EoG Chapter 3: Religion in the Age of Chiefdoms

So far in this book, we have had the question of Marxism versus fundamentalists; rephrased, we have been discussing if religion is good for the people or for those in power. In the last chapter, it was a question of whether shamans created mystical gods to control and victimize the people around them or if they genuinely believed that they had control over the supernatural world and used that power to help those around them. In this chapter, we have reached the next step in human cultural development, the chiefdoms. These groups are larger than the bands of kin that spread throughout the world, and are more complicated and hierarchal, but not as large, complicated or hierarchal as future ancient city-states.

As groups became more complicated, so too did religion. Religion stepped in to reinforce a moral code and social system to keep order. In Evolution of God, Robert Wright uses the example of Polynesian islands whose concept of manu and tapa used to keep control. Manu is good; tapa was bad. Chiefs and priests would invoke tapa to punish those who were exhibiting anti-social behaviors, either morally (such as murder or theft) or not following religious rituals. Similarly, chiefs were considered conduits of the positive religious energy of manu, which protected you from religious wrath and made your life more successful. They rewarded those who lived their lives positively and religiously. Thus began moral dimensions within society- do good, receive good fortune; do bad, be sacrificed to appease the gods.

In many ways, concepts such as manu and tapa served ancient chiefdoms as science. People would find correlations between two variables-such as the appearance of stars in the night sky and weather, or perhaps the behavior of the parents and the health of their child- and surmise an explanation, using their religion. In the first case, they would interpret their gods' wishes to predict the weather; in the second case, they would reason that the parent's tapa made the child ill. While their methodology was crude and their explanations often wrong, our modern science is dated back to ancient times.

The Marxists believe that chiefs and priests selfishly used manu and tapa as a carrot to control those in society and, while they may be correct in some instances, ancient chiefdoms tended to be subject to cultural Darwinism. Chiefs that abused their power or rule poorly tended to fall victim to wars or coups, and their societies tended to be trampled by socially stronger societies. Just as anti-social people tended to be eliminated through sacrifice or by outcasting them, so stronger and more harmonious societies developed and grew, and more selfish chiefs were eliminated in coups. And the most successful societies eventually grew into larger ancient states, such as Babylon, forming the next chain in human development.