Ancestors, Territoriality, And Gods: A Natural History Of Religion (the Frontiers Collection)
by Ina Wunn /
2016 / English / PDF
8.7 MB Download
This books sets out to explain how and why religion came into
being. Today this question is as fascinating as ever,
especially since religion has moved to the centre of
socio-political relationships. In contrast to the current,
but incomplete approaches from disciplines such as cognitive
science and psychology, the present authors adopt a new approach,
equally manifest and constructive, that explains the
origins of religion based strictly on behavioural biology. They
employ accepted research results that remove all need
for speculation. Decisive factors for the earliest
demonstrations of religion are thus territorial behaviour and
ranking, coping with existential fears, and conflict solution with
the help of rituals. These in turn, in a process of cultural
evolution, are shown to be the roots of the historical
and contemporary religions.
This books sets out to explain how and why religion came into
being. Today this question is as fascinating as ever,
especially since religion has moved to the centre of
socio-political relationships. In contrast to the current,
but incomplete approaches from disciplines such as cognitive
science and psychology, the present authors adopt a new approach,
equally manifest and constructive, that explains the
origins of religion based strictly on behavioural biology. They
employ accepted research results that remove all need
for speculation. Decisive factors for the earliest
demonstrations of religion are thus territorial behaviour and
ranking, coping with existential fears, and conflict solution with
the help of rituals. These in turn, in a process of cultural
evolution, are shown to be the roots of the historical
and contemporary religions.
