Evolutionary origin of religion

They demonstrate long periods of silence and mourning at the point of death; later, elephants return to grave sites and caress the remains.

The cerebral neocortex is presumed to be responsible for the neural computations underlying complex phenomena such as perception, thought, language, attention, episodic memory and voluntary movement.

[12] Robin Dunbar argues that the critical event in the evolution of the neocortex took place at the speciation of archaic Homo sapiens about 500,000 years ago.

His study indicates that only after the speciation event is the neocortex large enough to process complex social phenomena such as language and religion.

The study is based on a regression analysis of neocortex size plotted against a number of social behaviors of living and extinct hominids.

Philip Lieberman states "human religious thought and moral sense clearly rest on a cognitive-linguistic base".

[24] Transcending the continuity-versus-discontinuity divide, some scholars view the emergence of language as the consequence of some kind of social transformation[25] that, by generating unprecedented levels of public trust, liberated a genetic potential for linguistic creativity that had previously lain dormant.

A very specific social structure—one capable of upholding unusually high levels of public accountability and trust—must have evolved before or concurrently with language to make reliance on "cheap signals" (words) an evolutionarily stable strategy.

The animistic nature of early human language could serve as the handicap-like cost that helped to ensure the reliability of communication.

The attribution of spiritual essence to everything surrounding early humans served as a built-in mechanism that provided instant verification and ensured the inviolability of one's speech.

Although morality awareness may be a unique human trait, many social animals, such as primates, dolphins and whales, have been known to exhibit pre-moral sentiments.

According to Michael Shermer, the following characteristics are shared by humans and other social animals, particularly the great apes: attachment and bonding, cooperation and mutual aid, sympathy and empathy, direct and indirect reciprocity, altruism and reciprocal altruism, conflict resolution and peacemaking, deception and deception detection, community concern and caring about what others think about you, and awareness of and response to the social rules of the group.

Based on the size of extant hunter-gatherer societies, recent Paleolithic hominids lived in bands of a few hundred individuals.

By including ever-watchful ancestors, spirits and gods in the social realm, humans discovered an effective strategy for restraining selfishness and building more cooperative groups.

Cognitive scientists underlined that religions may be explained as a result of the brain architecture that developed early in the genus Homo in the course of the evolutionary history of life.

Collective religious belief draws upon the emotions of love, fear, and gregariousness and is deeply embedded in the limbic system through socio-biological conditioning and social sanction.

Specifically, rituals, beliefs, and the social contact typical of religious groups may serve to calm the mind (for example by reducing ambiguity and the uncertainty due to complexity) and allow it to function better when under stress.

[52] Although the exact time when humans first became religious remains unknown, research in evolutionary archaeology shows credible evidence of religious/ritualistic behavior from around the Middle Paleolithic era (45–200 thousand years ago).

Philip Lieberman states "burials with grave goods clearly signify religious practices and concern for the dead that transcends daily life.

[58] Philip Lieberman states: Burial rituals incorporating grave goods may have been invented by the anatomically modern hominids who emigrated from Africa to the Middle East roughly 100,000 years agoMatt Rossano suggests that the period between 80,000 and 60,000 years before present, following the retreat of humans from the Levant to Africa, was a crucial period in the evolution of religion.

Archeologist Steven Mithen contends that it is common for religious practices to involve the creation of images and symbols to represent supernatural beings and ideas.

Due to the association of art and religion, evidence of symbolism in the fossil record is indicative of a mind capable of religious thoughts.

Wentzel van Huyssteen states that the translation of the non-visible through symbolism enabled early human ancestors to hold beliefs in abstract terms.

Some scientists, such as Richard Klein and Steven Mithen, only recognize unambiguous forms of art as representative of abstract ideas.

Organized religion traces its roots to the Neolithic Revolution that began 11,000 years ago in the Near East, but may have occurred independently in several other locations around the world.

The transition from foraging bands to states and empires precipitated more specialized and developed forms of religion that reflected the new social and political environment.

Organized religion emerged as a means of providing social and economic stability through the following ways: The states born out of the Neolithic Revolution, such as those of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, were theocracies with chiefs, kings and emperors playing dual roles of political and spiritual leaders.

[36] Following the Neolithic Revolution, the pace of technological development (cultural evolution) intensified due to the invention of writing 5,000 years ago.

Printing, invented only over a thousand years ago, rapidly increased the speed of communication and became the main spring of cultural evolution.

With the advent of writing, information that was not easy to remember could easily be stored in sacred texts that were maintained by a select group (clergy).