Week 9

Question 1

Rituals:

Answer 1

§ All socities have rituals.
§ Its a human universal.
§ Non-human animals have ritualistic behaviours.
§ Much more literature on it, different perspectives,
definitions etc.

Question 2

Four clusters of research:

Answer 2

Health:
o	OCD, anxiety, PTSD, depression etc.
o	Clinical disorders.
o	Treatment.
o	Symptoms
o	Prevelance 

Comunity Health:
o US based.

Conext and Risk

Evolution
o	Cultural
o	Politics
o	Archiology 
o	Power
o	Age
o	Religion 
o	gender

Question 3

Key Words within clusterd in reaserch:

Answer 3

§ Motor themes: centralised key word clusters,
interconnected and maturing of research overtime.
§ Niche very clear themes, coherent and not central.
§ Basic themes: central but not clearly differentiated
themes.
§ Emerging or declining themes: not central and not
coherent.

*all the work on behaviour evolution is central but is not a
cohesive field as of yet. Skill development prevelance
research (health) is very central and internally cohesive
(emerging motor theme).

Question 4

What are the most important citations within these fields in the recent years?
sources

Answer 4

§ Pink cluster is older anthropological works (classic or
traditional theory).
§ Yellow cluster is modern evolution perspectives
which reflect on classic anthropological works (pink
and yellow are interconnected).
§ Purple cluster: clinical, methodological issues,
symptoms and classification issues.

*there is a dviersity of perspectives on ritualistic
behaviour but we will only be covering the intersection
between antrhopological work and modern evolutionary
theory!

Question 5

Why Rituals?

Why do we have strange behaviours?

Answer 5

§ Ice age: harsh and hostile conditions where finding
food, shelter and proctection is very hard. Yet humans
still spent time and energy to make bone flutes or
Gobekli tepe stone circle. They use primiative tools to
make ritualistic materails, art forms or scenes into stone.
Why would we do this?
§ Behaviours like marching in lines are another form of
ritualistic behaviours (synchronised; still present why?).
§ The design of terricotta warriors which were all very
detailed and protected their king in the afterlife.

Question 6

Two Questions we need to ask

Answer 6

§ How did it evolve in our evolutionary lineage?

§ What purpose does it serve now?

Question 7

Traditional View:

Answer 7

§ Anthropology look at demeaning structures created
to explain ritualistic behaviours.
§ Material culture

Question 8

Biologists and Evolutionary Biologists:

Answer 8

Focus on action. Does the share act of doing some actions have an impact on how we think and how we perceive the world?

Question 9

Melonoski (Antrhopology)

Answer 9

§ In polynesian cultures he observed that ritualistic
behaviours are more common before people
embarked on long dangerous journeys.
§ A connection between danger, uncertainty and
rituals.
§ They were the first to test this in the labratory by
stress-testing people and then observing their
behaviour afterwards. They found that people who
were stressed became more ridgid and enaged in
more repetitive behaviours.
§ The effects of anxiety on spontaneous ritualistic
behaviour; Does ritualistic behaviour calm people
down?

Question 10

Johannes (evoltutionary psychology)

Answer 10

§ Argued that Melonoski calimed that ritualistic
behaviour calms anxiety but they did not actually
find causal evidence that rituals calm people down.
§ He stressed-tested people by acting as an
authoritiative experimenter who stared you down as
they complete cogntive load tasks. He mesaured
their blood pressue and heart rate. They then were
asked to clean an object and observed their
movements as they cleaned the object.
§ He found that people that were stressed used more
ridgid and repetitive behaviour when they cleaned
the object and begun to calm down (heart rate and
blood pressure lowered) faster than others.

Question 11

There is a two way feedback loop between our thoughts and our behaviour:

Answer 11

There is a two way feedback loop between our thoughts and our behaviour:
§ Mind effects the body (top-down)
§ Body effects the mind (bottom-up)

*processes are both taking place at the same time and need to be considered.

Question 12

Rituals are Diverse:

Answer 12

§ Different features, colours, songs, actions, beliefs
across cultures.
§ We need to focus on the central features which are
invariant across cultures (bottom-up pathway) which
may explain why rituals are still present in modern
society.

Question 13

Three Reasons for why Rituals

Anthropology & evolutionary psychologists

Answer 13

§ Builds social connections (despite the behaviour
being irrational)
§ Emotion regulation (calms people down; or make
people excited)
§ Task focus (just before you take a large exam there
is a behaviour you always do to help your
performance)

Question 14

(1) Builds Social Cohesion

Answer 14

§ Rituals are syncrohnised actions between large groups
of people (ingroup)
§ It has been argued that sychronised action acts as a
“coalitional signal” it demonstrates that we are all apart
of the same group.
§ E.g., doing the Huka or singing the National anthem.
§ Durkhiem from modern sociology argued (pink cluster)
that people in a ritual have intellectual and moral
conformity.. everything is common to all (all do the same
stereotypical actions which reflects conformaity of
thought; all share the same mind).
§ McNeill (pink) made observations about syncorisity via
marhcing on older hunter-gather populaitions.
Wiltermuth and Heath (yellow) do more recent work on it
where US students would sing the Canadian national
athem and pass the same cupboard at the same time
(syncronisity) made people trust strangerers more and
were more willing to share money with them
(cooperation).
§ Why?
§ Mirror Neurons which blur self-other distinctions. There
are neurons in the prefrontal cortex/motor which
activate when we observe behaviour and when we
imitate the same behaviour. Therefore, synchronisity
(fires 2x) blurs the line between us and them.
§ Another complementary view:
§ Shared attention and intentionality
§ Eye gaze and pointing indicates that your attention on
an event and can eleict joint attention. Synchronicity
makes us feel that we share the same interests with
others can blur self-other distinctions.
§ Labratory experiments:
§ We can strip away any possible real-world meaning and
get people to engage in strange synchronised
behaviours together and test its effects.

Reddish, Fischer & Bulbia (2013)
Reinforcement of cooperation model

§ Sycnchrony increases percieved cooperation, unity,
trust (via shared attention and a comon goal and
coalition signalling) which facilitates cooperation.
§ These different explanations are not mutually exclusive
and can be intergrated into one model.

§ Sequential condition tested whether it was coordination
rather than synchronicity has which is important for
mirror neuron explanation.
§ Results:
§ Group goals with synchronicity provided to highest
cooperative behaviour realtive to sequention and
asynchrony action.

Question 15

(2) Collective Effervescence

Answer 15

Emotions
§ The act of cngregating, doing things collectivley
creates electricity. A form og effervescence which may
be important to understanding rituals.
§ Labratory work can allow us to explore how rituals build
social cohension and help us regulate our emotions.
Rinita, Fisher, Bulbia (2017)

Lab
§ Conducted a meta-anlysis on studies which examined
studies that looked on ritual effect on social cohesion
and emotions.
§ Studies were seperated into categories: behaviour
(towards others), perception (trust), cogntion (what you
remembered about others), affective (emotions towards
others).
§ She studied the effect of syncrony and social
coordination (control; not in sync) acorss these four
categories.
§ Results:
o Strong effects of synchrony across all four groups.
o Synchrony has an additional effect, above coordination,
which supports the mirror nueron theory.
o Synchrony had the smallest effect on affect; this maybe
that being in a group already imporve affect.
§ Group size:
o Is an important variable to consider when looking at
perception and affect (efferescence).
o Larger group size, decreased perceieved
synchroniscity of the group and recall of its members
which is consitent with the mirror neuron. Too many
people for it to take effect.
o Larger group size lead to an increase in behaviour
syncronistity which is inconsistent with the mirror
neuron theory.
o Larger group size lead to a large increase in affect
which supports the effervescence theory.

Fisher, Callander, reddish and Bulbilia, (2013)
Field Research
§ Naturally occuring rituals: coded their behaviour every five minuets in their everday life.
§ Ethnogrpahic descriptions were coded by independed raters in terms of three groups: exact synchronisty, complimentry synhronisity (coordination) and no synchronicity.
§ Pre-test and post-test design with an economic game to see if people would keep the money or share it with others.
§ The most successful stratergy for the group would be if everybody shared but at an individual level you are better to defect.
§ Results:
o Synchrony predicts prosocial behaviour later on.
o Individuals shared more money with the group in the exact synchrony group compared to the complimentary and no synchrony groups.

Are there negative sides of synchrony?

For example, there are two sides of creativity:
§ Divergent:
o Coming up with new novel ideas.
o As many as possible.
o Flexible.
§ Convergent:
o Narrowing down on options to one solution.
o Critical.
o Intergrate information.
o Make choices.
o Find the best option.

*Perhaps what Durkhiem’s observation means is that
synchronisty shifts or cognition from divergent to
convergent creativity.

Evidence
Does group synchronisity reduce creattivity?

§ Participants were given a divergent task (alternative
uses task): how many possible solutions can you find for
a papper clip in 30 seconds and a convergent task: here
are three words what is the theme that links them?
§ Rinita:
o People in syncronisty came up with fewer ideas, lower
novelty but were better able to select optimal solutions
(impairs divergent but increases convergent thinking).
o It has positve and negative effects on group cognition.

Take-Home Message:
§ Synchronised behaviour rituals (chanting, singing,
dancing) decreases divergent thinking (novel ideas) but
inreases convergent thinking (finding the most
appropriate solution).

Question 16

Rituals are multi-dimensional

Why do people engage in extreme rituals that they would not engage in without religious belief? (new line of research)

Answer 16

Costly Rituals as Commitment Devices:
§ Extreme rituals signal to the self and others that you are
committed to the group and its values.
§ Costly Rituals (valid signals)
o There is variations in theorys on signals but the
common theme across them is that costly signals are
hard to fake and communicate to others your
committment to the group (honest signal; deters free
riders).
o Extreme Rituals Promote Prosociality
 Natural field study (can not get ethical apporval in labs)
 Walk bare foot across fire, mutilations, periceings etc.
 High intensity (participants and observers)
 Low intensity (chanting or singing)
 Varied in physical pain acorss these groups.
 How much money would they donate to the temple
across these groups.
 Amount of money donated to the temple after the ritual
increased from 50% to almost 100% (in high intensity
group the participants and observers did not differ).
 Greater perceived pain was associated with more
donations.

Synchrony vs Pain (effects of prosociality)
§ 9 day thailand festival with various high intensity rituals
they engage in.
§ Study on how these Chinese rituals have evolved
overtime and dispersed and fused with other cultures
such as thailand.
§ Arnold Van Gennep (1960) looked at the stages of
rituals.
o There are seperation rituals which mark the seperation
from everyday acts to religious ritual ones. The next step
is to engage in the focal action of the ritual and most
meaningful part. A final step where the we are bridged
from the magical acts of the ritual into the real world.
o The syncronisity and painful components of a ritual
occurs in the center focal stages. People do both, they
engage in syncornised/non-syncronised and
painful/non-painful rituals which allowed us to assesss
what people go through once they participate in these
types of rituals.
o They didn’t use behavioural economic games due to
religious beliefs and they opted for a social identity self-
identification scale.
o There was overall no effect of synchrony on prosocial
measures (social identity). There was an effect of pain;
higher pain lead to higher prosocial reactions. There
was a gender difference. For males, the prosocial.
response was higher in painful and syncronised rituals.
For women, the prosocial response was higher in painful
no-synchrony (in isolation).
o From a signaling perspective, this raises a very
imporant question about gender (missing variable
people fail to consider; under studied sex differences)
who signals what to whom?

Question 17

Summary

Answer 17

§ Research on rituals is very diverse
§ He focuses on rituals as an evolutionary adaptations
(why did they evolve; why are they still here?)
§ The physchological, neurological, behavioural
mechanisms of rituals still remain unclear.

Question 18

Recap: why are beliefs and rituals universal?

Answer 18

• We looked at why beliefs (in unseen supernatural
beings) and rituals universal? These beliefs are as
old as humans.
• We looked at what these beliefs and rituals may do
for people (i.e., commitment signaling theory).
• Commitment signaling theory:
o Within small scale societies costly (high/low)
religious rituals are used to communicate to
coreligionist cooperative intentions (= safeguard; only
those who truly believe in supernatural beings will
incur the cost for later foreseen benefits).
o Participation in all forms of rituals (high and low cost)
are used to test people’s commitment to
supernatural agent.
o The theory allows us to explain why belief in
supernatural beings and participation in costly
rituals coevolve to facilitate cooperation and
overcome cooperative problems.
o In large scale societies, religion is ingrained into
cultures and has evolved to evoke cooperative
intentions and overcome coordination problems
where rituals are good at evoking strong emotional
responses from people (i.e., more cooperation when
people engage or witness a high arousal, high-cost
rituals; more so than lower cost, low arousal ritual).

Question 19

This week: what accounts for the variation of religious cultures?

Answer 19

• Is the pattern of variation in religious belief’s across
cultures random? Is there an underlying pattern within
the variation?
• What principles or causes can we look at to make sense
of this variation?
• How can evolutionary theory achieve this?

Question 20

Pacific Cultural Diversity

Answer 20

• We will focus on pacific cultural diversity which
encompassed half the world’s longitude and a third of
the world’s latitude (a large part of the globe).
• Pacific people expanded across the globe and needed
to adapt to a wide array of ecological contexts. We will
focus on how religion facilitated their success; having a
large database on Pacifica cultural diversity means we
are able to test functional theories of religious variation
and can use the timing of religious and social
complexities to support/contradict our theories.

Question 21

Pulotu Database

Answer 21

• It contains broader information about Austronesian
political, social, & ecological diversity, as well as beliefs
and rituals on 116 cultures.
• Note: An ancestral spirit is the spirit of a deceased
ancestor who was once a human or other corporeal
being and continues to influence the lives of his or her
living descendants. Unlike deified ancestors, ancestral
spirits have a narrow sphere of influence and concern
(usually confined to a single family), and are usually,
though not always, the spirits of those who lived in the
recent past.
• It looks at three time foci; Traditional State, Post-Contact
History, Contemporary State.

Question 22

Three studies on the pacific

Answer 22

Study 1: Big Gods  Big Societies?
• Broad supernatural punishment but not high moralising
gods precede the evolution of political complexity in
Austronesia (Watts, 2015)
• How does belief in big gods drive transition into large
scale societies?
• The results do not support the hypothesis.

Study 2: Ritual Sacrifice  Political Authority
• Does ritual sacrifice promote and sustain the transition
into large scale societies?
• Ritual human sacrifice is seen as a means through which
political leaders increase their authority. What does the
timing of the emergence of human ritual sacrifice tell us
about how specific form of authority arose?
• We found evidence of human sacrifice in 40 of the 88
(45%) cultures sampled.
• Human sacrifice was practiced in 5 of the 20 (25%)
egalitarian societies, 17 of the 40 (43%) moderately
stratified societies, and 18 of the 28 (64%) highly
stratified societies sampled.
• The extent of social stratification, as well as the
presence of human sacrifice, varied throughout a wide
range of geographic regions and cultural groups.

Study 3: Christanity Spreads Faster in Small, Politically Structured Socities

• How does the timing of the spread of Christianity across
the pacific (i.e., conversion) occurred across different
forms of societies (large/small scale, political complexity
and social inequality)?
• Theory 1: top down (i.e., more stratified and politically
complex societies; the ability of elites to structure
society and allow the adoption of Christianity to occur;
i.e., for power).
• Theory 2: Bottom-up (i.e., Christianity is more appealing
in areas with high social inequality because it has a
message of egalitarian acceptance).

Question 23

Key Questions

What to pay attention to when reading these articles:

Answer 23

• How does evolutionary theory help to generate
hypotheses about cultural variation (in religious
cultures)?
• Why are the “horizontal” or “synchronic” comparative
methods of standard cross-cultural psychology limited.
(i.e., weaker then phylogenetic-time series studies)?
• How have researchers used time-series data in the
Pacific to test cultural evolutionary theories of religion?
• What were the main findings?

Question 24

Cultural Evolution of Religion in the Pacific

How does religion coevolve with other cultural traits?

Answer 24

How does religion coevolve with other cultural traits?
(A) Society-Religion
• There is a classic traditional argument that religion
reflects society (Durkhiem). Swanson is a sociologist that
believed different religious beliefs resulted from
experiences of different social structures that were
projected onto the supernatural world.
• Gods are projections of kings.
(B) Religion-Society
• The alternative traditional perspective is that it is religion
that shapes society. Anthropologists Graeber & Shalins
(2017) argue that kings are imitations of gods. They
argue that all forms of human leadership and authority
are modeled after the supernatural world. That real
power is equivalent to supernatural power regardless of
how it is obtained.
• It also follows that kings are imitations of gods rather
than gods of kings—the conventional supposition that
divinity is a reflex of society notwithstanding. In the
course of human history, royal power has been
derivative of and dependent on divine power … As a
corollary, there are no secular authorities: human power
is spiritual power—however pragmatically it is achieved.
(Sahlins & Graeber, 2017, p. 3)
(C) Religion-Society and Society-Religion
• This view argues that the relationship between society
and religion is bidirectional, it goes both ways.
• Norezayan

Question 25

Synchronic and Diachronic Methods

Can be used to

Answer 25

Synchronic and Diachronic Methods
• Can be used to test these three hypotheses about the
relationship between society and religion coevolution.

Question 26

Synchronic Methods:

Main advantage, two problems and how its applied to three main society-religion hypothesis

Answer 26

 Synchronic Methods:

• Are like cross-sectional methods (i.e., studying lots of
societies at the same point in time; snapshot of cultural
variation)
• For example, looking at descent systems (inheritance)
and how they relate to subsistence (food gathering).
• There is a hypothesis that cultures that rely in fishing for
sustenance are more likely to have maternal systems
(trace heritage through women, line of mothers). A
synchronic approach to studying this hypothesis would
be test the correlation between fishing and maternal
lineage in contemporary societies.
• The main advantage of this approach is that there is
large databases of information about contemporary
societies.
• A problem with this approach is the Galton’s Problem
(non-independence of cultural traits; it means that just
because certain cultural traits appear together
synchronically we cannot assume that they are causally
linked). Note: there are ways to address and reduce the
issue of Galton’s problem (i.e., control for historical
relationships etc.)
• One author noticed that as societies become more
complex they adopt patrilineal descent; they begin to
trace descent through men rather than women.
However, Galton critiqued their conclusion and stated
that the association could be explained by many other
factors than a causal relationship between paternal
lineage lading to more complex societies. For example,
societies which use paternal lineage and are complex
may merely share a common ancestor with both of these
traits or adopted them from another societies
(borrowed). This association may merely be a
coincidence.
• The Second problem is that because the evidence is
correlational we are not able to determine causality
between to associated cultural traits. The association
could go in either direction.
• For example, if we find evidence of patriliny and social
complexity are linked there are three possible
relationships present:
o Patriliny – social complexity
o Social complexity – patriliny
o Patriliny – social complexity and social complexity -
patriliny

Galton’s Problem: Historical relatedness means that traits cannot be assumed to have arisen anew in each population: data points may not be independent of one another.

• Applying this issue of determining the direction of
causation to the three hypothesis of religion-society
coevolution:
o Religion-society
o Society-religion
o Religion-society and society-religion
• In all three cases these hypothesis make the same
prediction that religious trait X will be associated with
social Trait X which doesn’t help us in identifying which
of these alternative hypothesis are correct (synchronic
approach)

Question 27

Diachronic Methods: Main advantage, disadvantage

and application to three hypothesis

Answer 27

• Otherwise called longitudinal methods
• Involve studying changes overtime within a given
cultural tradition.
• We could do this by using historical/archeological
sources.
• Its main advantage is that it can tell us about the order of
causation. If one trait causes another then it must
precede it in time. Therefore, identifying time sequence
of trait evolution and can tell us which trait causes
another.
• Applying this method to the original three hypothesis we
can see that each hypothesis makes its own prediction
about the direction of the relationship between religion-
society:
• Religion-society = changes in religious trait X will
precede changes in social trait X
• Society-religion = changes in society trait X will precede
changes in religious trait X
• Society-religion and religion-society = social trait X and
religious trait X will appear at the same time (one doesn’t
precede the other)

• A disadvantage of this approach is the paucity of data
(i.e., it requires a lot of data which often isn’t available; is
we are looking at early human civilizations then
archeological evidence is all we have, which has a lot of
missing data around the world, it can only tell us limited
amount about historical societies; archeology deals with
residues of behaviour rather than directly observed
behaviour; we cannot ask them what they believe)
• Another disadvantage is that biases are what gets
preserved over time.

Question 28

Cultural Phylogenetics

Answer 28

• Is an emerging field which combines synchronic and
diachronic methods together.
• It is based on the idea that cultural evolution has a tree
like structure (phylogeny; like Darwin’s tree of life)
where branches result in the split of human groups into
smaller distinct groups over time; sometimes they also
merge into larger groups which is why figure b is more
accurate than figure a.
• They assume that human cultural evolution has enough
of a tree like structure for the approach to be beneficial.

Question 29

Phylogenetic Trees

Answer 29

• Are made up of nodes, branches and tips
• Nodes are points in time where populations split into
smaller distinct groups
• Branches reflect populations evolving overtime
• Tips represent contemporary populations
(sometimes extinct ones)
• Root is the first common ancestor of all the
populations in the tree
• Cultural phylogenic methods allows us to take data
from contemporary societies, map them onto the
tips of a phylogenic tree and reconstruct how
they’ve evolved over evolutionary time.

Question 30

The Austronesian-speaking world

How have Cultural Phylogeny methods been used to study how Religion evolved in the Pacific?

Answer 30

• Pacific = the Austronesian-speaking world (a language
family which largely inhabits the pacific but not all
cultures in the pacific speak Austronesian and not all
Austronesian speaking countries are in the pacific).
• There are 1200 Austronesian languages which makes it
one of the largest language families in the world.
• It is thought to have originated in Taiwan and
subsequently expanded into southeast Asia, then into
neuroociania i.e., New Guinea and into remote Oceania
• The early stages of this migration may or may not have
included large groups of people (i.e., migration) and may
just reflect cultural diffusion. However, the later stages
of the expansion of Austronesian-language into new
Oceania would have required mass migration. New
Zealand was one of the last people to be reached was
New Zealand, with new methods we now know that
Maori inhabited nz 700,000 years ago and not
1000,000. Settling NZ was a huge achievement.

Question 31

Advantages of studying Austronesia

Answer 31

Austronesian language tree(s)

Austronesian Diversity (social and religious)
• Austronesian speaking countries are diverse (genetic
and cultural)
• Prior to colonialization these Austronesian cultures
were more diverse than they are today.
• Diversity takes many forms but we can see it more
broadly in their scale:
• Late 1927, when the Kwaio mountains were first
pacified, the mean number of adult men per descent
group was 3 to 20 – small even by the standards of
seaboard Melanesia.
• At the other extreme, we have Hawaii which upon
captain cooks arrival had four kingdoms with over
100,000 people, 100 fold difference in group
size/structure.
• Diversity in religion, ethnic religions (paganism or
animism or indigenous religions which are closely tied
to a specific context) were very diverse in their beliefs
and practices. Although today most of them are now
Christian or Muslim due to conversion during
colonialization (Recent development into world religions,
independent of other cultural traits and shared by more
diverse cultures).

Question 32

Puluto Database:

Answer 32

Watts et al. developed the Pulotu database of Pacific Religions (Austronesian) which documents the beliefs and religions of these groups. It involved reading ethnographies and coding them into numerical data. Pulotu is a Western-Polynesian term for the abode of the gods.

Question 33

Supernatural punishment and political complexity in the Austronesian speaking world

Answer 33

 Whilst they were building the database Joseph Bulbia
was working on supernatural punishment and political
complexity in the Austronesian speaking world.
 The supernatural punishment/policing hypothesis which
claims that believing in a moralising god facilitated
cooperation and deterred selfishness.
 Some believe that prosocial religions, with their Big
Gods who watch, intervene, and demand hard-to-fake
loyalty displays, facilitated the rise of cooperation in
large groups of anonymous strangers. In turn, these
expanding groups took their prosocial religious beliefs
and practices with them, further ratcheting up large-
scale cooperation in a runaway process of cultural
evolution. (Norenzayan, 2013, p. 8).

Definitions:
• Political Complexity:
o The number of jurisdictional levels … transcending the
local community … Different types of organization on
the same level … are counted as one, and organizations
not held to be legitimate, e.g., imposed colonial regimes,
are excluded. (Murdock, 1967, p. 160)
• Moralising High God:
o Is an agent that created the universe, is concerned
about human affairs and intervenes to reward an punish
human behaviour (i.e., Christian, Judaism and Islam god
is the ultimate creator and cares about how people treat
him and others; belief in MHG’s is not universal).
• Broad Supernatural Punishment:
o However, supernatural punishment may not need to be
administered by a moralizing high god to be effective!
The BSP argues that any from of supernatural
punishment for selfish behaviour promotes large-scale
cooperation. Supernatural punishment by lesser deities
or impersonal forces i.e., Karma.

Two Alternative Hypothesis about Supernatural Punishment:
• Moralizing High God (MHG) Hypothesis:
o Belief in supernatural punishment promotes large-scale
cooperation most effectively if the punishing agent is a
Moralizing High God.
• Broad Supernatural Punishment Hypothesis:
o Belief in supernatural punishment promotes large-scale
cooperation whether the punishing agent is a
Moralizing High God.

Research Question:
• Which hypothesis; MHG or BPS is linked to the evolution
of larger and more complex societies (indexed as
political complexity) in Austronesian speaking world.

Political Complexity:
• Figure A:
o Local communities are smaller groups of people
engaging in face-to-face interactions. In premodern
societies this was most common but in contemporary
societies it is more common to live in integrated
communities such as states. In historical local
communities they were largely politically independent. If
leaders existed they would only have authority of their
local community. Figure A. with the dots reflecting the
local community and its leader.
• Figure B,
o several local communities are united under one
leader[s] = one jurisdictional level beyond the local
community.
• Figure C,
o is a more complex organisation. Where multiple
integrated local communities are linked together under
one leader. There are now two jurisdictional levels
beyond the local community.
• Highly Politically Complex Socities:
o Joseph Bulbia defined that highly politically complex
societies where groups with 2+ jurisdictional levels
beyond the local community.

Method:
• He used political complexity as the contemporary
cultural traits which he mapped onto the tips of the
Austronesian-language-family phylogeny tree and
reconstructed the evolutionary history under two
difference models (independent & dependant) to see
which model was the best fit and what hypothesis it
supported.

• Independent Model: traits (i.e., political complexity and
supernatural beliefs) do not co-evolve; they are
independent. In otherwards, the likelihood of one trait
being lost or gained is independent of another being
present.
• Dependant Model: traits (i.e., political complexity and
supernatural beliefs) do co-evolve; one trait can be more
likely to be gained or lost if another is present.
• 0 = absent, 1= gained. Therefore, 0-1 means a trait has
been gained, 1-0 means that a trait has been lost.
• In the independent model, there are (4) transitions
possible because there are two traits and either can be
lost or gained.
• In the dependant model, there are (8) transitions
possible because each trait can be gained or lost at
different rates depending on if another trait is present (4;
combinations double).
• If we run both models and the dependent model runs
substantially better than this supports that the traits are
co-evolving. However, if the independent model is better
they evolved independently of one another-no causal
link is present.

Mapping the studies two traits (political complexity and supernatural belief) onto the independent and dependant model this is what we get:

• We would expect high political complexity and
supernatural belief to coevolve. This could happen
through supernatural beliefs making political complexity
more likely to happen/lost; other way around or any of
these combinations.

Results:
• Showed that political complexity coevolved with both
MHG’s and BSP’s. In both instances the dependant
model out performed the independent model.
• Left (dependant model for BSP-political complexity) right
(dependant model for MHG’s political complexity)
• The thickness of the arrows show the rate of which
these transitions occurred. The dotted lines show
transition which are not significantly different from 0.
• The left diagram clearly shows that BSP is more likely to
be gained (and no less likely to be lost) in high politically
complex societies.
• The right diagram shows that high political complexity
makes MHG’s more likely to be gained, which is the
opposite direction of what the MHG hypothesis predicts!
Whether MHG’s makes higher political complexity more
likely to be gained is less clear but the follow up analysis
showed no evidence of this pattern being present. ONLY
HPC lead to MHG’s; MHG’s did not lead to HPC!

Conclusion:
• These results provide support for the BSP hypothesis
and NOT the MHG hypothesis.
• Caveat: is that MHG’s belief is rare in Austronesian-
speaking cultures, only 6/96 had them. Those that did
had a long history with world religions. This indicates
that MHG’s may have been borrowed from cultures
outside of the Austronesian world.

Question 34

Examples of Religous Beliefs in the Sample:

Answer 34

(A) Toba Batak: example of MHG belief
• Another characterization of Mulajadi na Bolon is as a judge. He is conceived as a totally just judge who impartially administers his law and rules without favouring anybody … The impartial, unbending, and inexorable justice of the High God is tempered with mercy and forgiveness. (Sinaga, 1981, p 58)
• They maintained their indigenous beliefs till late 19th century but they’ve had extensive contact with other world religions such as Islam and their god sounds a lot like our Christian god. However, we cannot ASSUME that this is due to borrowing outside of Austronesian cultures but it is a likely possibility.
(B) Eastern Toraja
• Pue mpalaburu was mainly concerned with punishing those offenses which affected the foundations of their society: incest, intercourse with animals, the breaking of oaths, lying, stealing, etc., and his punishments were violent and sudden. ‘… he orders a crocodile to devour the liar; he makes a falling tree crush the thief; incest he punishes with long drought or with severe hurricanes, and he makes his wrath about other transgressions known by earthquakes, earth-falls and landslides, by which extensive plantations on the mountains are sometimes destroyed’ (II, 6; 1912: I, 270f.). (Downs, 1956, p 28).
• BSP was more common: 37/96 societies had it. Eastern Toraja is an example, of a BSP. They share similar traits to MHG’s but differences as well. He is mainly concerned about punishing offences which disturb the structure of society and punishes moral transgressions through natural disaster, misfortune and death.

(C) Ontong Java
• Other examples might be given to illustrate the principle that the kipua are always ready to punish those who fail to do their duty towards their relatives … The belief in immortality thus plays its part in securing the execution of obligations between relatives, especially within the joint family. When a person is afflicted with disease the community at large discusses the question to see if he has fulfilled his obligations. (Hogbin, 1934, pp 150-151)
• BSP are more commonly less powerful and intervening than Eastern Toraja. For example, they had smaller circles of concern. Dead ancestors monitored for violations to kinship obligations and could inflict illness, less server than Eastern Toraja, and punish people fail to meet their obligations for their family. When people get sick in the community they first look at whether they’ve filled their obligations.

(D) Iban
• Each member part of the universe, be it spirit, human, animal, or vegetable, belongs to the universal order and has its normal and appropriate way of behaving according to its nature. When it follows the order, it follows its particular adat … An offence against adat disturbs the universal order, producing disorder and the undesirable ‘heated’ or ‘feverish’ state, angat. The results of disorder range from minor sickness to epidemics and crop failure. Lesser transgressions may affect only the bilek [family] concerned, although this is not necessarily so since an offence against adat disrupts the total order …. Serious transgression of adat invariably touches the whole community. (Jensen, 1974, pp 111-113)
• Supernatural punishment can occur without being tied to a specific agent (person):
o Like in Hinduism and Buddhism
o Natural and social laws (adat; customary law)
o Each person is a part of the universe; An offence against adat disturbs the universal order, producing disorder and the undesirable ‘heated’ or ‘feverish’ state, angat. The results of disorder range from minor sickness to epidemics and crop failure. Lesser transgressions may affect only the bilek [family] concerned, although this is not necessarily so since an offence against adat disrupts the total order …. Serious transgression of adat invariably touches the whole community.

(E) Tikopia
• Indirectly, Tikopia pagan religion showed a moral element in the field of responsibility. The representative character of much ritual and the mobilization of individual effort towards the common ends did imply a moral responsibility of every person for the welfare of others … But though failure in behaviour might be regarded as a sin … little moral stigma did actually attach to it. Moreover, the Tikopia gods were not regarded as concerning themselves with morality in other spheres. Adultery, lying, theft, though socially reprehensible and incurring moral judgement, were not regarded as requiring exclusion of the offender from ritual participation. They might result in religious sanctions, according to accepted belief, but this would be because of appeal to the gods or ancestors by the offended party, not by automatic consequence of sin. A person’s moral state was treated as being his own responsibility and that of persons related to or associated with him, not the responsibility of religious entities. (Firth, 1970, pp 24-25)
• Although, supernatural punishment beliefs were common in the sample. Most societies did not have them (MHGs or BSP). It seemed that supernatural world were indifferent to the moral conduct of human beings. Supernatural beings which we moralistic but didn’t have a negative stigma attached to behaviour to the extent that they were excluded for ritual practices but could be sanctioned. The responsibility of being moral being is the humans individual responsibility, not of the community or the religious entity.

Question 35

Human Sacrifice and Social Stratification in the Austronesian speaking world

Answer 35

Human Sacrifice and Social Stratification in the Austronesian speaking world

• Applied the same cultural phylogeny method to looking
at whether human ritual sacrifice (supernatural related
sacrifice to appease gods, and reduce risk to
community) is linked to social stratification in
Austronesian world.
• Social Control Hypothesis:
• Human sacrifice serves to maintain intragroup power
differences. A mechanism used by elites to maintain and
extend power through violence and threats of violence
(supernatural directed; framed as an action done to
appease the gods, and outside of the elites control; this
makes it a very effective mechanism of control because
the risk of retaliation is minimised).
• Social Stratification (an institutionalized form of social
inequality)

*Hypothesis: societies with human ritual sacrifice would
be more likely to gain than loose socially stratification

• Three categories of social stratification index allowed
for further analysis on whether the level of social
stratification of societies mattered for human sacrifice

Egalitarian:
o Egalitarian societies were those in which there was little
or no hereditary inequality. This doesn’t mean that
there was no inequality at all, just that these inequalities
were rarely passed on from generation to generation.
Here is an example of one of the egalitarian societies in
the sample. Men in Santa Cruz could achieve high
status, but couldn’t pass this status onto their sons, at
least not directly. It seems that status had to be
acquired anew with each generation.
o As in many so-called stateless societies, the person of
political and social importance achieves his position of
authority, not by inherited prerogatives and wealth, or
by lineal succession, but by demonstration of his
superior abilities. Here, the critical abilities are
commercial acumen and skill in redistributing amassed
wealth to assist others in social observances that are
held in the highest esteem. (Davenport, 1964, p 90)
o You’ll notice that we’ve only mentioned men. Gender
inequality is present in virtually all societies, but this
isn’t stratification because it isn’t hereditary - men and
women are just as likely to have sons or daughters.

Highly Stratified:
o Highly stratified societies were those in which there
were pronounced hereditary inequalities in both wealth
and status between clearly delineated social groups, as
well as restricted opportunities for social mobility. The
quote here is about a highland people from the
Philippines:
o At the top of the social scale in Bontok is a class known
as kadangyan… The main basis from which kadangyan
status is derived is hereditary rank, or more strictly.
descent through senior lines within the class;
secondarily it is possession of wealth and performance
of major kanyau (ritual) observances, involving animal
sacrifices and public feasts … Below this group are the
main body of the villagers who hold lands of their own,
a kind of middle or commoner class … At the bottom of
the social scale are a class of people in a state of
peonage, because of debts and other obligations to
their richer fellows …. The traditional rates of interest
and of crop division here as in so many other sections
of east and south Asia make escape from this group,
once in it, almost impossible so that the obligations
tend to carry over indefinitely from generation to
generation. (Keesing, 1949, pp 594-595)
o Elites, middle class and subordinates (slaves) persist
over generations

Moderately Stratified:
o Moderately stratified societies were somewhere in the
middle. Hereditary differences in wealth or status
existed between groups, but one or more conditions
were present that softened these distinctions, like
opportunities for social mobility. The excerpt here is
about the Marquesas. There were at least two classes
in this society, but was a degree of social mobility, and
differences in living standards were not dramatic.
o At the head of the tribe stood a chief who usually ruled
by birthright, being the eldest son of a line of eldest
sons, tracing their devious genetic pathway back to the
gods. Chieftainship was not only a matter of birth,
however, for a good warrior could and did assume the
position by virtue of force, wars honors, or economic
power … Subtribal rulers were distantly related to the
chiefly line. Tribal and subtribal chiefs received
decidedly deferential treatment from their subjects but
were not the pampered tyrants of Hawaii and Tonga.
They seem to have dressed much like commoners and
in general did not act in a particularly autocratic fashion.
Visitors often noted that they could not distinguish the
chief in a crowd by dress or manner. (Suggs, 1966, pp
13-14)

Results:
• Human sacrifice happened at least occasionally in
nearly half of the societies in the sample.
• There was an obvious pattern in how prevalent it was at
different levels of stratification – the more stratified a
society was, the more likely it was to have human
sacrifice. This seemed to support the social control
hypothesis, as did the fact that in ethnographic
descriptions of human sacrifice, the victims were almost
always described as low-status. However, this pattern
could have been explained in terms of opportunity.
Presumably it was easier and less risky to sacrifice low
status individuals, and it would have been easier to find
low-status individuals in stratified societies.
• To test the social control hypothesis properly, we
needed to know how stratification and sacrifice had
coevolved over time.

Method:
• To investigate how human sacrifice had coevolved with
social stratification in general, we combined moderately
stratified and highly stratified societies into one
category, ‘stratified’.
• To look at the relationship between human sacrifice and
specifically high levels of stratification, we combined
egalitarian and moderately stratified societies into
another category.
• We mapped these traits onto the tips of our phylogeny
and reconstructed their evolutionary histories under
dependent and independent models.

Results:
• What we found was consistent with the social control
hypothesis:
• Human sacrifice co-evolved with both social
stratification in general and specifically high social
stratification.
• Societies with human sacrifice were less likely to lose
social stratification in general, but were not more likely
to gain it.
• Conversely, societies with human sacrifice were more
likely to gain high social stratification, but were not less
likely to lose it.

Question 36

The spread of Christianity in the Austronesian-speaking world

Answer 36

• Involved the relationship between religion and society.
• Almost all Austronesian-speakers today are followers of
world religions, primarily Christianity and Islam. The
spread of Islam in Southeast Asia is not very well
documented, but there’s abundant information on the
spread of Christianity. We were interested in looking at
whether the cultural traits of Austronesian societies
influenced how long they took to adopt Christianity.

Method:
• Our approach was synchronic. We used a cultural
phylogeny to address Galton’s problem, but did not
attempt to reconstruct patterns of cultural change over
evolutionary time. We were interested in how different
societies responded to a singular historical event – the
arrival of Christianity.

• We tested two hypotheses about how cultural traits
predicted conversion times. These hypotheses were
based on two different views about how Christianity has
spread over the past 2,000 years.
• The top-down view
o is that Christianity has spread through appealing to
political elites.
o We reasoned that if the spread of Christianity in the
Pacific was top-down, higher political complexity would
predict faster rates of conversion.
o This is because in politically complex societies, more
people are under the control of fewer leaders.
• The bottom-up view
o is that Christianity spread by appealing to underclasses
through its egalitarian message.
o If the spread of Christianity was bottom-up, we
expected social inequality to predict faster
Christianisation.
o This is because by definition, underclasses can only
exist in unequal societies.

Sample:
o We coded 70 societies, which were a subset of the 116
societies n the Pulotu database.
o The sources we used were mostly missionary accounts,
or secondary sources based on these accounts.

Variables:
o Our dependent variable was conversion time, which we
defined as the number of years that elapsed between
the time that missioniaries arrived and the time at which
half of the population had adopted Christianity. One
striking thing was how much conversion time varied
The range was 1 to 203 years. The mean and median
were 30 and 25 years respectively, which is intriguingly
close to a generation.
o In terms of our predictor variables, political complexity
will already be familiar from the supernatural
punishment study, and our measure of social inequality
was very similar to the social stratification variable from
the human sacrifice study.
o We also included three other predictors: population
size, isolation, and year of missionary arrival. In
addition, we tested whether phylogeny and geography
made a difference to conversion time – that is, whether
societies that were culturally related or geographically
close together had similar outcomes.

Results:
o We found that all of our predictor variables except for
social stratification significantly predicted conversion
times.
o All of these except for population size were negative
predictors – that is, they predicted shorter conversion
times.
o Phylogeny and geography had no effect.
o The most interesting result in terms of our hypotheses
was that political complexity predicted faster
conversion, whereas social inequality did not. This
tends to favour the top-down view of how Christianity
has spread, rather than the bottom-up view.
o Having underclasses made little or no difference to
conversion time, whereas having powerful leaders did.
These results are consistent with missionary accounts,
which explicitly describe a strategy of seeking to
convert powerful leaders – partly for protection, and
partly in the hope that their dependants would follow. It
would seem that much of the time, this strategy worked.

o We did some follow-up analyses that provided further
nuance. We noticed that the two societies in the sample
that took the longest to convert – the Iban of Borneo
and the Ifugao of the Philippines, which are clearly
visible on the map - lacked any political authority at all.
These were the kind of societies that anthropologists
call ‘acephalous’ – they lack formal leadership. When
we excluded the 11 acephalous societies from the
sample, the effect of political complexity disappeared.
This indicates that it’s not political complexity per se that
influences conversion, but simply the presence of formal
political leaders.

Taken Together:
 These studies seem to favour a reciprocal view of the
relationship between society and religion:
o In the supernatural punishment study, supernatural
punishment beliefs influenced political complexity, and
political complexity also had an effect on supernatural
punishment beliefs.
o In the human sacrifice study, we found that a
supernatural practice, human sacrifice, affected the
likelihood of societies becoming more or less stratified.
o In our paper on the spread of Christianity, we showed
that political authority made a difference to how readily
societies adopted a new religion.
 Religion can shape society, but the reverse can also be
true.

Question 37

Summary

Answer 37

 Cultural phylogenetic methods are a useful tool for
studying the evolution of religion.
 The Pacific is an ideal place for studying cultural
evolution in general and the cultural evolution of
religion in particular.
 Cultural phylogenetic studies of religion in the Pacific
suggest a reciprocal relationship between religion and
other cultural phenomena.
 A lot more remains to be illuminated though. Cultural
phylogenetics is a useful way of getting at these
questions, and the Pacific is a superb place to apply
these methods.