81 posts · 69,065 views
This blog explores the following questions: (1) is there something about the evolved brain-mind that inclines humans towards supernatural thinking or religious belief; (2) can individual or group level selection account for any such features of brain-mind; (3) can we discern supernatural-religious activities or beliefs from the archaeological record (and if so, what kinds); (4) how have supernatural-religious activities and beliefs changed over time; and (5) what might explain such changes?
Cris Campbell
81 posts
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- December 16, 2011
- 11:17 AM
- 2,954 views
Searching for the Elusive God Effect
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Physicists may soon confirm the actual existence of the Higgs boson or God particle. It must exist or their models don’t work and the math is all wrong, which can’t possibly be the case. Or perhaps it can. Stranger things have happened. The elusiveness of the God particle, which is needed for mass to exist, [...]... Read more »
Stark, Rodney. (1984) Religion and Conformity: Reaffirming a Sociology of Religion. Sociological Analysis, 45(4), 273-282. info:/
- December 14, 2011
- 01:42 PM
- 2,929 views
Eating Bodies & Drinking Spirits
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
For historians and theorists of religion, one of the more useful exercises is to compare and contrast the religions of indigenous peoples whose economies or “bases” were different. We are fortunate to have fairly comprehensive records of two such peoples in America: the Iroquois tribes and the Plains Indians. The Iroquois were sedentary horticulturalists whereas [...]... Read more »
Abler, Thomas. (1980) Iroquois Cannibalism: Fact Not Fiction. Ethnohistory, 27(4), 309-316. info:/
- March 18, 2011
- 06:23 PM
- 1,441 views
Pair Bonding & Ritual Marriage
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Over the past few years, something like a perfect storm has been brewing over human pair bonding and the profound impacts it has wrought on human social structure. This is a welcome development in a field that has long been dominated by those who wish to root the relatively modern idea of marriage in ancient [...]... Read more »
Chapais, B. (2011) The Deep Social Structure of Humankind. Science, 331(6022), 1276-1277. DOI: 10.1126/science.1203281
Hill, K., Walker, R., Bozicevic, M., Eder, J., Headland, T., Hewlett, B., Hurtado, A., Marlowe, F., Wiessner, P., & Wood, B. (2011) Co-Residence Patterns in Hunter-Gatherer Societies Show Unique Human Social Structure. Science, 331(6022), 1286-1289. DOI: 10.1126/science.1199071
Lovejoy, C. (1981) The Origin of Man. Science, 211(4480), 341-350. DOI: 10.1126/science.211.4480.341
Lovejoy, C. (2009) Reexamining Human Origins in Light of Ardipithecus ramidus. Science, 326(5949), 74-74. DOI: 10.1126/science.1175834
Langdon, J. (1997) Umbrella hypotheses and parsimony in human evolution: a critique of the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis. Journal of Human Evolution, 33(4), 479-494. DOI: 10.1006/jhev.1997.0146
- June 4, 2011
- 04:26 PM
- 1,351 views
Decoding Frazer’s “Golden Bough”
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Few books in the history of anthropology are better known (but never read) than James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. First published in 1890 (2 volumes), Frazer published a second edition in 1900 (3 volumes), and a rolling third edition between 1911 and 1915 which ballooned to 12 volumes.
Though [...]... Read more »
Ackerman, Robert. (1975) Frazer on Myth and Ritual. Journal of the History of Ideas, 36(1), 115-134. DOI: 10.2307/2709014
- April 20, 2011
- 05:06 PM
- 1,310 views
The Sins of Evolutionary Psychology
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
In 1902, Rudyard Kipling published his wonderfully imaginative Just So Stories. What child does not thrill to learn “How the Camel Got His Hump” or “How the Leopard Got His Spots“? When I was six years old, my grandmother read “How the Whale Got His Throat” and I swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Having [...]... Read more »
Panksepp, Jaak, & Panksepp, Jules. (2000) The Seven Sins of Evolutionary Psychology. Evolution and Cognition, 6(2), 108-131. info:other/
- July 2, 2011
- 12:21 PM
- 1,296 views
Community & Kinship at Catalhoyuk
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Strange things are afoot at Catalhoyuk (7400-5600 BCE), one of the earliest and most important Neolithic (i.e., sedentary and agricultural) sites known to archaeology. As I noted in Bones, Burials and Ancestors, mortuary practices at Catalhoyuk were unusual and often involved secondary burial in the floors of homes.
The assumption has always been that these were [...]... Read more »
Pilloud, Marin A., & Larsen, Clark Spencer. (2011) “Official” and “practical” kin: Inferring social and community structure from dental phenotype at Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. info:/10.1002/ajpa.21520
- March 11, 2011
- 06:23 PM
- 1,284 views
The Magic of Contagion
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
What makes people pay large sums of money for apparently mundane objects such as JFK’s golf clubs ($772,500 at auction) and rocking chair ($453,500)? Although a portion of the price is related to investment value, this cannot account for the exorbitant amounts paid for these items. Something else is at work. According to a study [...]... Read more »
Newman, George, Diesendruck, Gil, and Bloom, Paul. (2011) Celebrity Contagion and the Value of Objects. Journal of Consumer Research. info:/10.1086/658999
Curtis V, & Biran A. (2001) Dirt, Disgust, and Disease: Is Hygiene in Our Genes?. Perspectives in biology and medicine, 44(1), 17-31. PMID: 11253302
- April 14, 2011
- 03:07 PM
- 1,255 views
Mountain Dwarfs & Earthquakes
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Before there were materialist explanations of nature’s unpredictable fury, there were stories. These stories were not mere entertainment, but were attempts to make sense of that which was inexplicable. The world is of course an unpredictable place. We were powerfully reminded of this but one month ago, as an earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan.
Modern Japanese [...]... Read more »
McMillan, A. (2002) When the Mountain Dwarfs Danced: Aboriginal Traditions of Paleoseismic Events along the Cascadia Subduction Zone of Western North America. Ethnohistory, 49(1), 41-68. DOI: 10.1215/00141801-49-1-41
Cruikshank, Julie. (1992) Invention of Anthropology in British Columbia's Supreme Court: Oral Tradition as Evidence in Delgamuukw v. B.C. BC Studies, 25-42. info:other/
- May 31, 2011
- 12:25 PM
- 1,240 views
Ghostbusting with Gozer
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
According to the Ghostbusters Wiki, Gozer the Gozerian (known also as Gozer the Destructor, Volguus Zildrohar, and Lord of the Sebouillia) is an ancient entity who “was originally worshiped as a god by the Hittites, Mesopotamians, and the Sumerians around 6000 BC.” When not visiting retribution on New York in the form of the Stay [...]... Read more »
Lenzi, A. (2007) Dead Religion and Contemporary Perspectives: Commending Mesopotamian Data to the Religious Studies Classroom. Method , 19(1), 121-133. DOI: 10.1163/157006807X222550
- April 3, 2011
- 03:36 PM
- 1,224 views
Storytelling Gone Wild
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Humans everywhere are inveterate storytellers. Because storytelling, in the form of narrative, is found in all cultures and is structurally similar — with agents and action linked together by causation — there is excellent reason to think this ability is the result of intense selection pressure and is not simply a byproduct of other cognitive [...]... Read more »
Scalise Sugiyama, M. (2001) Food, foragers, and folklore: the role of narrative in human subsistence. Evolution and Human Behavior, 22(4), 221-240. DOI: 10.1016/S1090-5138(01)00063-0
Sugiyama, M. (2001) Narrative Theory and Function: Why Evolution Matters. Philosophy and Literature, 25(2), 233-250. DOI: 10.1353/phl.2001.0035
Sugiyama, M. (1996) On the origins of narrative. Human Nature, 7(4), 403-425. DOI: 10.1007/BF02732901
- June 21, 2011
- 12:43 PM
- 1,215 views
Post-Hoc Supernatural Punishers
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
In the inaugural issue of Religion, Brain & Behavior, Jeffrey Schloss and Michael Murray examine the idea that belief in supernatural agents is adaptive because these agents are punishers: supernatural policeman if you will. This policing can have two effects. First, belief in supernatural punishment can enhance within group cooperation. Second, it can reduce cheating [...]... Read more »
Schloss, Jeffrey P., & Murray, Michael J. (2011) Evolutionary Accounts of Belief in Supernatural Punishment: A Critical Review. Religion, Brain , 1(1), 46-99. info:/10.1080/2153599X.2011.558707
Brandhorst, Mario. (2010) Naturalism and the Genealogy of Moral Institutions. The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 5-28. info:/
- August 27, 2011
- 03:34 PM
- 1,205 views
The Zoroastrian Ethic & Spirit of Modernity
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), Max Weber sought to correct or temper Karl Marx’s view that religion was always a reflection or epiphenomenon of the economic base. Although Marx’s understanding of religion was considerably more complicated and drew heavily on Ludwig Feuerbach’s idealist critique in The Essence of Christianity (1841), [...]... Read more »
STARK, R. (2004) SSSR Presidential Address, 2004: Putting an End to Ancestor Worship. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 43(4), 465-475. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-5906.2004.00249.x
Kennedy, Jr., R. (1962) The Protestant Ethic and the Parsis. American Journal of Sociology, 68(1), 11. DOI: 10.1086/223262
- February 4, 2011
- 01:24 PM
- 1,196 views
Early Complex Societies & Early Organized Religions
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Historians have long known that the shelf life of complex societies throughout human history has been rather limited. Archaeologists are aware of this also. But how to explain it?
In a recent (open access) paper, “Cycling in the Complexity of Early Societies,” Sergey Gavrilets and colleagues mathematically modeled early complex societies using a number of variables [...]... Read more »
Gavrilets, Sergey, Anderson, David G., & Turchin, Peter. (2010) Cycling in the Complexity of Early Societies. Cliodynamics: The Journal of Theoretical and Mathematical History, 1(1), 59-80. info:/http://escholarship.org/uc/item/5536t55r
- June 2, 2011
- 02:37 PM
- 1,189 views
Lost in (Western) Translation
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
There is a sense in which we are all cultural narcissists. By this, I mean that because all of us are acculturated at a particular time and in a particular place, we have a strong tendency to view other times and places through our own cultural lens. These lenses are prismatic and what we see [...]... Read more »
Bird-David, Nurit. (1999) "Animism" Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology. Current Anthropology. DOI: 10.1086/200061
Bergman, I., Ostlund, L., Zackrisson, O., & Liedgren, L. (2008) Varro Muorra: The Landscape Significance of Sami Sacred Wooden Objects and Sacrificial Altars. Ethnohistory, 55(1), 1-28. DOI: 10.1215/00141801-2007-044
- June 30, 2011
- 05:11 PM
- 1,174 views
Twisted Saga of “World’s Oldest Ritual”
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
In 2006, University of Oslo archaeologist Sheila Coulson gave an open lecture about her work at a small cave in the Tsodilo Hills of northern Botswana. Although her lecture focused on Middle Stone Age tools recovered from the cave and an unusual rock formation that looked to her like a snake or python, she also [...]... Read more »
Robbins, Lawrence, Campbell, Alec, Brook, George, & Murphy, Michael. (2007) World’s Oldest Ritual Site? The “Python Cave” at Tsodilo Hills World Heritage Site, Botswana. Nyame Akuma, 67(June), 2-6. info:/
- April 16, 2011
- 02:51 PM
- 1,172 views
Tricksters, Selfishness & Altruism
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
In evolutionary biology, few issues have caused more debate than altruism or what appears to be altruism. It is generally accepted that selection operates on individual organisms and that these organisms are selfishly interested in their own survival and reproduction. Another way of stating this is that individual organisms are interested solely in passing along [...]... Read more »
Ricketts, M. (1966) The North American Indian Trickster. History of Religions, 5(2), 327. DOI: 10.1086/462529
Carroll, M. (1984) The Trickster as Selfish-Buffoon and Culture Hero. Ethos, 12(2), 105-131. DOI: 10.1525/eth.1984.12.2.02a00020
- May 28, 2011
- 03:18 PM
- 1,172 views
Religious Evolution: Sami Sticks & Phoenician Stones
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Unlike living organisms, cultural formations do not “evolve.” Evolution, sensu stricto, is a biological process and not a cultural one. Despite this fact, some scholars have fruitfully deployed evolutionary ideas — as analogy and metaphor — to analyze cultural history.
In 1964 the sociologist Robert Bellah did just this in his classic paper, Religious Evolution. Taking [...]... Read more »
Bellah, R. (1964) Religious Evolution. American Sociological Review, 29(3), 358. DOI: 10.2307/2091480
Bergman, I., Ostlund, L., Zackrisson, O., & Liedgren, L. (2008) Varro Muorra: The Landscape Significance of Sami Sacred Wooden Objects and Sacrificial Altars. Ethnohistory, 55(1), 1-28. DOI: 10.1215/00141801-2007-044
Stockton, Eugene D. (1974) Phoenician Cult Stones. Australian Journal of Biblical Archaeology, 1-27. info:/
- May 25, 2011
- 12:48 PM
- 1,166 views
Bones, Burials and Ancestors
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Death is big business. This past year, Americans spent $15 billion on funeral related expenses. Americans are not outliers when it comes to death spending; funeral related expenditures around the world are estimated to be at least this much and probably more. Strangely, the ratio of death spending does not diminish in poorer countries. In [...]... Read more »
Hackett, P. (2005) Historical Mourning Practices Observed among the Cree and Ojibway Indians of the Central Subarctic. Ethnohistory, 52(3), 503-532. DOI: 10.1215/00141801-52-3-503
Macqueen, J. (1978) Secondary Burial at Catal Huyuk. Numen, 25(3), 226. DOI: 10.2307/3269537
Hodder, I., & Cessford, C. (2004) Daily Practice and Social Memory at Çatalhöyük. American Antiquity, 69(1), 17. DOI: 10.2307/4128346
- June 15, 2011
- 02:34 PM
- 1,149 views
A Ray of Light on Stonehenge
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
If you have ever suffered through an episode of “Ancient Aliens” on the History Channel, you might believe that every megalithic structure in the world was constructed by extraterrestrials:
Apparently inspired by the show, one credulous soul posted this question over at Answers.com: “Can scientists prove that Stonehenge was not built by ancient astronauts?” The pithy [...]... Read more »
Ray, B. (1987) Stonehenge: A New Theory. History of Religions, 26(3), 225. DOI: 10.1086/463079
- January 25, 2011
- 12:11 PM
- 1,124 views
The Religion Gene (II)
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
In his paper purporting to show that a beneficial, baby-making “religion gene” will sweep through a population and eventually make everyone religious, Robert Rowthorn ignores this inconvenient fact: nearly everyone in the world is already religious. Here is how it breaks down:
Because fifty percent of the “Non-Religious” group is theistic but not “religious,” we can [...]... Read more »
Rowthorn, R. (2011) Religion, fertility and genes: a dual inheritance model. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.2504
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