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that such use ofsymbols is a prerequisite for On the Origin of religion, and some argue that religious beliefs must have existed by this time. Religion The first deliberate burials are found at roughly the same time, at a site called Qafzeh in Israel, dated to about 95,000 years ago. Researchers have dug up more than 30 indi- viduals, including a 9-year-old child with its that lean toward a belief in supernatural legs bent and a deer antler in its arms. And agents, to something like a god," says experi- starting about 65,000 years ago or even ear- mental psychologist Justin Barrett of the Uni- lier, Neandertals also sometimes buried their versity of Oxford in the United Kingdom. dead. Henry de Lumley of the Institut de Barrett and others see the roots of reli- Paltiontologie Humaine in Paris has referred gion in our sophisticated social cognition. to these ancient burials as "the birth ofmeta- Humans, they say, have a tendency to see physical anguish." signs of "agents"—minds like ow own—at But others aren't sure what metaphysical Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 25, 2009 work in the world. "We have a tremendous message burial conveys. "There can be lots capacity to imbue even inanimate things of reasons to bury things; just look at kids in with beliefs, desires, emotions, and con- a sandbox," says Barrett. Burial by itself, sciousness, ... and this is at the core ofmany says archaeologist Nicholas Conard of the religious beliefs;' says Yale University psy- University of Tubingen in Germany, may chologist Paul Bloom. best be considered a sign of "protobelier Meanwhile, archaeologists seeking signs If they had to name one time and place of ancient religion focus on its inextricable when the gods were born, Conard and some link to another cognitive ability: symbolic others might point to 30,000 to 35,000 years behavior. They, too, stress religion's social ago in Europe. That's when symbolic expres- component. "Religion is a particular form of sion flowered in what's called the Upper To Charles Darwin, the origin of religious a larger, social symbolic behavior," says Paleolithic explosion (Science, 6 February, belief was no mystery. "As soon as the archaeologist Colin Renfrew of the Univer- p. 709). At this time,Ice Age hunter-gatherers important faculties of the imagination, won- sity of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. painted strikingly realistic animals—and a der, and curiosity, together with some power So archaeologists explore early religion by few half-animal, half-human figures—on of reasoning, had become partially devel- excavating sites that reveal the beginnings of the walls of France's Grotte Chauvet and oped, man would naturally crave to under- symbolic behavior and of complex society. other caves. They also left small but spectac- stand what was passing around him, and Yet these fields are developing chiefly in ular figurines in caves in Germany, including would have vaguely speculated on his own parallel, and there remains a yawning gap a dramatic carved ivory "Venus" reported in existence," he wrote in The Descent ofMan. between the material evidence ofthe archaeo- May and three "lion-men"—each a carved But our propensity to believe in unseen logical record and the theoretical models of male body with the head of a lion. deities has long puzzled Darwin's scientific psychologists. Archaeological objects fall The "Venus of Hohle Fels" illustrates the descendants. Every human society has had short ofrevealing our ancestors' minds, says difficulties of interpreting such ancient its gods, whether worshipped from Gothic Bloom, while on the psychological side, "we objects: Conard, who discovered it, considers cathedrals or Mayan pyramids. In all cul- need more evidence!' the 6-centimeter figure ofa head- tures, humans pour resources into elaborate THE YEAR OF less woman with huge breasts and religious buildings and rituals, with no obvi- Birth of the gods carefully carved genitalia to be a ous boost to survival and reproduction. So When did religious beliefs begin? DARWIN religious fertility object, while how and when did religion arise? A likely place to find out is the archaeologist Paul Mellen of the No consensus yet exists among scientists, archaeological record, but infer- University of Cambridge has 2 but potential answers are emerging from ring "religion" from ancient called it "paleo-porn." both the archaeological record and studies of objects and practices can be a tall Yet many observers agree the mind itself. Some researchers, exploring order. Many researchers take the that the lionmen, with their com- religion's effects in society, suggest that it use of symbols as a clue to bud- bination of human and animal may boost fitness by promoting cooperative ding spirituality. As far back as qualities—something seen in behavior. And in the past 15 years, a growing 100,000 years ago, people at the many early religions—are strong number of researchers have followed South African site of Blombos This essay is the I 1 tn candidates for a supernatural Darwin's lead and explored the hypothesis Cave incised pieces of ochre in a monthly senes. For more on evolutionary being or spirit guide. Some go so that religion springs naturally from the nor- with geometric designs, creating ongins online, see the far as to suggest that the small mal workings of the human mind. This new the first widely recognized signs Origins bldg at Hags. statues were pan of shamanistic sdentemag.erglorIgins. field, the cognitive science ofreligion, draws of symbolic behavior (Science, For more on the Origin of rituals, though Conard says we on psychology, anthropology, and neuro- 30 January, p. 569). Although it's Religion, listen to a cannot know for sure. "Even if it 0 science to understand the mental building difficult to equate enigmatic pockast by author wasn't shamanism," he says, ". Elizabeth Culotta at blocks ofreligious thought. "There are nine- lines on a chunk of ochre with a www.selencermag.erg/ bet the bank it was something U tional properties of our cognitive systems belief system, researchers agree muftieneelle/podeast consider religious beliefs.- 784 6 NOVEMBER 2009 VOL 326 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org PublishedbyAAAS EFTA00731358  The world over. All cultures have religious beliefs, Born believers? nomena to the agency of another being. though they express them in diverse ways. While archaeologists trace the outward When it comes to natural phenomena, "we expressions ofreligious and symbolic behav- may be intuitive theists: says cognitive psy- Twenty thousand years later, humans ior, another group of researchers is trying to chologist Deborah Kelemen of Boston Uni- reached another religious milestone, build- trace more subtle building blocks of religious versity (BU). She has shown in a series of § ing what is often considered the world's first belief, seeking religion's roots in our minds. papers that young children prefer "teleologi- Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 25, 2009 I temple at the 11,000-year-old site of cal: or purpose-driven, expla- Gobekli Tepe in Turkey (Science, 18 January 2008, p. 278). There, rows of standing stones "Thu begin that a god is a to see nations rather than mechanical ones for natural phenomena. up to 6 meters tall march down a high hill- likely thing for a human mind For example, in several side in circles; each massive stone is carved studies British and American 3 with images of wild animals. "There is the to construct." children in first, second, and erection of monumental and megalithic Deborah kelemon, fourth grades were asked architecture for the first time: says excava- Boston Iltivcrsitp whether rocks are pointy tor Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeo- because they are composed of logical Institute in Berlin. According to the emerging cognitive small bits ofmaterial or in order to keep ani- After this time, more organized sites with model ofreligion, we areso keenly attuned to mals from sitting on them. The children pre- apparently religious aspects appear else- the designs and desires of other people that ferred the teleological explanation. "They where. For example, at one of the first set- we are hypersensitive to signs of "agents": give an animistic quality to the rock; it's pro- tled towns, Catalhoya in southern Turkey, thinking minds like ow own. In what anthro- tecting itself," Kelemen explains. Further excavator Ian Hodder of Stanford University pologist Pascal Boyer of Washington Univer- studies have confirmed this tendency. Even and his crew are finding what they consider sity in St. Louis in Missouri has described as Kelemen's own son—who "gets mechanistic copious evidence ofspiritual life: feasts with a "hypertrophy of social cognition;' we tend explanations ofeverything"—is not immune: I wild bulls, burials of ancestors beneath houses, and sometimes the removal and to attribute random events or natural phe- At age 3, after hearing how flowers grow from seeds, his question was, "Who makes reintennent of skulls. And yet Hodder notes the seeds?" that separating "religion" from other activi- The point of studying children is that ties seems arbitrary, as it is not clear that the they may better reflect innate rather than people of Catalhoyiik themselves cultural biases, says Kelemen. But recent separated the religious sphere ,, work suggests that it's not just children: from the rest of life. Kelemen and Krista Casler of Franklin & Renfrew cautions that it Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylva- might not be possible to know nia, found the same tendency to ascribe pur- for sure that a culture wor- pose to phenomena like rocks, sand, and shipped gods until we can read lakes in uneducated Romany adults. They their names—that is, until the also tested BU undergraduates who had literate societies of ancient taken an average of three college science Mesopotamia and Egypt, classes. When the undergrads had to some 5000 years ago. Those respond under time pressure, they were early empires had both secu- likely to agree with nonscientific statements lar and religious hierarchies, such as "The sun radiates heat because with priestly elites and some- warmth nurtures life:' times a god-king who ruled both "It's hard work to overcome these teleo- g the temporal and spiritual logical explanations: says Kelemen, who realms. In this view, full-fledged adds that the data also suggest an uphill "religion" develops hand in hand battle for scientific literacy. "When you 3 with organized social hierarchies. It speed people up, their hard work goes by may be that "you don't necessarily the wayside." She's now investigating how € have beliefin deities until you have persons of professional scientists perform on her tests. enormously high status, who themselves are Signs of the spirit? Small, 30,000-year-old fig- Such purpose-driven beliefs are a step on 3 close to divine," like a pharaoh, says Renfrew. urines from Germany suggest religious belief. the way to religion, she says. "Things exist www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 326 6 NOVEMBER 2009 785 PublishedbyAAAS EFTA00731359 I ORIGINS for purposes, things are intentionally there?' ... Given ambiguous stimuli, we to thinking that the agent has a mind like caused, things are intentionally caused for a often posit an agency at play." your own. "Higher order theory of mind purpose by some agent. ... You begin to see Guthrie suggested that natural selection enables you to represent mental states of that a god is a likely thing for a human mind primed this system for false positives, because beings not immediately or visibly present, Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 25. 2009 to construct." if the bump in the night is really and who could have a Other researchers find the work intrigu- a burglar—or a lion—you very different perspec- ing. "If her data are right, we all from child- could be in danger, while if it's tive than your own," says hood have a bias to see the natural world as just the wind, no harm done. Barrett. "That's what you purposefully designed," says Barrett. "It's Of course, this is still a need to have a rich repre- a small step to suppose that the design has long way from believing in sentation of what it might a designer." gods or spirits. But a hair- be like to be a god." (It's This predisposition to "creationist" trigger agency detector could also what is needed to explanations has resonance with another ten- work with another sophisti- have a functional reli- dency in the human mind, says Barrett— cated element of the human gion, because people something he calls the "hypersensitive mind to make us prone to need to know that others agency detection device": looking for a believe in gods, cognitive share their beliefs.) As thinking "being" even in nonliving things. In researchers say. They refer to Darwin put it, humans classic experiments in the 1940s, psycholo- what's called theory of mind, developing religion gists found that people watching animations or the understanding that Who made it? Studies suggest that "would naturally attrib- of circles, triangles, and squares darting another being has a mind with children tend toward creationist ute to spirits the same about could identify various shapes as char- intentions, desires, and beliefs explanations of natural phenomena. passions, the same love of acters and infer a narrative. Anthropologist of its own. Studies have vengeance, or simplest Stewart Guthrie noted in 1993 that this ten- shown that this ability develops over time in form of justice, and the same affections dency could help explain religion, because children and is usually present by age 5; which they themselves feel." it implies we attribute "agency" to all kinds functional magnetic resonance imaging Some fMRI studies lend support to this 5 of inanimate objects and (fMRI) studies have localized the parts of the idea. In the 24 March issue of the Proceed- ambiguous signals. As Barrett brain involved. ings of the National Academy ofSciences, a describes it: "When I hear a If you suspect that an agent was team led by Jordan Grafman of the National bump in the night, I think responsible for some mysteri- Institute of Neurological Disorders and 'Who's there?' not 'What's ous event, it's a short step Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland, asked 40 peo- ple to evaluate statements about God's emo- tions and relationships to humans, such as, Raising the temple. The "God is removed from the world" and "God standing stones at Gobekli is forgiving,- while they were in an fMRI Tepe are considered by scanner. The researchers found that the areas many to be the oldest that lit up (indicating oxygen uptake and so humanmade holy place. presumably brain activity), such as the infe- rior frontal gyrus on both sides of the brain, 2 are also involved in theory ofmind. This and other results argue against any special "god region" of the brain as some have suggested, says Grafman. Rather, he says, "religious belief co-opts widely distributed brain sec- tors, including many concerned with so- called theory ofmind:' Other researchers are extending this cog- eF nitive model, finding additional thought processes that they say make religious belief natural. For example, Bloom and Jesse 786 6 NOVEMBER 2009 VOL 326 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org pubtethedayams EFTA00731360  ORIGINS I j Bering of Queens University Belfast argue tion, "it's a compelling idea, but I haven't signal that a religion's members are strongly that children are predisposed to think that the seen lots of empirical evidence that you can committed to the group and so will not seek a mind persists even after the death of the get from there to religious beliefs," says free ride, a perennial problem in cooperative body—something that approaches the idea social psychologist Ara Norenzayan of the groups (Science, 4 September, p. 1196). Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 25. 2009 of an afterlife. Bering showed children ages 4 University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Norenzayan and others also note that through 12 years old a puppet show in which in Canada. helpful behavior is more common when peo- a crocodile ate a mouse. Then he asked the Indeed, even if more data are forthcom- ple think that they are being watched, so a children questions about the mouse. Did it ing, such models are a long way from supernatural god concerned with morality feel hunger? Was it still mad at its brother? explaining the complex systems of gods and could encourage helpful behaviors, espe- The children agreed that the mouse's body no rituals that make up religion. Cognitive cially in large groups where anonymity is 12 longer functioned; it didn't need to eat, for example. But they thought it would still feel researchers face what has come to be called the "Mickey Mouse" problem: The possible. Some researchers suggest that cog- nitive tendencies led to religion, which hunger; its psychological states persisted. Disney character Mickey Mouse then took hold and spread because it Preschoolers showed this tendency more has supernatural powers, but raised fitness. - than older children. no one worships or would But others, such as Boyer, E We can acknowledge the death of the counter that this adaptationist 1, body, says Bering, but we believe that the explanation is itself light on 2 mind continues: "We have this unshakeable data. "It is often said that reli- sense that ow minds are immortal.- Bloom gion encourages or prescribes O. notes that this kind of belief - is universal. solidarity within the group, but A You won't find a community anywhere we need evidence that people where most people don't believe that they are actually follow [their religion's] rec- separate from their bodies." ommendations: says Boyer. "The case is * still open:' Mind or soul? Meanwhile, disciplinary gaps persist ,9 Such hypotheses seem to make intuitive among archaeology, psychology, and neuro- sense. But critics such as Paul Harris of Har- science. Cognitive types insist that ancient vard University say that children learn about objects can answer only a small subset of 3 the afterlife from others. Working in Spain Social circuits. When subjects in an fMRI scanner questions, while some archaeologists dis- CI E and Madagascar, Harris and colleagues did thought about God's relationship with humans, a miss the cognitive model as speculation. Yet studies somewhat similar to Bering's, asking part of the brain involved in understanding the there have been some stirrings of interdisci- g children about the physical and psychological thoughts of others lit up (top tight). plinary activity. Archaeologist Steven ti states of a person who had died. Older chil- Mithen of the University of Reading in the dren and adults were more likely than fight-or kill-for him. Our social brains United Kingdom has suggested that the half- younger children to think that psychological may help explain why children the world human, half-animal paintings and carvings states continued after death, suggesting that over are attracted to talking teacups, but reli- of the Paleolithic demonstrate that early ideas of the afterlife are learned. What's gion is much more than that. "Deriving belief Homo sapiens were applying theory of mind more, people in many cultures distinguish from the architecture of the mind is neces- to other animals 30,000 years ago. And g between the mind, which learns and changes sary but not sufficientr says Norenzayan. anthropologists focusing on the develop- 16- over time, and something like an unchange- He favors an additional class of explana- ment of religion are finding signs of key g able soul, says Harris. 'To say that there is a tions for why religion is so prominent in changes in ritual at archaeological sites like / continuance of mind after death misrepre- every culture: It promotes cooperative Catalhoya. All agree that the field is expe- 2 sents these people's beliefs,- he says. - 1 behavior among strangers and so creates sta- riencing a surge of interest, with perhaps the think people are disposed not to dualism but ble groups (Science, 3 October 2008, p. 58). best yet to come. "In the next 10 to 15 years I to 'triadism'of mind, body, and soul. Other researchers hypothesize that religion is there's likely to be quite a transformation, Even those who embrace the cognitive actually adaptive: By encouraging helpful with a lot more evidence, to give us a com- E. model concede that more studies are needed behavior, religious groups boost the biologi- pelling story about how religion arose:' to distinguish what is learned from what is cal survival and reproduction of their mem- says Norenzayan. innate. As for hypersensitive agency detec- bers. Adhering to strict behavioral rules may —ELIZABETH CULOTTA www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 326 6 NOVEMBER 2009 787 PublishedbyAAAS EFTA00731361