Interdisziplinäre Anthropologie

Herausgegeben von
G. Hartung
M. Herrgen
Wuppertal, Deutschland
Anthropologische Forschungen stehen gegenwärtig im Brennpunkt interdiszipli-
närer Debatten. Insbesondere in den Bereichen der Biologie und den empirischen
Anthropologien sind in den letzten Jahrzehnten rasante Fortschritte zu verzeich-
nen. Eine Jahresschrift zur Interdisziplinären Anthropologie stellt sich der Auf-
gabe, den interdisziplinären Dialog in der aktuellen anthropologischen Forschung
darzustellen und versteht sich daher als ein strikt Disziplinen übergreifendes
Publikationsmedium. Dieser Anspruch manifestiert sich in der dialogischen Form
des Diskursteils (in jeder Ausgabe wird ein Schwerpunktthema im Dreischritt
Leitartikel, Kommentare, Replik diskursiv thematisiert), der mit Berichten zu
interdisziplinären Projekten im anthropologischen Forschungsfeld ergänzt wird.
Ein Rezensionsteil bespricht aktuelle wissenschaftliche Publikationen zu rele-
vanten Aspekten, die Rubrik ‚Kalender‘ widmet sich einem biographischen oder
bibliographischen Jubiläumsereignis.

Herausgegeben von
Prof. Dr. Gerald Hartung
Dr. Matthias Herrgen
Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Deutschland
Gerald Hartung • Matthias Herrgen (Hrsg.)

Interdisziplinäre
Anthropologie
Jahrbuch 3/2015: Religion und Ritual
Herausgeber
Gerald Hartung Matthias Herrgen
Bergische Universität Wuppertal Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität
Deutschland Münster
Deutschland

ISSN 2198-8277 ISSN 2198-8285 (electronic)

Interdisziplinäre Anthropologie
ISBN 978-3-658-10977-6 ISBN 978-3-658-10978-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-10978-3

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbi-

bliograe; detaillierte bibliograsche Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar.

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Inhalt

Vorwort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IX

I Diskurs

1 Target Article

Matt J. Rossano
The Ritual Origins of Humanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2 Comments

Wolfgang Achtner
Rituals are not always costly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Christoph Antweiler
Rituals and Human Capacities for Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Michael Blume
Cooperative Breeding instead of Cooperative Killing. The Evolution
of Human Ritual & Religion has not been a “male thing” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Ulrich Frey
Religious Rituals – Cooperation, Costly Signalling and
Cultural Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Gerald Hartung
On Rituals and values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
VI Inhalt

Matthias Herrgen
Methodological Framework and the Cognitive Niche Construction . . . . . . . . 61

Magnus Schlette
Do natural born cooperators need rituals? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Richard Sosis / John H. Shaver

How Rituals Elicit Shared Sacred Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Ina Wunn
The Crux of a Darwinian Approach on Evolution: What is Evolution,
and what did evolve? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

3 Reply

Matt J. Rossano
Reply to Comments: Ritual’s Long Reach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

II Forschung

Christian Kietzmann
Das Forschungsprojekt „Die anthropologische Differenz aus empirischer
und begrifflicher Perspektive“ in Leipzig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

III Beiträge

Christian Thies
Was ist Rousseauismus? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Ralf Becker
Der Mensch will über den Menschen hinaus. Hinweise zur
Ideengeschichte des homo creator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Maria Kronfeldner
Naturgemäß ausgegrenzt: Die normative Kraft eines Begriffs der
menschlichen Natur in gesellschaftlichen und wissenschaftlichen
Kontexten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Inhalt VII

IV Projekte

Viktoria Bachmann / Raul Heimann

Zwischen Mängelwesen und Maß aller Dinge. Ein Bericht über die
Gründungstagung der AG „Philosophische Anthropologie in der Antike“
innerhalb der Gesellschaft für antike Philosophie (GANPH e.V.) . . . . . . . . . . 211

V Rezensionen

Andreas Hütig
Rezension zu Gethmann, Carl Friedrich; Carrier, Martin; Hanekamp, Gerd;
Kaiser, Matthias; Kamp, Georg; Lingner, Stephan; Quante, Michael; Thiele,
Felix: Interdisciplinary Research and Trans-disciplinary Validity Claims
(Series: Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment, Vol. 43), Springer
2015, 195 Seiten. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

Gerald Hartung
Rezension zu Prütting, Lenz: Homo ridens. Eine phänomenologische
Studie über Wesen, Formen und Funktionen des Lachens, 3 Bände,
Verlag Karl Alber: Freiburg und München 2013, 1950 Seiten. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

Alexander Hildebrandt
Rezension zu Rölli, Marc (Hrsg.): Fines Hominis? Zur Geschichte der
philosophischen Anthropologiekritik, Transcript Verlag: Bielefeld 2015,
227 Seiten. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

Magnus Schlette
Rezension zu Will, Heribert: Freuds Atheismus im Widerspruch. Freud,
Weber und Wittgenstein im Konflikt zwischen säkularem Denken und
Religion, Kohlhammer: Stuttgart 2014, 182 Seiten. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

Hans-Ulrich Lessing
Rezension zu Wunsch, Matthias: Fragen nach dem Menschen.
Philosophische Anthropologie, Daseinsontologie und Kulturphilosophie,
Vittorio Klostermann: Frankfurt am Main 2014, 326 Seiten. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
VIII Inhalt

VI Kalender

Matthias Wunsch
Was macht menschliches Denken einzigartig?
Zum Forschungsprogramm Michael Tomasellos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Gerald Hartung / Matthias Herrgen

Vorwort

Die dritte Ausgabe unseres Jahrbuchs thematisiert ein umstrittenes Thema unserer
Gegenwart. Religion, das Phänomen des Religiösen, Religiosität als Verhaltensweise
sowie die vielfältigen Formen religiöser Praxis stehen im Zentrum wissenschaftlicher
Debatten und alltäglicher sozialpolitischer Diskussionen über die Grenzbestim-
mungen von Kulturen, Gesellschaften und Individuen. Die einstmals beschworene
These eines „Niedergangs der Religionen“ ist offensichtlich nicht haltbar.
Nach idealistischen (Feuerbach), materialistischen (Marx), psychologischen
(Nietzsche, Mauthner), und psychoanalytischen (Freud) Phasen der Religionskritik
lässt sich im zurückliegenden Jahrhundert eine Wende zu einer anthropologischen
Erforschung des Phänomenbereichs „Religion/Religiosität“ beobachten. Hier wird
jedwede religiöse Vorstellung und Praxis zum „Prüfstein“ einer Selbstbeschreibung
des Menschen unter der Leitfrage: „Sind wir von Natur aus religiös?“ Einerseits
wird die wissenschaftliche und öffentliche Debatte von aggressiven naturalistischen
Auflösungsprogrammen (bspw. Dawkins 2006: The God Delusion) bestimmt,
andererseits gibt es aber auch ein nachdenkliches Interesse an Religion als einem
anthropologischen Moment, das sich in der Frage nach ihrer Bedeutung als spezifisch
menschlicher Form der Wirklichkeitserschließung zeigt (bspw. Joas 2004: Braucht
der Mensch Religion?; Deuser 2014: Religion. Kosmologie und Evolution). In dieser
Lage zeigt sich die Herausforderung für das Programm einer Religionsanthropologie,
die wir als ein zentrales Thema der interdisziplinären Anthropologie auffassen.
Unser Diskursteil stellt sich genau dieser Herausforderung: Dank eines hervor-
ragenden target articels unseres Kollegen Matt Rossano (Department of Psychology,
Southeastern Louisiana University, hervorgetreten durch Supernatural Selection.
How Religion evolved, Oxford 2010) konnten wir zahlreiche Disziplinen in den
Diskurs einbinden. Der Großteil der Kommentatoren hatte auf einer DFG-fi-
nanzierten internationalen Konferenz (Towards a Philosophical Anthropology of
Religion, 12.–14.03.2014, Bergische Universität Wuppertal) bereits die Möglichkeit,
die Grundzüge einer Religionsanthropologie auszuloten. Erstmalig erscheint der
Diskursteil unseres Jahrbuchs komplett in englischer Sprache. Wir sind gespannt
X Gerald Hartung / Matthias Herrgen

auf die Rezeption dieses interdisziplinären Gesprächs, das unzweifelhaft stark

von der im angelsächsischen Raum dominierenden psychologischen Perspektive
auf kognitive Dispositionen des Menschen geprägt ist, und hoffen auf einen nach-
haltigen Impuls für das Forschungsgebiet einer Religionsanthropologie, auch im
deutschen Sprachraum.
Mit der dritten Ausgabe möchten wir unser Bemühen, eine offene Plattform für
die Thematisierung interdisziplinärer Anthropologie aufzubauen, intensivieren,
indem wir unsere Rubrik der freien „Beiträge“ durch Peer Reviewer/innen kritisch
prüfen lassen. Wir möchten damit den Kreis der Akteure unseres Jahrbuchs ver-
größern und danken an dieser Stelle unserem Review Board ganz herzlich für ihr
Engagement. Zur Zeit sind folgende Gutachter/innen für unser Jahrbuch gelistet:

t
Prof. Dr. Christoph Antweiler (Uni Bonn, Ethnologie)

t
PD Dr. Judith Burkart (Uni Zürich, Comparative Cognition and Psychology)
t
Prof. Dr. Andrea Bender (Uni Bergen, Psychologie & Ethnologie)
t
Prof. Dr. Ralf Becker (Uni Ulm, Philosophie)
t
Prof. Dr. Dagmar Ellerbrock (TU Dresden, Geschichte)
t
Prof. Dr. Martin Endreß (Uni Trier, Soziologie)
t
Prof. Dr. Matthias Jung (Uni Koblenz, Philosophie)
t
Prof. Dr. Bernhard Kleeberg (Uni Konstanz, Kulturwissenschaften)
t
Prof. Dr. Barbara Krahé (Uni Potsdam, Sozialpsychologie)
t
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Krohs (Uni Münster, Wissenschaftstheorie)
t
Prof. Dr. Katja Liebal (FU Berlin, Primatologie, Entwicklungspsychologie)
t
Dr. Thorsten Moos (FEST Heidelberg, Theologie)
t
Prof. Dr. Achim Stephan (Uni Osnabrück, Kognitionswissenschaften)
t
Prof. Dr. Christian Thies (Uni Passau, Philosophie)
t
PD Dr. Matthias Wunsch (Uni Kassel, Philosophie)

Unser Kalender lotet alljährlich die historische Dimension unseres interdisziplinären

Projekts durch Erkundungen zu disziplinären Verankerungen unserer Fragestel-
lung aus. Wir danken unserem Kollegen Matthias Wunsch ganz herzlich für ein
„Geschenk“ anlässlich des 65. Geburtstags von Michael Tomasello, in dem er die
Forschungsstrategie der vergleichenden evolutionären Anthropologie mit „klassi-
schen“ Fragen der philosophischen Anthropologie zu einem richtungsweisenden
interdisziplinären Forschungsprogramm verknüpft.
Die Herausgeber danken den Kollegen des editorial boards (Christian Bermes,
Winfried Henke, Peter M. Kappeler und Magnus Schlette) für hilfreiche Kritik und
vielfältige Anregungen. Unsere mittlerweile unverzichtbare Redaktionsassistentin
Sarah Laufs (Promotionsstudentin im Graduiertenkolleg „Materialität und Produk-
Vorwort XI

tion“ der Universität Düsseldorf) betreute auch außerhalb der Redaktionswochen die
Beiträge und kümmerte sich um redaktionelle Belange. Ferner unterstützte uns im
Rahmen eines Redaktionspraktikums Lars Kiesling (MA-Student der Philosophie
an der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität) tatkräftig bei editorischen Arbeiten.
Das vierte Jahrbuch wird sich mit dem Thema „Wahrnehmung“ auseinanderset-
zen und im vierten Quartal 2016 erscheinen. Wir freuen uns über Rückmeldungen
unserer Leserinnen und Leser, über kritische Anregungen und Überlegungen zur
weiteren Entwicklung unseres Jahrbuchs: herausgeber@interdisziplinaere-anth-
ropologie.de

Wuppertal und Münster, im August 2015

 I
Diskurs
1 Target Article
Matt J. Rossano

The Ritual Origins of Humanity

Abstract: This paper argues that ritual played a central role in making us human.
The argument is based on four premises: (1) Humanity is defined by cooperative
communities, (2) cooperative communities are defined by shared values, (3) shared
values are defined by ritual, and (4) religious ritual elevates shared values to sacred
status. Ritual solved a communication problem: that of effectively displaying,
transmitting, and honestly committing to group values. Over the course of our
evolutionary history, those communities with sacred shared values out-competed
others, thus making religion a human universal.

[1] Humanity Defined by Cooperative Communities

For most of our history, we have seen ourselves as distinct from other animals by
virtue of our rationality. More recently, however, science has shifted the focus of
human uniqueness from rationality to social skills. Humans have been described
as an ultra-social or hyper-social species.1 Tomasello and colleagues have amassed
considerable evidence supporting the notion that humans have evolved unique
cooperative capacities.2 To understand how we became ultra-social, Tomasello

1 Hrdy, Sarah B.: Meet the Alloparents, in: Natural History 118 (2009), p. 24-29; Melis,
Alicia P. / Semmann, Dirk: How is Human Cooperation Different?, in: Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society B 365 (2010), p. 2663-2674; Tomasello, Michael: The
Ultra-Social Animal, in: European Journal of Social Psychology 44 (2014), p.187-194.
2 Herrmann, Esther / Call, Josep / Lloreda, Maria Victoria / Hare, Brian / Tomasello,
Michael: Humans Have Evolved Specialized Skills of Social Cognition: The Cultural
Intelligence Hypothesis, in: Science 317 (2007), p. 1360-1366; Tomasello, Michael: Why
we Cooperate, Cambridge 2009; Tomasello, Michael / Carpenter, Malinda / Call, Josep
/ Behne, Tanya / Moll, Henrike: Understanding and Sharing Intentions: the Origins of
Cultural Cognition, in: Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2 (2005), p. 675-735.

G. Hartung, M. Herrgen (Hrsg.), Interdisziplinäre Anthropologie,

Interdisziplinäre Anthropologie, DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-10978-3_1,
© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2016
4 Matt J. Rossano

and colleagues have looked closely at the cooperative differences between humans
(mostly children) and our closest primate relatives, chimpanzees.

[1.1] Uniquely Human Cooperative Abilities

Chimpanzees and bonobos have fairly well-developed cooperative abilities, sug-

gesting that our earliest hominin ancestors were similarly endowed. Both wild
chimpanzees and bonobos hunt cooperatively. In the case of chimpanzees, a group
of males will often work together to capture monkeys.3 However, there is little
evidence that this hunting is truly cooperative in the sense of different individuals
understanding and coordinating distinct roles in achieving a share goal.4 Instead,
chimpanzees seem to operate by a “follow-the-leader” strategy. That is, one chimp
will spot and chase a monkey and others will join in. Monkeys are quick, so it is
nearly impossible for a chimpanzee to capture it alone. Thus, collaboration among
chimpanzee hunters is essential if anyone is to get anything. Furthermore, making
the kill oneself or being near to the kill when it happens generally increases an
individual’s portion of the spoils.5 All of this suggests that the hunt is more of a
collective action arising from separate self-interests than a truly cooperative activity.
By contrast, human children as young as 18 months show surprising cooperative
abilities exceeding that of adult chimpanzees. This has been shown using social
games where players work jointly to achieve a goal. For example, in the trampoline
game, players hold different ends of a large fabric in an attempt to keep a ball from
rolling off. Chimpanzees fail miserably at the game, and unlike human children,
show no evidence of understanding the importance of complementary roles in

3 Stanford, Craig B.: The Hunting Apes: Meat-eating and the Origins of Human Behavior,
Princeton 1999.
4 Bullinger, Anke F. / Wyman, Emily / Melis, Alicia p. / Tomasello, Michael: Coordina-
tion of Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in a Stag Hunt Game, in: International Journal
of Primatology 32 (2011), Issue 6, p. 1296-1310; Fletcher, Grace E. / Warneken, Felix /
Tomasello, Michael: Differences in Cognitive Processes Underlying the Collaborative
Activities of Children and Chimpanzees, in: Cognitive Development 27 (2012), Issue 2,
p. 136-153; Povinelli, Daniel J. / O’Neill, Daniela K.: Do Chimpanzees use Their Gestures
to Instruct Each Other?, in: Understanding Other Minds: Perspectives from Develop-
mental Cognitive Neuroscience, edited by Simon Baron-Cohen, Helen Tager-Flusberg
and Donald. J. Cohen, Oxford 2000, p. 459-487.
5 Boesch, Christophe: Cooperative Hunting in Wild Chimpanzees, in: Animal Behaviour
48 (1994), p. 653-667.
The Ritual Origins of Humanity 5

achieving the joint objective.6 By two years of age, however, human children are
skilled game players, readily coordinating activities to achieve a common goal.7
Unlike chimpanzees, children appear to understand the different roles from an
objective, “bird’s eye” perspective, thus allowing them to easily engage in role
reversal.8 Furthermore, if a partner quits his or her role, the child will often take
assertive action to re-engage the partner, something chimpanzees never do.
Further evidence of this cooperative advantage can be seen in the fact that chil-
dren recognize that embarking on a joint venture implies a commitment to both
one’s partners and the shared goal. Unlike chimpanzees, young children almost
always communicate with partners before pursuing the goal. This pre-venture
communication is used to solidify joint commitment, which in turn, leads to the
expectation of continued effort until the goal is achieved.9 Furthermore, if the child
must disengage from the activity, he or she nearly always asks permission.10 This
suggests that implicit norms guide cooperative action: partners must be commit-
ted and disengagement requires permission. Nothing comparable has been found
with chimpanzees.

6 Tomasello, Michael / Carpenter, Malinda: The Emergence of Social Cognition in Three

Young Chimpanzees, in: Monographs for the Society for Research in Child Develop-
ment 70 (2005), Issue 1, p. 1-136; Warneken, Felix / Chen, Frances / Tomasello, Michael:
Cooperative Activities in Young Children and Chimpanzees, in: Child Development 77
(2006), Issue 3, p. 640-663.
7 Carpenter, Malinda / Tomasello, Michael / Striano, Tricia: Role Reversal Imitation and
Language in Typically-Developing Infants and Children with Autism, in: Infancy 8
(2005), p. 253-278; Tomasello, Michael / Carpenter, Malinda: The Emergence of Social
Cognition in Three Young Chimpanzees, in: Monographs for the Society for Research
in Child Development 70 (2005), Issue 1, p. 1-136; Warneken, Felix / Chen, Frances /
Tomasello, Michael: Cooperative Activities in Young Children and Chimpanzees, in:
Child Development 77 (2006), Issue 3, p. 640-663.
8 Fletcher, Grace E. / Warneken, Felix / Tomasello, Michael: Differences in Cognitive
Processes Underlying the Collaborative Activities of Children and Chimpanzees, in:
Cognitive Development 27 (2012), Issue 2, p. 136-153.
9 Bullinger, Anke F. / Wyman, Emily / Melis, Alicia p. / Tomasello, Michael: Coordina-
tion of Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in a Stag Hunt Game, in: International Journal
of Primatology 32 (2011), Issue 6, p. 1296-1310; Tomasello, Michael: The Ultra-Social
Animal, in: European Journal of Social Psychology 44 (2014), p. 189.
10 Gräfenhain, Maria / Behne, Tanya / Carpenter, Malinda / Tomasello, Michael: Young
Children’s Understanding of Joint Commitments, in: Developmental Psychology 45
(2009), Issue 5, p. 1430-1443; Hamann, Katharina / Warneken, Felix / Tomasello, Mi-
chael: Children’s Developing Commitments to Joint Goals, in: Child Development 83
(2012), Issue 1, p. 137-145.
6 Matt J. Rossano

Importantly, chimpanzee’s cooperative failings are not due to a lack of cognitive

ability. Chimpanzees can identify intentional behaviors and infer goals and thus
understand that someone reaching for an object intends to possess the object.11
This allows them to offer simple “helping” behaviors such as retrieving an object
for another or assisting another in obtaining food.12 Chimpanzees can also work
with a partner to achieve a goal, although it is quite possible that they simply regard
the partner as a tool for achieving a reward.13
What is lacking in chimpanzees is the motivation that makes achieving joint
goals inherently rewarding, as it is with human children. For chimpanzees, joint
endeavors, such as those found in social games, are generally treated with disin-
terest. They prefer to solve problems alone and will disengage when tasks become
too challenging.14 This motivational deficit also contributes to their limitations in
intentional instruction and simple information sharing (i.e. pointing things out to
one another15); activities that even very young children engage in readily.
Further studies have pinpointed the source of this lack of motivation. For a
chimpanzee, it often does not pay to cooperate because a more dominant chimp will
monopolize the rewards. In a pair of studies16 chimps and three-year-old children

11 Call, Josep / Hare, Brian / Carpenter, Malinda / Tomasello, Michael: Unwilling or Unable:
Chimpanzees’ Understanding of Intentional Action, in: Developmental Science 7 (2004),
Issue 4, p. 488-498; Tomasello, Michael / Carpenter, Malinda: The Emergence of Social
Cognition in Three Young Chimpanzees, in: Monographs for the Society for Research
in Child Development 70 (2005), Issue 1, p. 1-136; Warneken, Felix / Tomasello, Michael:
Altruistic Helping in Infants and Chimpanzees, in: Science 311 (2006), p. 1301-1303.
12 Melis, Alicia p. / Warneken, Felix / Jensen, Keith / Schneider, Anna-Claire / Call, Josep /
Tomasello, Michael: Chimpanzees Help Conspecifics Obtain Food and Non-Food Items,
in: Proceedings of the Royal Society B 278 (2011), Issue 1710, p. 1405-1413; Warneken,
Felix / Hare, Brian / Melis, Alicia p. / Hanus, Daniel / Tomasello, Michael: Spontaneous
Altruism by Chimpanzees and Young Children, in: PLOS Biology 5 (2007), e184.
13 Melis, Alicia / Hare, Brian / Tomasello, Michael: Chimpanzees Recruit the Best Col-
laborators, in: Science 311 (2006), p. 1297-1300; Melis, Alicia p. / Semmann, Dirk: How
is Human Cooperation Different?, in: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
B 365 (2010), p. 2663-2674.
14 Warneken, Felix / Tomasello, Michael: Altruistic Helping in Infants and Chimpanzees,
in: Science 311 (2006), p. 1301-1303; Warneken, Felix / Hare, Brian / Melis, Alicia p. /
Hanus, Daniel / Tomasello, Michael: Spontaneous Altruism by Chimpanzees and Young
Children, in: PLOS Biology 5 (2007), e184.
15 Warneken, Felix / Tomasello, Michael: Cognition for Culture. In the Cambridge Hand-
book of Situated Cognition, edited by Phillip Robbins and Murat Aydede, Cambridge
2009, p. 467-479.
16 Melis, Alicia / Hare, Brian / Tomasello, Michael: Engineering Cooperation in Chim-
panzees: Tolerance Constraints on Cooperation, in: Animal Behaviour 72 (2006), p.
The Ritual Origins of Humanity 7

engaged in cooperative tasks potentially leading to desirable rewards. For example,

partners could work together by pulling on a rope which brought a food reward
within reach. The food was either pre-divided into equal piles or was presented
in one big pile. Both chimps and children successfully cooperated when the food
reward was pre-divided. But only the children were successful when the reward
was in one pile, readily dividing the pile equally between them. For the chimps,
however, cooperation broke down in the one pile condition because the food was
always taken by the more dominant chimp.
In another study17, children and chimps could either work independently or as
partners pulling on ropes (or a single rope) to bring in a food reward. When they
worked independently, neither chimps nor children shared their rewards (even if,
just by “chance,” one individual received considerably more than another). How-
ever, when they worked together, children almost always shared equally, chimps
almost never did. From these studies, Tomasello has concluded that young children
have a “sense of distributed justice that is closely tied to collaborative activities”18
– something utterly lacking in chimpanzees. Chimpanzees, of course, will protest
when another tries to take food or other desirables from them,19 but they do not
seem to connect effort with reward.
Something happened over the course human evolutionary history that forced
our ancestors to make the connection between cooperation and justice. Tomasello
(2014) argues that the key selective event was “obligate cooperative foraging.” For
our ancestors, the most basic survival activity, getting food, required cooperative
effort. Chimpanzees and other apes largely forage alone, with the only notable
exception being the collaborative hunting discussed earlier.
Over time, however, lone foraging became exceedingly perilous for our ancestors.
Upright and hairless, hominin mothers were forced to carry infants or “park” them
on the ground or in a tree while gathering food. Lone mothers would have been at a
severe disadvantage compared to pairs or groups of mothers who worked together

275-286; Warneken, Felix / Lohse, Karoline / Melis, Alicia p. / Tomasello, Michael:

Young Children Share the Spoils After Collaboration, in: Psychological Science 22
(2011), Issue 2, p. 267-273.
17 Hamann, Katharina / Warneken, Felix / Tomasello, Michael: Children but not Chim-
panzees Share More Equitably After Cooperation, in: Nature 476 (2011), p. 328-331.
18 Tomasello, Michael: The Ultra-Social Animal, in: European Journal of Social Psychology
44 (2014), p. 189.
19 e.g., Jensen, Keith / Call, Josep / Tomasello, Michael: Chimpanzees are Vengeful but not
Spiteful, in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (2007), p. 13046-13051.
8 Matt J. Rossano

to minimize risks while maximizing returns.20 As hominin brains and bodies grew,
meat increasingly became a critical component of the diet. This put hominins in
competition with a long-established predator guild of felines and hyenas. A lone
male hunter was at a serious disadvantage both in making a kill and in protecting
it from scavengers compared to a group of hunters.21 Under these conditions, those
unable to form effective cooperative relationships were at risk of starvation.
Obligate cooperative foraging, however, only explains small-scale cooperative-
ness – two or a few individuals working together to achieve a joint goal. Expanding
this cooperativeness to a larger community required a second evolutionary step
– that is, inter-group competition where more cooperative groups replace less
cooperative ones.

[1.2] From Partnership to Cooperative Communities

Around 300,000 ybp (years before present) the first evidence of the ritual use of
pigment emerges in the hominin archaeological record.22 Around 100,000 ybp
evidence of beads and body ornaments emerge along with remains indicating in-
creased use of specialized hunting weapons.23 Collectively, these remains suggest
two important social changes: (1) increased personal and tribal identification and
(2) increased intra-group role specialization.24 Different groups and individuals

20 Falk, Dean: Prelinguistic Evolution in Early Hominins: Whence Motherese?, in: Behav-
ioral and Brain Sciences 27 (2004), p. 491-541.
21 Alvard, Michael: Mutualistic Hunting, in: The Early Human Diet: The Role of Meat,
edited by Craig Stanford and Henry Bunn, New York 2001, p. 261-278.
22 Barham, Lawrence S.: Systematic Pigment use in the Middle Pleistocene of South-Central
Africa, in: Current Anthropology 43 (2002), No. 1, p. 181-190; Watts, Ian: The Origin of
Symbolic Culture. In the Evolution of Culture, edited by Robin Dunbar, Christopher
Knight and Camilla Power, New Brunswick/New Jersey 1999, p. 113-146.
23 Shea, John J. / Sisk, Matthew: Complex Projectile Technology and Homo Sapiens Dis-
persal into Western Eurasia, in: PaleoAnthropology (2010), p. 100-122; Sterelny, Kim:
A Paleolithic Reciprocation Crisis: Symbols, Signals, and Norms, in: Biological Theory
9 (2014), p. 65-77; Wadley, Lyn: Were Snares and Traps Used in the Middle Stone Age
and Does it Matter? A Review and a Case Study from Sibudu, South Africa, in: Journal
of Human Evolution 58 (2010), p. 179-192.
24 Kuhn, Steve / Stiner, Mary C.: Body Ornamentation as Information Technology: To-
wards an Understanding of the Significance of Early Beads, in: Rethinking the Human
Revolution, edited by Paul Mellars et al., Cambridge 2007, p. 45-54; Sterelny, Kim: A
Paleolithic Reciprocation Crisis: Symbols, Signals, and Norms, in: Biological Theory 9
(2014), p. 65-77.
The Ritual Origins of Humanity 9

within a single group were distinguishing themselves using jewelry, body painting,
feathers, and other personal adornments. This points to greater inter-group inter-
action and competition along with increased intra-group role differentiation (e.g.
mothers, mates, hunters, elders, shaman, etc.). In this more complex social world,
groups better able to cooperatively organize themselves would have an advantage
over others.

[2] Cooperative Communities Defined by Shared Values

For many archaeologists, beads, body ornaments, and pigment use indicate an
understanding of symbolism.25 Thus, it is likely that around this time, the ritualized
behaviors common to all primate groups were transforming into more human-like
rituals with cultural and symbolic significance. These rituals would have done more
than just mark social roles (such as dominants from subordinates); they would have
placed that role into a larger symbolic communal framework. An initiation marked
one’s transition into an abstract state called “adulthood.” A mating ritual bound
a couple in something akin to “marriage.” This would have made these roles and
the duties associated with them part of a shared reality about the group, its history,
identity, and the place of individuals within that context. True human cultures were
emerging. In a competitive environment, the most successful groups would have
been those able to compel individuals to form strong commitments to their cultures.
Group competition molded the human motivation to cooperate into a unique
form of primate tribalism. Humans were not just motivated to be good cooperators
but to be loyal tribe members. Displaying loyalty required costly displays of commit-
ment to group norms and values. This heightened level of group commitment can
once again be seen empirically through comparisons of children and chimpanzees.
Both chimps and children allow the majority to influence their behavior. For
example, suppose there are three options to select from (A, B, or C), where only
one leads to a reward. Both children and chimps watch a single demonstrator pick
one option (say B) three times or they watch three different demonstrators pick
a different option (say A) once each (so both options were selected three times,
but A was selected three times by three different demonstrators). Under these
circumstances, Haun, Rekers, and Tomasello (2012) found that both chimps and
children would select option A – the one picked by more. But what if prior to this,

25 Watts, Ian: The Origin of Symbolic Culture. In the Evolution of Culture, edited by Robin
Dunbar, Christopher Knight and Camilla Power, New Brunswick/New Jersey 1999, p.
113-146.
10 Matt J. Rossano

both chimps and children had been allowed to select another option (C) which
led to a reward? Would they later switch their decision to the majority choice even
if it contradicted their personal past experience? For chimps the answer was no,
but for children it was yes.26 For children, but not for chimps, it’s more important
to demonstrate group commitment than to be certain of an individual reward.
Moreover, it’s children, and not chimps, who are especially concerned with
in-group reputational status. When being watched, chimps are equally likely to
behave selfishly or cooperatively. Five-year-old children, on the other hand, are
far more likely to behave cooperatively when watched – especially if the observers
are in-group members.27
What these studies show is that from a very early age children are motivated to
exhibit behaviors that identify them as good group members. An important aspect
of this motivation is demonstrating commitment to group values. For example, even
very young children will swiftly acquire and vigorously enforce social rules. Edwards
(1987) analyzed more than 100 naturalistic observations of Oyugis (Luo-speaking
native Kenyans) children and concluded that by age 2.5 they were already active
enforcers of social rules. This was true even though the children were only taught
the rules themselves and never specifically instructed to enforce the rules on others.
The same has been found in laboratory settings. Rakoczy and colleagues (Ra-
koczy, Brosche, Warneken, & Tomasello, 2009; Rakoczy. Wameken, & Tomasello,
2008) taught preschoolers the rules of simple games. Once having learned the
rules, children vigorously protested rule violations. Significantly, the rules being
enforced were often simply arbitrary in nature. In other words, they did not affect
the instrumental goals of the game. However, the children understood them as
“normative” – the “right” way to do things. The “right” way to do things – to dress,
eat, mate, speak, worship, etc – is exactly what defines one cultural group from
another. They are a group’s shared values.
Thus, the selective effect of group competition was to mold cooperative motiva-
tion into a powerful form of group commitment. Group commitment, however, is
problematic. For group members to commit to group values they must know what
those values are and they must have a clear means of displaying their personal
commitment to them. At a very practical level, group commitment becomes a com-

26 Tomasello, Michael: The Ultra-Social Animal, in: European Journal of Social Psychology
44 (2014), p. 191.
27 Engelmann, Jan M. / Herrmann, Esther / Tomasello, Michael: Five-Year Olds, but not
Chimpanzees, Attempt to Manage their Reputations, in: PLoS ONE 7 (2012), Issue
10, e48433; Engelmann, Jan / Over, Harriet / Herrmann, Esther / Tomasello, Michael:
Young Children Care More About their Reputation with Ingroup Members and Possible
Reciprocators, in: Developmental Science 16 (2013), p. 552-558.
The Ritual Origins of Humanity 11

munication problem. How can groups effectively communicate values to members?

How can members effectively display commitment to those values? Language is not
a solution to this problem because language can too easily be used deceptively.28
Groups can lie about their values and individuals can lie about their commitment.
Fortunately, this communication problem is nothing new. Evolution had grappled
with it eons ago (long before language) and derived a solution: ritual.

[3] Shared Values Defined by Ritual

The use of ritualized behaviors as a means of regulating social life is widespread

across the animal kingdom. For example, male elk (other large male ungulates)
use a “low stretch” ritual to gain access to an estrous female without frightening
her.29 The stretch position emulates that of a calf wanting to nurse and puts the
female at ease while allowing the male to better detect estrus odors. Similarly,
among many waterfowl, ritualized mating dances are used both for selecting mates
and building social bonds between them.30 Finally, many dog owners are familiar
with the “play bow” ritual often seen at the opening of a rough-house play session.
The dog lowers its head to the ground between its front paws with its hind end
raised and tail wagging. The bow conveys the important message that seemingly
aggressive acts (growling, chasing, biting, etc.) are not to be misconstrued as real
aggression – they’re for play.
As highly social creatures our primate cousins have an array of ritualized be-
haviors for regulating their social lives. For example, when chimpanzee, bonobo,
and spider monkey foraging parties reunite, they engage in ritualized acts of
welcoming and social re-affirmation including mutual embracing, kissing, group
pant-hooting, and grooming.31 Gelada baboons use rhythmic back-and-forth ap-
proach vocalizations to signal benign intent during close-quarter feeding sessions.
These vocalizations allow two baboons to peaceful feed near one another without
threat.32 Finally among chimpanzees, reconciliation between combatants is signaled
by submissive bows, plaintiff vocalizations, and the hand-out begging gesture (on

28 Rappaport, Roy: Ritual, Religion and the Making of Humanity, Cambridge 1999.
29 Guthrie, R. Dale: The Nature of Paleolithic Art, Chicago 2005, p. 68.
30 Kraaijeveld, Ken / Mulder, Raoul A.: The Function of Triumph Ceremonies in the Black
Swan, in: Behavior 139 (2002), p. 45-54.
31 Goodall, Jane: The Chimpanzees of Gombe. Cambridge/Massachusetts 1986.
32 Richman, Bruce: Rhythm and Melody in Gelada Vocal Exchanges, in: Primates 28
(1987), p. 199-223.
12 Matt J. Rossano

the part of the loser) followed by embraces and kisses (from the winner33). Given
their primate heritage, our ancestors were pre-adapted with a rich repertoire of
ritualized behaviors for regulating social life.

[3.1] What is Ritual?

A ritualized gesture differs from an instrumental one in that it has become eman-
cipated and formalized.34 Take, for example, ritual washing. To wash a table or
other object we use a series of elemental gestures. We get some cleaner. We get a
rag. We hold the cleaner in one hand, rag in the other. We spray the cleaner. We
wipe the table with the rag and so forth. Ritualization begins when we emancipate
or segregate a single gesture from this sequence, say, the wiping gesture, and we
then formalize it or execute it in a more dramatic, exaggerated, stylized way. So
now I don’t just wipe the table in any old way, I do it in a very deliberate, dramatic,
attention-getting way. Think of the way a military bugler raises and lowers the horn
to his mouth in that very distinctive, disciplined manner.
Often this formalization includes repetition, so that the dramatic, stylized action
is repeated again and again in order to attract and hold someone’s attention. Ritual
washings, baptisms, and anointings often involve repeated gestures. I baptize you in
the name of the Father (pour), Son (pour again) and Holy Spirit (pour a third time).
Often the emancipated, formalized, repeated gesture itself becomes part of a rigidly
ordered sequence that must be completed for the ritualized act to be done properly.
Finally, and uniquely with humans; ritualized actions also exhibit the quality of
goal demotion, where executing the elemental gesture correctly becomes the goal in
and of itself.35 So a meditator clears everything else from the mind and concentrates
on the mere act of breathing. The mental discipline required to remain focused on
proper gestural execution despite discomfort or distraction is the foundation upon
which costly ritual acts of endurance and pain tolerance are built.
The end result then is an attention-getting, unambiguous social signal. But what
is it signaling? With nonhuman animals, this signal indicates something about the
sender’s intentions: The “bowing” dog wants to play, the “stretching” elk wants to
mate, etc. But with humans, the message often goes beyond this. The sender is not

33 de Waal, Frans: Peacemaking Among Primates. Cambridge/Massachusetts 1990.

34 Rossano, Matt J.: The Essential Role of Ritual in the Transmission and Reinforcement
of Social Norms, in: Psychological Bulletin 138 (2012), p. 529-549.
35 Lienard, Pierre / Boyer, Pascal: Whence Collective Rituals? A Cultural Selection Model
of Ritualized Behavior, in: American Anthropologist 108 (2006), p. 814-827.
The Ritual Origins of Humanity 13

just indicating intentions, but also values. Ritual washing is about much more than
just hygiene. It’s about the sacredness of the object. The bugler is showing us much
more than just proper bugle-playing posture. He’s showing us respect for the dead.
Ritualized actions embody values. Saluting the flag, shaking another’s hand, rising
when the judge enters court, tossing dirt on the grave – all of these acts embody or
physically express the shared values of a community.

[3.2] Ritual Transmission of Group Values

Ritual solves the first part of the “values communication problem” by clearly
displaying the value (the sacred object, respect for the dead) through embodied
action (ritual washing, the military-style bugling). But displaying is not enough.
The value must also be effectively transmitted to others, especially children. Ritu-
alized gestures address this problem as well. It is through ritualized gestures that
we transmit normative values to others, especially to infants and children. Indeed,
ritualized behaviors are the means by which we draw infants increasingly into the
adult social world and its normative standards.
The earliest “turn-taking” interactions between infants and their caregivers are
ritualized interactions.36 These interactions typically begin with some exaggerated
attention-getting signal, such as coo or call from the infant or cheery “helloooo”
from mom. Once engaged, these interactions involve repetitive, stylized, strictly
sequenced, rule-governed gestures. These gestures follow the same general script as
adult conversational turn-taking, which one reason why mother-infant interactions
are often called “proto-conversations.”
The exaggerated, stylized, attention-getting gestures (“motionese”) and vo-
calizations (infant-directed speech or “motherese”) present in “turn taking” are
especially effective in transmitting social and motor skills.37 For example, ritualized
infant-caregiver interactions teach infants the rules of adult conversational turn-tak-

36 Dissanayake, Ellen: Antecedents of the Temporal Arts in Early Mother-Infant Interaction,

in: The Origins of Music, edited by Steven Brown et al., Cambridge/Massachusetts 2000,
p. 389-410; Reddy, Vasudevi: How Infants Know Minds, Cambridge/Massachusetts
2008, p. 52-55; Tronick, Edward Z. / Als, H. / Adamson, L.: Structure of Early Face-to-
Face Communicative Interactions, in: Before Speech: The Beginning of Interpersonal
Communication, edited by Margaret Bullowa, Cambridge 1979, p. 349-370.
37 Brand, Rebecca. J. / Baldwin, Dare A. / Ashburn, Leslie A.: Evidence for Motionese:
Modifications in Mothers’ Infant-Directed Action, in: Developmental Science 5 (2002),
Issue 1, p. 72-83; Casler, Krista / Kelemen, Debra: Young Children’s Rapid Learning
About Artifacts, in: Developmental Science 8 (2005), p. 472-480.
14 Matt J. Rossano

ing.38 The “motionese” employed by adults when interacting with children aids in
their acquisition of various motor skills, such as tying shoes and brushing teeth.39
But ritualized gestures do more than just teach children how things can be done;
they teach them how things are supposed to be done. Children don’t just imitate, they
over-imitate – that is, they faithfully replicate actions that are obviously intentional
yet causally irrelevant (in other words, ritualized actions). For example, Lyons,
Young, and Keil (2007) found that 3- to 5-year-olds would readily imitate stroking
a feather on the side of a jar before removing the lid to retrieve an object. Similarly,
Nielsen and Tomaselli (2010) found that 2 to 13-year-olds imitated rotating a stick
three times on the top of a box or wiping a stick three times from front to back
over a box before opening the box. Imitation of these actions persisted even after
children understood that they were not causally necessary for opening the boxes.
Other studies have confirmed that children do not see over-imitated acts as caus-
ally necessary, but instead understand them as normatively necessary. Kenward40
has found that young children’s over-imitation is based on a flexible declarative
belief (not a behavioral procedure) and this belief is normative in nature. Children
demonstrate that normativity by spontaneously objecting when others fail to follow
the “correct” sequence of actions when performing a task. Thus, when observing an
adult’s clearly intentional acts (the intentionality being evidenced by the ritualized
nature of the acts) children extract a normative rule about the “correct” way in
which certain tasks are to be accomplished. We don’t have to open boxes this way,
but this how we (our culture) are supposed to open boxes.

38 Nadel, Jacqueline / Carchon, Isabelle / Kervella, Claude / Marcelli, Daniel / Reserbat-Plan-

tey, Denis: Expectancies for Social Contingency in 2-Month-Olds, in: Developmental
Science 2 (1999), p. 164-173.
39 Gergely, Gyorgy / Csibra, Gergely: The Social Construction of the Cultural Mind: Im-
itative Learning as a Mechanism of Human Pedagogy, in: Interaction Studies: Social
Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems 6 (2005), p. 463-481,
p. 479.
40 Kenward, Ben / Karlsson, Markus / Persson, Joanna: Over-Imitation is Better Explained
by Norm Learning than by Distorted Causal Learning, in: Proceedings of the Royal
Society B: Biological Sciences 278 (2011), p. 1239-1246; Kenward, Ben: Over-Imitating
Preschoolers Believe Unnecessary Actions are Normative and Enforce their Performance
by a Third Party, in: Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 112 (2012), p. 195-207.
The Ritual Origins of Humanity 15

[4] Religious Ritual Makes Values “Sacred” (Thus Solving

the Credibility Problem)

To commit to group values, those values must be effectively communicated to

members. Ritual solves this problem by clearly displaying and transmitting values
through embodied action. Through these embodied actions, individuals (especially
children) learn the content of group values. Individuals, however, must commit to
that content in order to be perceived as trustworthy group members – group members
with whom others want to form reciprocal fitness-enhancing relationships. Group
solidarity, cohesion, and competitiveness depend on an abundance of trustworthy
group members. Displaying commitment to group values, however, raises another
problem. Not only must one display commitment, but the display must be credible.
Faking commitment can produce individual gains (for the faker), but it will be at
the expense of the group – eroding its common spirit.
Once again, the problem of ensuring credibility in displays is an evolutionarily
ancient one. Nature solved the problem long ago by making some social signals
costly. Most social signals, including ritualized signals, are primarily aimed at
manipulating another’s behavior by influencing his or her affective state.41 For
example, by lowering its head and putting its hand out in the begging gesture, a
chimpanzee signaler adopts a submissive, vulnerable posture which serves to relax
the receiver who then might be more apt to share food, provide aid, or stop aggres-
sion.42 For a social signal to communicate honest commitment it must be hard to
fake. In other words, it must impose such a cost on the signaler that “faking it” is
simply not worth the effort. This type of signal is essential for building enduring
cooperative relationships. To be effective, ritual signals of commitment must be
costly; otherwise they are prone to deceptive use and therefore unreliable as a basis
for relationship-building.
Two primate gestures exemplify the difference between low and high cost
“rituals”. The begging gesture is low cost, can be used deceptively and is therefore
relatively ineffective as a sign of relational commitment. However, male baboons
have another ritual that has been found to be effective for relationship-building: the
scrotum grasp. A male baboon wishing to signal friendship to another will allow

41 Owren, Michael J. / Rendall, Drew / Bachorowski, Jo-Anne: Nonlinguistic Vocal

Communication, in: Primate Psychology, edited by Daniel Maestripieri, Cambridge/
Massachusetts 2003, p. 359-394.
42 Pollick, Amy S. / de Waal, Frans B. M.: Ape Gestures and Language Evolution, in: Pro-
ceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (2007), p. 8184-8189.
16 Matt J. Rossano

his potential “friend to be” to momentarily handle his genitals.43 The gesture is es-
pecially risky since grabbing and ripping at the genitals is common when primates
fight. By taking the risk of literally putting his reproductive success in another’s
hands, the baboon honestly displays his trustworthiness to the other.
Using cost as a means of assuring honest commitment in social communication
can be found in many species. Indeed, for reliable signals to evolve those signals
must be hard to fake otherwise recipients will ignore them.44 For example, a male
frog wishing to signal his robustness to local females might do so using a loud long
croak. However, if loud long croaks can be easily produced by weakling males, then
there is no reason why females should evolve to accept such a signal as informative
of the male’s health status. As it turns out though, a loud long croak is metabolically
expensive for such a small bodied creature and weakling males generally cannot
produce croaks with the same intensity as healthy males. Thus, loud long croaks
effectively serve as reliable signals of robustness specifically because they are costly
to produce.45
Similarly, Thompson’s gazelles will often jump high into the air or “stot” as a
predator approaches the herd. Stotting is both attention-getting and energetically
expensive and as such seems odd in the presence of a predator – why expend so
much energy trying to attract the attention of someone who wants to eat you? The
answer is that by obviously demonstrating its strength and agility, the stotting
gazelle sends an honest message about its physical fitness. A slower, weaker gazelle
cannot afford such a display and thus becomes a more desirable victim in the eyes
of the approaching predator.46
Our hominin ancestors faced the same problem of trying to identify trustworthy
group members. They solved it the same way as other species: by imposing costly
ritual displays. Furthermore, it appears that the most successful way of elevating
the cost of hominin ritual displays was to include the supernatural in the ritual – in
other words, to “supernaturalize” the ritual.

43 Whitham, Jessica C. / Maestripieri, Dario: Primate Rituals: The Function of Greetings

Between Male Guinea Baboons, in: Ethology 109 (2003), p. 847-859.
44 Sosis, Richard / Alcorta, Candace: Signaling, Solidarity, and the Sacred. The Evolution
of Religious Behavior, in: Evolutionary Anthropology 12 (2003), p. 264-274; Zahavi,
Amotz / Zahavi, Avishag: The Handicap Principle, Oxford 1997.
45 Welch, Allison M. / Semlitsch, Raymond D. / Gerhardt, H. Karl: Call Duration as an
Indicator of Genetic Quality in Male Grey tree Frogs, in: Science 280 (1998), p. 1928-
1930.
46 Zahavi, Amotz / Zahavi, Avishag: The Handicap Principle, Oxford 1997.
The Ritual Origins of Humanity 17

By around 70,000 ybp the first archaeological evidence of supernatural ritual

emerges.47 Why add the supernatural to rituals? Numerous studies have shown
that religious rituals are more effective at building cooperative communities than
secular rituals. For example, religious communes have greater longevity than sec-
ular ones, with the most enduring religious communes being those that imposed
the most costly ritual obligations (e.g. giving up personal possessions, abstaining
from certain foods, frequent attendance at ritual activities48). More severe ritual
obligations, however, had no effect in increasing the longevity of secular communes.
Similarly, religious kibbutzim members have been found to practice signifi-
cantly greater within-group generosity compared to their secular counterparts.49
This generosity was directly tied to participation in public ritual prayer – the more
frequently one engaged in public prayer, the more generous he50 tended to be. No
similar relationship was found between public activities in secular kibbutzim
(dances, lectures, community meetings, etc.) and generosity.
The success of religious over secular ritual is very likely due to the fact that the
inclusion of the supernatural elevates ritual obligations to sacred duties.51 Violating
the ritual obligation and the group values upon which it is based become more than
just lapses or mistakes, they become punishable sins. Knowing that another takes
his or her obligations seriously enough to risk supernatural punishment enhances
trust. Empirical studies support this reasoning. Purzycki and Arakchaa (2013), for
example, found that those known to more scrupulously practice religious rituals
were judged as more trustworthy than those who didn’t. In another study, religious

47 Coulson, Shelia / Staurset, Sigrid / Walker, Nick: Ritualized Behavior in the Middle
Stone Age: Evidence from Rhino Cave, Tsodilo Hills Botswana, in: PaleoAnthropology
(2011), p. 861.
48 Sosis, Richard / Alcorta, Candace: Signaling, Solidarity, and the Sacred. The Evolution of
Religious Behavior, in: Evolutionary Anthropology 12 (2003), p. 264-274; Sosis, Richard
/ Bressler, Eric: Cooperation and Commune Longevity: a Test of the Costly Signaling
Theory of Religion, in: Cross-Cultural Research 37 (2003), Issue 2, p. 211-239.
49 Sosis, Richard / Ruffle, Bradley: Religious Ritual and Cooperation: Testing for a Re-
lationship on Israeli Religious and Secular Kibbutzim, in: Current Anthropology 44
(2003), p. 713-722; Ruffle, Bradley J. / Sosis, Richard: Does it Pay to Pray? Costly Ritual
and Cooperation, in: The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy 7 (2007), Issue
1, p. 1-35.
50 The effect was only found among male kibbutzim members. Only males are required to
engage in thrice daily public prayer.
51 Atran, Scott / Ginges, Jeremy: Religious and Sacred Imperatives in Human Conflict,
in: Science 336 (2012), p. 855-857; Sheikh, Hammad / Ginges, Jeremy / Coman, Alin
/ Atran, Scott: Religion, Group Threat and Sacred Values, in: Judgment and Decision
Making 7 (2012), Issue 2, p. 110-118.
18 Matt J. Rossano

people extended greater trust to others identified as religious, while non-religious

people were equally trusting (or mistrusting) of others regardless of religious iden-
tity.52 The greater trust extended to religious partners was actually well-placed as
religious partners proved to be more generous than non-religious partners.
To outsiders, some religious rituals can seem peculiar and onerous. Having to
stop everything five times a day to pray, as devout Muslims do, or praying in the
hot sun wearing a heavy dark coat and hat, as Orthodox Jews do, hardly seem worth
the bother. Moreover, some religious rituals, such as the snake handling practices of
Appalachian Pentecostals, are downright dangerous. But the costly religious rituals
are highly effective in building strong community commitment. Xygalatas et al.
(2013) found that both participants in and witnesses to high ordeal rituals (such
as those involving body piercing with needles, hooks, and skewers) contributed
significantly more to a public fund and showed stronger emotional attachment to
their national identity than low ordeal ritual participants. Furthermore, rituals that
incorporate greater degrees of synchronous movement, such as chanting, praying, or
dancing together, have been found to instill a greater sense of shared sacred values
among participants leading to significant increases in intra-group generosity.53
Considerable research supports the notion that group competition played a
significant role in our evolutionary past.54 In this competition, the advantage
would have gone to the best organized, most cohesive groups. What the research
just reviewed indicates is that those groups would have been the ones where costly
supernatural rituals were used to ensure trust among group members. That reli-
gious groups out-competed non-religious ones in our prehistory provides a good
explanation for the universality of religion among humans.

[5] The Ritually Defined Person

Human uniqueness finds it origins in ritually-organized cooperativeness. However,

ritual’s importance in shaping humanity goes even deeper. It is at the very heart
of human “personhood.” As far back as Boethius, Western philosophy has tried in

52 Tan, Jonathan H. W. / Vogel, Claudia: Religion and Trust: An Experimental Study, in:
Journal of Economic Psychology 29 (2008), p. 832-848.
53 Fischer, Ronald / Callander, Rohan / Reddish, Paul / Bulbulia, Joseph: How do Rituals
Affect Cooperation? An Experimental Field Study Comparing Nine Ritual Types, in:
Human Nature 24 (2013), p. 115-125.
54 see Rossano, Matt J.: Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved, Oxford 2010, p.
50-51 for review.
The Ritual Origins of Humanity 19

vain to identify a critical trait or quality unique to and universal among humans
that accounted for personhood.55 Among the many defining traits proposed are:
rationality, self-awareness, free-will, morality, language, or memory.56 It is no secret
that by and large these attempts have failed.
In contrast to philosophy, traditional cultures and most religious traditions
have defined personhood as relational. 57 For example, in most traditional African
societies, personhood is not a biological endowment, but a state achieved through
increased incorporation into a community,58 aptly reflected in the African proverb
“I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am”.59 The community is the
defining social reality and one’s relations within that community served to define
one’s very self. Such was the conclusion of anthropologist Janice Boddy who spent
years in Sudan: “Certainly northern Sudanese with whom I worked do not see
themselves as unique entities, wholly distinct from others of their group … Person-
hood in northern Sudan is relational rather than individualistic; a person is linked
corporeally and morally to kin”.60 In this view, personhood entails the assumption
of roles and responsibilities within communal life – roles and responsibilities almost
always bestowed through rituals (christening, initiation, marriage, etc.).
The relational approach to personhood has the advantage of being fully compatible
with our evolutionary history. In our evolutionary past, “personhood” was not an

55 Singer, Peter: Rethinking Life and Death: The collapse of our Traditional Ethics, Oxford
1994.
56 e.g. Dennett, Daniel: Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology, Cam-
bridge 1978; Fletcher, Joseph: Humanhood. Essays in Biomedical Ethics, Buffalo/New
York 1979; Frankfurt, Harry G.: Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person, in: The
Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971) Issue 1, p. 5-7; Rawls, John: A Theory of Justice, Cam-
bridge 1971; Sartre, Jean-Paul: Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological
Ontology, New York 1956; Taylor, Charles: The Concept of a Person, in: Philosophical
Papers 1 (1985), p. 97-114.
57 Brown, William S.: Neurobiological Embodiment of Spirituality and Soul, in: From
Cells to Souls and Beyond: Changing Portraits of Human Nature, edited by Malcolm
Jeeves, Grand Rapids, Grand Rapids/Michigan 2004, p. 58-76; Green, Joel B.: What
Does it Mean to be Human? Another Chapter in the Ongoing Interaction of Science and
Scripture, in: From Cells to Souls and Beyond: Changing Portraits of Human Nature,
edited by Malcolm Jeeves, Grand Rapids/Michigan 2004, p. 179-198.
58 Menkiti, Ifeanyi A.: Person and Community in African Traditional Thought, in: African
Philosophy: An Introduction, edited by Richard A. Wright, Washington 1984, p. 171-181.
59 Mbiti, John: African Religions and Philosophies, New York 1970, p. 141.
60 Boddy, Janice: The Work of Zar: Women and Spirit Possession in Northern Sudan, in: The
Problem of Ritual Efficacy, edited by William Sax, Johannes Quack and Jan Weinhold,
Oxford 2010, p. 115.
20 Matt J. Rossano

abstraction defined by some elusive trait. It was an adaptive function. Specifically,

a “person” was a cooperative partner in a fitness-enhancing relationship. Ritual
was the means by which trustworthy cooperative partners could be identified.
As the world has modernized, however, the need to ritualistically identify trust-
worthy partners has largely been supplanted by laws, governments, and market
forces that oversee the more-or-less proper fulfillment of our social roles. I don’t
need to cooperatively hunt with my fellow tribe-member anymore; I simply need
the farmer, trucker, and grocer to do their jobs. Communities don’t need to instill
supernatural fear in their members to compel them to follow norms of coopera-
tion. The police, along with an array of governmental and professional regulatory
agencies, can largely keep us all in line.
Sacrificing intimate quality for instrumental quantity has served our material
desires well – developed societies provide most of their citizens with an unprece-
dented degree of stability and comfort. But it has also had an important effect on
our understanding of personhood: it has elevated the function of the relationship
over the psycho/emotional sharing of the relationship. This increasing de-person-
alization may help explain the growing frequency of depression and anomie in
wealthy nations. Indeed, a recent survey found that individuals in wealthier, less
religious nations have significantly lower levels of “meaning” in life compared to
those in poorer, more religious ones.61

[6] The Future of Ritual

The paper has argued that ritual played a critical role in making us human. It
seems, however, that ritual’s role in modern society is becoming increasingly
marginalized. Will something of our very humanity be sacrificed if this continues?
Can we truly be human without some form of religious ritual? The answer to this
is unclear. However, the very fact that the question emerges suggests that ritual’s
future is not a trivial issue. Addressing this question and others will require a broad
inter-disciplinary approach, with different disciplines approaching the issue from
their own unique perspectives.
For example, paleoanthropology has recently developed criteria for identifying
ritual in the archeological record. This can tell where and when ritual emerged in
our evolutionary past. Cultural anthropology is critical for helping us better under-

61 Oishi, Shigehiro / Diener, Ed: Residents of Poorer Nations Have a Greater Sense of
Meaning in Life Than Residents of Wealthier Nations, in: Psychological Science 25
(2014) p. 422-430.
The Ritual Origins of Humanity 21

stand the social function of ritual both in our past and presently. Psychology has
only begun to address the effects of ritual on the cognitive and emotional lives of
the participants. Evolutionary biology and psychology can help us understand the
potential adaptive function of ritual and the selection pressures that transformed
the ritualized behaviors of nonhuman primates into human religious rituals. Phi-
losophy (and possibly even theology) will undoubtedly inherit the formidable task
of integrating findings across these disciplines to tackle the ultimate questions of
human uniqueness, meaning, value, and purpose. If ritual made us human, then
it is important to know if a de-ritualized world is a de-humanized one as well.

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Contact

Matt J. Rossano, Ph.D.

Professor
Department of Psychology
Southeastern Louisiana University
Box 10831
Hammond, LA, 70402
USA
E-Mail: mrossano@selu.edu