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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

(Hrdy, 2009; Melis & Semmann, 2010; Tomasello, 2014). Tomasello and colleagues have

amassed considerable evidence supporting the notion that humans have evolved unique

cooperative capacities (Herman, Call, Lloreda, Hare, & Tomasello, 2007; Tomasello, 2009;

Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005). To understand how we became ultra-social,

Tomasello 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, suggesting 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 (Stanford, 1999). However, there is little evidence that this hunting is truly cooperative

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in the sense of different individuals understanding and coordinating distinct roles in achieving a

share goal (Bullinger, Wyman, Melis, & Tomasello, 2011; Fletcher, Warneken, & Tomasello,

2012; Povinelli & O’Neill, 2000). 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

(Boesch, 1994). 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 achieving the joint objective (Tomasello & Carpenter, 2005; Warneken,

Chen, & Tomasello, 2006). By two years of age, however, human children are skilled game

players, readily coordinating activities to achieve a common goal (Carpenter, Tomasello, &

Striano, 2005; Tomasello & Carpenter, 2005; Warneken, et al., 2006). 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 (Fletcher, et al., 2012). 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.

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Further evidence of this cooperative advantage can be seen in the fact that children

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 (Bullinger et

al., 2011; Tomasello, 2014 p. 189). Furthermore, if the child must disengage from the activity, he

or she nearly always asks permission (Gräfenhain, Behne, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2009;

Hamann, Warneken, & Tomasello, 2012). This suggests that implicit norms guide cooperative

action: partners must be committed and disengagement requires permission. Nothing comparable

has been found with chimpanzees.

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 (Call, Hare, Carpenter, &

Tomasello, 2004; Tomasello & Carpenter, 2005; Warneken & Tomasello, 2006). This allows

them to offer simple “helping” behaviors such as retrieving an object for another or assisting

another in obtaining food (Melis, Warneken, Jensen, Schneider, Call, & Tomasello, 2011;

Warneken, Hare, Melis, Hanus, & Tomasello, 2007). 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 (Melis, Hare, & Tomasello, 2006a; Melis & Semmann, 2010).

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 disinterest. They prefer to solve problems

alone and will disengage when tasks become too challenging (Warneken & Tomasello, 2006;

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Warneken, et al., 2007). This motivational deficit also contributes to their limitations in

intentional instruction and simple information sharing (i.e. pointing things out to one another,

Warneken & Tomasello, 2009). 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 studies (Melis, et al., 2006b; Warneken, Lohse, Melis, & Tomasello, 2011) chimps and

three-year-old children 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 study (Hamann, Warneken, & Tomasello, 2011), 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). However,

when they worked together, children almost always shared equally, chimps almost never did.

From these studies, Tomasello (2014) has concluded that young children have a “sense of

distributed justice that is closely tied to collaborative activities” (p. 189) – something utterly

lacking in chimpanzees. Chimpanzees, of course, will protest when another tries to take food or

other desirables from them (e.g., Jensen, Call & Tomasello, 2007), but they do not seem to

connect effort with reward.

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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 to minimize risks while

maximizing returns (Falk, 2002) 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 (Alvard,

2001). Under these conditions, those unable to form effective cooperative relationships were at

risk of starvation.

Obligate cooperative foraging, however, only explains small-scale cooperativeness – 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 archaeological record (Barham, 2002; Watts, 1999). Around 100,000 ybp

evidence of beads and body ornaments emerge along with remains indicating increased use of

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specialized hunting weapons (Shea & Sisk, 2010; Sterelny, 2014; Wadley, 2010). Collectively,

these remains suggest two important social changes: (1) increased personal and tribal

identification and (2) increased intra-group role specialization (Kuhn & Stiner, 2007; Sterelny,

2014). Different groups and individuals within a single group were distinguishing themselves

using jewelry, body painting, feathers, and other personal adornments. This points to greater

inter-group interaction 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 (Watts, 1999). 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 commitment to group norms and values.

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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,

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 (Tomasello, 2014, p.

191). 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 watch, 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 (Engelmann,

Herrmann & Tomasello, 2012; Engelmann, Over, Herrmann & Tomasello, 2013).

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

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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 (Rakoczy,

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 motivation 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 communication 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

(Rappaport, 1999). 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.

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[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 (Guthrie, 2005, p. 68). 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 (Kraaijeveld &

Mulder, 2002). 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 behaviors 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 (Goodall, 1986). Gelada

baboons use rhythmic back-and-forth approach vocalizations to signal benign intent during

close-quarter feeding sessions. These vocalizations allow two baboons to peaceful feed near one

another without threat (Richman, 1987). Finally among chimpanzees, reconciliation between

combatants is signaled by submissive bows, plaintiff vocalizations, and the hand-out begging

gesture (on the part of the loser) followed by embraces and kisses (from the winner, de Waal,

1990). Given their primate heritage, our ancestors were pre-adapted with a rich repertoire of

ritualized behaviors for regulating social life.

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[3.1] What is Ritual?

A ritualized gesture differs from an instrumental one in that it has become emancipated and

formalized (Rossano, 2012). 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

(Lienard & Boyer, 2006). So a meditator clears everything else from the mind and concentrates

on 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:

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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 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. Ritualized 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 (Dissanayake, 2000; Reddy, 2008, pp. 52-55; Tronick, Als & Adamson, 1979).

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.”

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The exaggerated, stylized, attention-getting gestures (“motionese”) and vocalizations

(infant-directed speech or “motherese”) present in “turn taking” are especially effective in

transmitting social and motor skills (Brand, Baldwin & Ashburn, 2002; Casler & Kelemen,

2005). For example, ritualized infant-caregiver interactions teach infants the rules of adult

conversational turn-taking (Nadel, Carchon, Kervella, Marcelli, & Reserbat-Plantey, 1999). The

“motionese” employed by adults when interacting with children aids in their acquisition of

various motor skills, such as tying shoes and brushing teeth (Gergely & Csibra, 2005, p. 479).

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 limes 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 causally

necessary, but instead understand them as normatively necessary. Kenward (Kenward et al.,

2011; Kenward, 2012) 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

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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.

[4] Religious Ritual as the Solution 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 (Owren, Rendall & Bachorowski, 2003). 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 aggression (Pollick & de Waal, 2007). 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

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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 his potential “friend to be” to momentarily handle is genitals

(Whitham & Maestripieri, 2003). The gesture is especially 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 (Sosis & Alcorta, 2003; Zahavi & Zahavi, 1997).

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 (Welch, Semlitsch, & Gerhardt, 1998).

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

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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 (Zahavi & Zahavi, 1997).

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 costly ritual displays were those that included

the supernatural.

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

(Coulson, Staurset, & Walker, 2011). 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 secular 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 activities; Sosis & Alcorta, 2003; Sosis & Bressler, 2003). More severe ritual

obligations, however, had no effect in increasing the longevity of secular communes.

Similarly, religious kibbutzim members have been found to practice significantly greater

within-group generosity compared to their secular counterparts (Sosis & Ruffle, 2003; Ruffle &

Sosis, 2007). This generosity was directly tied to participation in public ritual prayer – the more

frequently one engaged in public prayer, the more generous he1 tended to be. No similar

1 The effect was only found among male kibbutzim members. Only males are required to engage in thrice dailypublic prayer.

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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 (Atran & Ginges, 2012; Sheikh,

Ginges, Coman, & Atran, 2012). 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 people extended greater trust to

others identified as religious, while non-religious people were equally trusting (or mistrusting) of

others regardless of religious identity (Tan & Vogel, 2008). 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

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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 (Fischer, Callander, Reddish, & Bulbulia 2013).

Considerable research supports the notion that group competition played a significant

role in our evolutionary past (see Rossano, 2010, pp. 50-51 for review). 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 religious 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 vain to identify a critical trait or quality

unique to and universal among humans that accounted for personhood (Singer 1994). Among the

many defining traits proposed are: rationality, self-awareness, free-will, morality, language, or

memory (e.g. Dennett, 1978; Fletcher, 1979; Frankfurt, 1971; Rawls, 1971; Sartre, 1956; Taylor,

1985). 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 (Brown, 2004; Green, 2004). For example, in most traditional African

societies, personhood is not a biological endowment, but a state achieved through increased

incorporation into a community (Menkiti, 1984), aptly reflected in the African proverb “I am

because we are, and since we are, therefore I am” (Mbiti, 1970, p. 141). The community is the

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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 … Personhood in

northern Sudan is relational rather than individualistic; a person is linked

corporeally and morally to kin (Boddy, 2010, p. 115).

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 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 trustworthy

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 cooperation. 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 quite

well – developed societies provide most of their citizens with an unprecedented degree of

19

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-personalization 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 (Oishi & Diener, 2014).

[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 understand 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.

Philosophy (and possibly even theology) will undoubtedly inherit the formidable task of

integrating across these disciplines to tackle the ultimate questions of human uniqueness,

20

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.

21

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