Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods

by E Fuller Torrey

  43.   Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (New York: Norton, 2003), 68, 70; Karina Croucher, Death and Dying in the Neolithic Near East (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 306; Raymond Tallis, The Kingdom of Infinite Space (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 249.

  44.   William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 5, scene 1; Theodosius Dobzhansky, The Biology of Ultimate Concern (New York: New American Library, 1967), 69.

  45.   Mike Parker Pearson, The Archeology of Death and Burial (College Station: Texas A and M University Press, 1999), 145. Tillich is quoted by Matthew Alper in The “God” Part of the Brain (New York: Rogue, 2001), 96. Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs Du Mal is quoted by Bauman in Zygmunt Bauman, Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 20. Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory (New York: Vintage, 1989), 19. The T. S. Eliot line is from “The Waste Land” in The Complete Poems and Plays.

  46.   Daniel L. Pals, Seven Theories of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 24–25.

  47.   Nabakov, Speak, Memory, 77; M. H. Nagy, “The Child’s View of Death,” in The Meaning of Death, ed. Herman Feifel (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), 79–98. See also D. Y. Poltorak and J. P. Glazer, “The Development of Children’s Understanding of Death: Cognitive and Psychodynamic Considerations,” Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America 15 (2006): 567–573.

  48.   Nagy, “The Child’s View of Death.”

  49.   See, for example, Cynthia Moss, Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1988), 270–271; and D. Joubert, “Eyewitness to an Elephant Wake,” National Geographic, May 1991, 39–41.

  50.   See G. Teleki, “Group Response to the Accidental Death of a Chimpanzee in Gombe National Park, Tanzania,” Folia Primatologica 20 (1973): 81–94; and Jane Goodall, The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 330 (see also 109, 283–285); Edgar Morin, cited by Bauman, Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies, 13.

  51.   Poems, in Petronius, with an English translation by Michael Heseltine, and Seneca Apocolocynto, with an English translation by William Henry Denham Rouse, 1913, 343, http://books.google.com/books?id=9DNJAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=petroniu; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, chapter 12, 1651, Project Gutenberg EBook, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3207. See also Annemarie de Waal Malefijt, Religion and Culture: An Introduction to Anthropology of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 27–28; Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, 302, quoted by Bauman, Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies, 22; William Butler Yeats, “Death,” in Selected Poetry (London: Pan, 1974), 142.

  52.   Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: Free, 1973), ix; P. T. P. Wong and A. Tomer, “Beyond Terror and Denial: The Positive Psychology of Death Acceptance (Editorial),” Death Studies 35 (2011): 99–106.

  53.   B. L. Burke, A. Martens, and E. H. Faucher, “Two Decades of Terror Management Theory: A Meta-Analysis of Mortality Salience Research,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 14 (2010): 155–195; A. Rosenblatt, J. Greenberg, S. Solomon et al., “Evidence for Terror Management Theory: I. The Effects of Mortality Salience on Reactions to Those Who Violate or Uphold Cultural Values,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57 (1989): 681–690.

  54.   Tylor, Primitive Culture, 2:1.

  55.   A. Irving Hallowell, “The Role of Dreams in Ojibwa Culture,” in The Dream and Human Societies, ed. G. E. Van Gruenbaum and Roger Caillois (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 269.

  56.   Tylor, Primitive Culture, 1:441–443, 2:2.

  57.   Patrick McNamara, The Neuroscience of Religious Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 203; Patrick McNamara and Kelly Bulkeley, “Dreams as a Source of Supernatural Agent Concepts,” Frontiers in Psychology 6 (2015): 1–8.

  58.   Elizabeth Colson, The Makah Indians: A Study of an Indian Tribe in Modern American Society (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1953), http://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=ne11–002; Alfred Métraux, Myths and Tales of the Matako Indians (The Gran Chaco, Argentina) (Gothenburg, Sweden: Walter Kaudern, 1939), http://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=si07–003.

  59.   Effie Bendann, Death Customs: An Analytic Study of Burial Rites (New York: Holt, 1930), 171, 257.

  60.   Clottes, in Christopher Chippendale and Paul S. C. Taçon, The Archaeology of Rock Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 125.

  61.   Curtis, The Cave Painters, 21; E. O. Wilson, “On the Origins of the Arts,” Harvard Magazine, May–June 2012.

  62.   Curtis, The Cave Painters, 47.

  63.   Ibid., 210–211.

  64.   E. Fuller Torrey, The Mind Game: Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists (New York: Emerson Hall, 1972), 4–6.

  65.   Clottes and Lewis-Williams, The Shamans of Prehistory, 99; Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave, 220; Whitley, Cave Paintings and the Human Spirit, 41–42; Hayden, Shamans, Sorcerers, and Saints, 142. The picture drawn by Breuil of “the sorcerer,” which is included in virtually every textbook of human development and archeology, is in fact much more impressive than pictures of the original cave drawing on which it was based, leading some observers to conclude that Breuil was exaggerating some features. See Pfeiffer, The Creative Explosion, 108.

  66.   É. Durkheim, “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life,” in A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, ed. Michael Lambek (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2002), 46; William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt, Reader in Comparative Religion, 4th ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), 27, 9; William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902; New York: Random House, 1929), 31–34.

  67.   Curtis, The Cave Painters, 209, 195, 99, 142–144; Whitley, Cave Paintings and the Human Spirit, 32–33.

  68.   Clottes and Lewis-Wilson, The Shamans of Prehistory, 69–71.

  69.   Guthrie, The Nature of Paleolithic Art, 9–10.

  70.   Tylor, Primitive Culture, 1:483.

  71.   Tattersall, Becoming Human, 10; Mithen, The Prehistory of the Mind, 175–176; Tylor, Primitive Culture, 1:486.

  72.   R. N. Spreng, R. A. Mar, and S. N. Kim, “The Common Neural Basis of Autobiographical Memory, Prospection, Navigation, Theory of Mind, and the Default Mode: A Quantitative Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 21 (2009): 489–510; J. S. Rabin, A. Gilboa, D. T. Stuss et al., “Common and Unique Neural Correlates of Autobiographical Memory and Theory of Mind,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 22 (2010): 1095–1111; H. C. Lou, B. Luber, M. Crupain et al., “Parietal Cortex and Representation of the Mental Self,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 101 (2004): 6827–6832.

  73.   P. Pioline, G. Chételat, V. Matuszewski et al., “In Search of Autobiographical Memories: A PET Study in the Frontal Variant of Frontotemporal Dementia,” Neuropsychologia 45 (2007): 2730–2743; S. Oddo, S. Lux, P. H. Weiss et al., “Specific Role of Medial Prefrontal Cortex in Retrieving Recent Autobiographical Memories: An fMRI Study of Young Female Subjects,” Cortex 46 (2010): 29–39; D. Stuss and B. Levine, “Adult Clinical Neuropsychology: Lessons from Studies of the Frontal Lobes,” Annual Review of Psychology 53 (2002): 401–433; D. T. Stuss, “Disturbance of Self-Awareness After Frontal System Damage,” in Awareness of Deficit After Brain Injury: Clinical and Theoretical Issues, ed. George P. Prigatano and Daniel L. Schacter (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

  74.   J. Okuda, T. Fujii, H. Ohtake et al., “Thinking of the Future and Past: The Roles of the Frontal Pole and the Medial Temporal Lobes,” NeuroImage 19 (2003): 1369–1380; D. R. Addis, A. T. Wong, and D. L. Schacter, “Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future: Common and Distinct Neural Substrates During Event Construction and Elaboration,” Neuropsychologia 45 (2007): 1363–1377; D. L. Schacter and
D. R. Addis, “The Ghosts of the Past and Future,” Nature 445 (2007): 27.

  75.   C. Lebel, L. Walker, A. Leemans et al., “Microstructural Maturation of the Human Brain from Childhood to Adulthood,” NeuroImage 40 (2008).

  76.   N. C. Andreasen, D. S. O’Leary, S. Paradiso et al., “The Cerebellum Plays a Role in Conscious Episodic Memory Retrieval,” Human Brain Mapping 8 (1999): 226–234; G. R. Fink, H. J. Markowitsch, M. Reinkemeier et al., “Cerebral Representation of One’s Own Past: Neural Networks Involved in Autobiographical Memory,” Journal of Neuroscience 16 (1996): 4275–4282. See also E. Svoboda, M. C. McKinnon, and B. Levine, “The Functional Neuroanatomy of Autobiographical Memory: A Meta-Analysis,” Neuropsychologia 44 (2006): 2189–2208; Coolidge and Wynn, The Rise of Homo sapiens, 24; J. H. Balsters, E. Cussans, J. Diedrichsen et al., “Evolution of the Cerebellar Cortex: The Selective Expansion of Prefrontal-Projecting Cerebellar Lobules,” NeuroImage 49 (2010): 2045–2052; A. H. Weaver, “Reciprocal Evolution of the Cerebellum and Neocortex in Fossil Humans,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 102 (2005): 3576–3580.

  77.   Addis et al., “Remembering the Past”; Schacter and Addis, “The Ghosts of the Past.”

  6. ANCESTORS AND AGRICULTURE

    1.   P. Kareiva, S. Watts, R. McDonald et al., “Domesticated Nature: Shaping Landscapes and Ecosystems for Human Welfare,” Science 316 (2007): 1866–1869.

    2.   R. Dale Guthrie, The Nature of Paleolithic Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 406; W. Dansgaard, J. W. C. White, and S. J. Johnsen, “The Abrupt Termination of the Younger Dryas Climate Event,” Nature 339 (1989): 532–534; Peter Bellwood, First Farmers: The Origin of Agricultural Societies (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), 19–25. The millennium of colder weather is called the Younger Dryas, after an arctic flower. It is thought to have been caused by huge amounts of glacial water flooding the North Atlantic and causing major changes in weather patterns.

    3.   O. Dietrich, C. Köksal-Schmidt, J. Notroff et al., “First Came the Temple, Later the City,” Actual Archaeology Magazine, Summer 2012, 32–51; Klaus Schmidt, Göblecki Tepe: A Stone Age Sanctuary in South-Eastern Anatolia (Munich: Beck, 2012).

    4.   A. Curry, “The World’s First Temple?,” Smithsonian, November 2008, 54–60; Patrick E. McGovern, Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 81.

    5.   A. Curry, “Seeking the Roots of Ritual,” Science 319 (2008): 278–280; Curry, “The World’s First Temple?”

    6.   M. Rosenberg, “Hallan Çemi,” in Neolithic in Turkey, ed. M. Ozdoğan (Istanbul: Arkeoloji ve Sanat Yayinlari, 1999), 25–33.

    7.   Schmidt, Göblecki Tepe, 69–76; McGovern, Uncorking the Past, 77–78.

    8.   Schmidt, Göblecki Tepe, 57–58; Karina Croucher, Death and Dying in the Neolithic Near East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 221.

    9.   Alan H. Simmons, The Neolithic Revolution in the Near East: Transforming the Human Landscape (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007), 151.

  10.   Schmidt, Göblecki Tepe, 231; Croucher, Death and Dying, 134; C. C. Mann, “The Birth of Religions,” National Geographic, June 2011, 39–59.

  11.   Croucher, Death and Dying, 139; Schmidt, Göblecki Tepe, 69; Dietrich et al., “First Came the Temple”; Curry, “The World’s First Temple?”

  12.   Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture: Researches Into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art and Custom, 2 vols. (1871; New York: Holt, 1874), 1:427; James L. Cox, The Invention of God in Indigenous Societies (Durham: Acumen, 2014), 4; H. C. People, P. Duda, and F. W. Marlowe, “Hunter-Gatherers and the Origin of Religion,” Human Nature 27 (2016): 261–282.

  13.   John Bailey, “Account of the Wild Tribes of the Veddahs of Ceylon: Their Habits, Customs, and Superstitions,” in Transactions, vol. 2 (London: Ethnological Society of London, 1863), 301–302, http://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=ax05–002; C. G. Seligman, Brenda Z. Seligman, Charles Samuel Myers et al., Gunasekara, The Veddas, Cambridge Archaeological and Ethnological Series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), 30, http://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=ax05–001; Allan R. Holmberg, Nomads of the Long Bow: The Siriono of Eastern Bolivia, Smithsonian Institution, Institute of Social Anthropology (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1950), 89, http://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=sf21–001; Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life Survey, August 2009, question 292a (Pew Research Center for People and the Press, 2012), 54.

  14.   Charles A. Bishop, The Northern Ojibwa and the Fur Trade: An Historical and Ecological Study, Cultures and Communities, Native Peoples (Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston of Canada, 1974), 7, http://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=ng06–054; A. Irving Hallowell and Jennifer S. H. Brown, The Ojibwa of Berens River, Manitoba: Ethnography Into History, Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991), 76, http://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=ng06–058; Clark Wissler, Societies and Dance Associations of the Blackfoot Indians, Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History (New York: Trustees, 1913), 443, http://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=nf06–018; Kaj Birket-Smith, The Chugach Eskimo, Nationalmuseets Skrifter, Etnografisk Række (Kobenhavn: Nationalmuseets publikationsfond, 1953), 112–113, http://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=na10–001; Frederica De Laguna, Under Mount Saint Elias: The History and Culture of the Yakutat Tlingit, Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology (Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1972), 606, http://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=na12–020.

  15.   Geoffrey Parrinder, African Traditional Religion (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1954), 57–66; Lorna Marshall, “!Kung Bushman Religious Beliefs,” in Africa, vol. 32 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 241, http://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=fx10–013; Lorna Marshall, The !Kung of Nyae Nyae (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 53, http://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=fx10–017; Tylor, Primitive Culture, 1:422. See also L. B. Steadman, C. T. Palmer, and C. T. Tilley, “The Universality of Ancestor Worship,” Ethnology 35 (1996): 63–76.

  16.   Jacques Cauvin, The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 11, originally published in 1994 as Naissance des Divinities, Naissance de l’Agriculture (Paris, CNRS); Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: Norton, 1997), 140.

  17.   Robert J. Wenke and Deborah I. Olszewski, Patterns in Prehistory: Mankind’s First Three Million Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 250; Steven Mithen, The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996), 218; M. Balter, “Seeking Agriculture’s Ancient Roots,” Science 316 (2007): 1830–1835, quoting Douglas Kennett at the University of Oregon.

  18.   G. Willcox, “The Roots of Civilization in Southwestern Asia,” Science 341 (2013): 39–40; Wenke and Olszewski, Patterns in Prehistory, 251.

  19.   McGovern, Uncorking the Past, 82, 13.

  20.   B. Hayden, N. Canuel, and J. Shanse, “What Was Brewing in the Natufian? An Archaeological Assessment of Brewing Technology in the Epipaleolithic,” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 20 (2013): 102–150.

  21.   Ibid.; McGovern, Uncorking the Past, xiii, 81.

  22.   Chris Stringer, Lone Survivors: How We Came to Be the Only Humans on Earth (New York: Times, 2012), 166; Guthrie, The Nature of Paleolithic Art, 407–408; E. Pennisi, “Old Dogs Teach a New Lesson About Canine Regions,” Science 342 (2013): 785–786.

  23.   “Sheep Domestication Caught in the Act,” Science 344 (2014): 456; Juliet Clutton-Brock, Domesticated Animals from Early Times (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 57–58.

  24.   Cro
ucher, Death and Dying, 3, 24. Archeologists divide the Neolithic era into periods based on the presence of pottery and other items: Natufian (14,500–12,000 years ago); prepottery Neolithic A (12,000–10,500 years ago); early prepottery Neolithic B (10,500–10,100 years ago); middle prepottery Neolithic B (10,100–9,300 years ago); late prepottery Neolithic B (9,300–8,700 years ago); final prepottery Neolithic B (8,700–8,300 years ago); and pottery Neolithic (8,300–7,200 years ago).

  25.   P. Skoglund, H. Malmström, M. Raghavan et al., “Origins and Genetic Legacy of Neolithic Farmers and Hunter-Gatherers in Europe,” Science 336 (2012): 466–469; R. Bouckaert, P. Lemey, M. Dunn et al., “Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family,” Science 337 (2012): 957–960; Greger Larson, “How Wheat Came to Britain,” Science 347 (2015): 945–946.

  26.   M. Balter, “New Light on Revolutions That Weren’t,” Science 336 (2012): 530–531; Wenke and Olszewski, Patterns in Prehistory, 375.

  27.   Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending, The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution (New York: Basic, 2009), 31; Wenke and Olszewski, Patterns in Prehistory, 230.

  28.   X. Wu, C. Zhang, P. Goldberg et al., “Early Pottery at 20,000 Years Ago in Xianrendong Cave, China,” Science 336 (2012): 1696–1700; G. Shelach, “On the Invention of Pottery,” Science 336 (2012): 1644–1645; Wenke and Olszewski, Patterns in Prehistory, 261; Andrew Shryock and Daniel L. Smail, Deep History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 211; McGovern, Uncorking the Past, 39; A. Tucker, “Dig, Drink and Be Merry,” Smithsonian, July–August 2011, 38–48.

  29.   Bellwood, First Farmers, 141–145.

  30.   Richard L. Burger, Chavin and the Origins of Andean Civilization (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992), 42; Wenke and Olszewski, Patterns in Prehistory 538–539, 262–268; Bellwood, First Farmers, 106–110.

  31.   Croucher, Death and Dying, 303; M. J. Rossano, “Supernaturalizing Social Life,” Human Nature 18 (2007): 272–294; Brian Hayden, Shamans, Sorcerers, and Saints (Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 2003), 184–185; Mike Parker Pearson, The Archaeology of Death and Burial (College Station: Texas A and M University Press, 1999), 161.