Food Storage Facilitates Professional Religious Specialization in Hunter-Gatherer Societies

Evolutionary Human Sciences • Vol/Iss. 4 • Cambridge University Press • • Published In • Pages: 1-11 •
By Watts, Joseph, Hamerslag, Elise, M., Sprules, Cassie, Shaver, John H., Dunbar, Robin I. M.

Abstract

Dozens of reasons have been proposed for the emergence of professional religious specialists in human history with little general consensus. Creating a global dataset of hunter-gatherers and using a novel method of exploratory phylogenetic path analysis, this study systematically identifies factors associated with the emergence of religious specialists. Results regarding existential insecurity were generally not supported. This study emphasizes the role of food storage as one of the only significant factors despite that it has been largely overlooked in the literature and theories. The results also highlight the need for more in-depth directional dependencies to better illustrate this evolution.

Samples

Sample Used Coded Data Comment
D-PLACEOther Researchers
Hunter-Gatherer Religion Database (HGRD)Mostly Researcher's Own84 historic hunter-gatherer societies prior to widespread conversion to major world religions or to major shifts in subsistence. Coded data from previous work by lead author (Watts et al 2019)

Hypotheses (6)

HypothesisSupported
Professional religious specialists will be more likely to be found in societies with higher, rather than lower, pathogen load (6)Not Supported
Professional religious specialists will be more likely to be found in societies with unpredictable environments (6)Not Supported
Less rich environments will predict more professional religious specialists (6)Not Supported
Social inequality and professional religious specialists will be positively associated (6)Not Supported
Food storage will be positively associated with professional religious specialists (6)Supported
Sociopolitical leadership and professional religious specialists will be positively associated (6)Supported
Documents and Hypotheses Filed By: hattie.berke