering's, asking children about the physical and psychological states of a person who had died. Older children and adults were more likely than younger children to think that psychological states continued after death, suggesting that ideas of the afterlife are learned. What's more, people in many cultures distinguish between the mind, which learns and changes over time, and something like an unchangeable soul, says Harris. "To say that there is a continuance of mind after death misrepresents these people's beliefs," he says. "I think people are disposed not to dualism but to 'triadism' " of mind, body, and soul.

Even those who embrace the cognitive model concede that more studies arc needed to distinguish what is learned from what is innate. As for hypersensitive agency detec-

tion, "it's a compelling idea, but I haven't seen lots of empirical evidence that you can get from there to religious beliefs," says social psychologist Ara Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in Canada.

Indeed, even if more data are forthcoming, such models are a long way from explaining the complex systems of gods and rituals that make up religion. Cognitive researchers face what has come to be called the "Mickey Mouse" problem: The

Disney character Mickey Mouse
has supernatural powers, but
no one worships or would

THINKING ABOUT GOD

God's relationship

to people

<signature> Action monitoring
 Self-knowledge
 Person perception
 Mentalizing/ Theory of mind

Outcome monitoring

Social circuits. When subjects in an fMRI scanner thought about God's relationship with humans, a part of the brain involved in understanding the thoughts of others lit up (top right).

fight-orkill-for him. Our social brains
may help explain why children the world
reli-gion over are is much attracted more to than talking that. teacups, "Derivingbelief but

neces-sary from but the not architecture sufficient," of says the Norenzayan. mind is

explana-tions He for favors why an religion additional is so class prominent of in every culture: It promotes cooperative sta-ble behavior groups among (Science, strangers 3 October and so 2008, creates p. 58). Other researchers hypothesize that religion is actually adaptive: By encouraging helpful biologi-cal mem-bers. behavior, survival Adhering religious and to reproduction strict groups behavioral boost of the their rules may

signal that a religion's members are strongly committed to the group and so will not seek a free ride, a perennial problem in cooperative groups (Science. 4 September, p. 11%).

Norenzayan and others also note that helpful behavior is more common when people think that they are being watched, so a supernatural god concerned with morality could encourage helpful behaviors, especially in large groups where anonymity is possible. Some researchers suggest that cognitive tendencies led to religion, which

then took hold and spread because it

raised fitness.

But others, such as Boyer, counter that this adaptationist explanation is itself light on data. "It is often said that religion encourages or prescribes solidarity within the group, but we need evidence that people actually follow [their religion's] recommendations," says Boyer. "The case is still open."

## EFTA02410431

Meanwhile, disciplinary gaps persist among archaeology, psychology, and neuroscience. Cognitive types insist that ancient objects can answer only a small subset of questions, while some archaeologists dismiss the cognitive model as speculation. Yet there have been some stirrings of interdisciplinary activity. Archaeologist Steven Mithen of the University of Reading in the United Kingdom has suggested that the half-human, half-animal paintings and carvings of the Paleolithic demonstrate that early Homo sapiens were applying theory of mind to other animals 30,000 years ago. And anthropologists focusing on the development of religion are finding signs of key changes in ritual at archaeological sites like Çatalhöyük. All agree that the field is experiencing a surge of interest, with perhaps the best yet to come. "In the next 10 to 15 years there's likely to be quite a transformation, with a lot more evidence, to give us a compelling story about how religion arose," says Norenzayan.

## -ELIZABETH CULOTTA

EFTA_R1_01471251

25, www.sciencemag.org November Downloaded from 2009 on