In The Religions of the American Indians, Ake Hultkrantz is clearly interested in reconstructing the supernatural beliefs and practices that the First Americans would have carried with them to the New World. Because Hultkrantz wrote the majority of the book (in Swedish) in 1967 and updated it for the English translation in 1979, the “Clovis [...]
Tags:Adena·Ake Hultkrantz·Amerindians·Bering Land Bridge·Beringia·Clovis first·David Meltzer·diffusion·First Americans·guardian spirit complex·high god concept·Hopewell·Meadowcroft Rock Shelter·Mesopotamia·Mircea Eliade·Mississippian cultures·Monte Verde·Mound Builders·Neolithic Revolution·peopling of americas·Peopling of North America·Piers Vitebsky·Plains Indians·Siberian hunter-gatherers·soul flight·Sumer·Sun Dance·The Religions of the American Indians·Urmonotheismus
Over at HuffPo Religion, John Whitehead has penned a high-minded piece taking Christians to task for failing to understand they are major contributors — given their high divorce rates — to the perceived breakdown of the “traditional” family. I have bracketed “traditional” in the same manner that we should bracket “natural” — these are historical [...]
Tags:Christians·D.H. Lawrence·democracy·divorce·epochs·extended family·family·foragers·freedom·human history·John Whitehead·kinship·marriage bond·mystification·Naturalization·Neolithic Revolution·nuclear family·pair bonding·pre-state societies·Roman history·social construction·The Breakdown of the Traditional Family·traditional family
In a previous post, Religious Wars and Nationalism, I discussed two factors that play a major role in group cohesion. The first factor, which played a dominant role for the majority of human evolution, was extended and fictive kinship. This is what primarily held groups together during the Paleolithic. After the Neolithic Revolution, another factor [...]
Tags:Benedict Anderson·Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Revisiting Civil Religion·Carolyn Marvin·Civil Religion·David Ingle·Durkheim·group cohesion·group identity·group level selection·guardians of faith·high priests·hymnals·Imagined Communities·kinship·liturgy·nationalism·Neolithic Revolution·Paleolithic·patriotism·patriots·religion·religiosity·religious violence·ritual leaders·ritual objects·Robert Bellah·sacred places·sacred texts·saints·temples·totemism·totems
Over at ABC News, Ki Mae Heussner reports on a Diane Sawyer interview of the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking with this contentious headline: “Stephen Hawking on Religion: Science Will Win.” This is an unfortunate banner. During the interview, Sawyer asked if religion and science could be reconciled. Hawking’s response was profoundly unhelpful:
“There is a fundamental [...]
Tags:animism·anthropomorphic·anthropomorphism·Babylon·Babylonian high god·city-states·Diane Sawyer·earthly kings·gods·Hebrews·hunter-gatherers·Judaism·Ki Mae Heussner·Levant·Mesopotamia·Neolithic·Neolithic Revolution·religion·Roy Rosenberg·science·spirits·spiritual kings·Stephen Hawking·supernatural thinking·Yahweh·Yahweh Becomes King
Most anthropologists date the appearance of anatomically modern Homo sapiens to approximately 150,000 years ago. It was at about this time that the skeletal structure of Homo becomes indistinguishable from modern humans. This does not mean, however, that human evolution simply stopped; evolution encompasses changes not only to skeletal structures but also to brain chemistry, [...]
Tags:accelerated human evolution·anatomically modern Homo sapiens·cultural imprinting·cultural patterning·earliest organized religions·fertility selection·group level selection·John Hawks·Neolithic Revolution·recent adaptations·recent human evolution
By my reading of history, the turning (or tipping) point for humanity was the domestication of plants and animals, otherwise known as the Neolithic Revolution. Before this occurred — at different places in the world at different times, beginning approximately 12,000 years ago and largely the dominant mode of production by 5,000 years ago — [...]
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I recently found an excellent blog, Homo religiosus — The Natural History of Religion, written by the German scholar Dr. Michael Blume. After I linked to his blog, Michael came over here for some reading. He also had a question, which I answered, and he responded. The issue we are discussing — higher fertility rates [...]
Tags:adaptive assumptions·cultural evolution·earliest religions·fertility·group level selection·Homo religiosus·hunter-gatherers·Michael Blume·Neolithic Revolution·Panglossian Paradigm·religion as adaptation·religion as byproduct·reproductive fitness·Richard Lewontin·Sarah Hrdy·shamanisms·shamans·spandrels·Stephen Jay Gould
As I noted in a previous post, the domestication of plants and animals — a process that began in the Old World approximately 12,000 years ago — led to a seismic shift in the way humans live. Although this process is often described as the “Neolithic Revolution,” this phrase incorrectly suggests there was a sudden [...]
Perhaps the single most important development in the history of humanity was the domestication of plants and animals. This process began approximately 12,000 years ago and is sometimes referred to as the “Neolithic Revolution.” Other than hominid evolution itself, no process has so profoundly influenced human history and culture. The shift from food gathering to [...]
