The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?

by Jared Diamond

  One suggested answer is that supernatural religious beliefs are just ignorant superstitions similar to supernatural non-religious beliefs, illustrating only that the human brain is capable of deceiving itself into believing anything. We can all think of supernatural non-religious beliefs whose implausibility should be obvious. Many Europeans believe that the sight of a black cat heralds misfortune, but black cats are actually rather common. By repeatedly tallying whether or not a one-hour period following or not following your observation of a black cat in an area with high cat density did or did not bring you some specified level of misfortune, and by applying the statistician’s chi-square test, you can quickly convince yourself that the black-cat hypothesis has a probability of less than 1 out of 1,000 of being true. Some groups of New Guinea lowlanders believe that hearing the beautiful whistled song of the little bird known as the Lowland Mouse-Babbler warns us that someone has recently died, but this bird is among the commonest species and most frequent singers in New Guinea lowland forests. If the belief about it were true, the local human population would be dead within a few days, yet my New Guinea friends are as convinced of the babbler’s ill omens as Europeans are afraid of black cats.

  A more striking non-religious superstition, because people today still invest money in their mistaken belief, is water-witching, also variously known as dowsing, divining, or rhabdomancy. Already established in Europe over 400 years ago and possibly also reported before the time of Christ, this belief maintains that rotation of a forked twig carried by a practitioner called a dowser, walking over terrain whose owner wants to know where to dig a well, indicates the location and sometimes the depth of an invisible underground water supply (Plate 46). Control tests show that dowsers’ success at locating underground water is no better than random, but many land-owners in areas where geologists also have difficulty at predicting the location of underground water nevertheless pay dowsers for their search, then spend even more money to dig a well unlikely to yield water. The psychology behind such beliefs is that we remember the hits and forget the misses, so that whatever superstitious beliefs we hold become confirmed by even the flimsiest of evidence through the remembered hits. Such anecdotal thinking comes naturally; controlled experiments and scientific methods to distinguish between random and non-random phenomena are counterintuitive and unnatural, and thus not found in traditional societies.

  Perhaps, then, religious superstitions are just further evidence of human fallibility, like belief in black cats and other non-religious superstitions. But it’s suspicious that costly commitments to belief in implausible-to-others religious superstitions are such a consistent feature of religions. The investments that the 10 groups of adherents listed in Table 9.2 make or made to their beliefs are far more burdensome, time-consuming, and heavy in consequences to them than are the actions of black-cat-phobics in occasionally avoiding black cats. This suggests that religious superstitions aren’t just an accidental by-product of human reasoning powers but possess some deeper meaning. What might that be?

  A recent interpretation among some scholars of religion is that belief in religious superstitions serves to display one’s commitment to one’s religion. All long-lasting human groups—Boston Red Sox fans (like me), devoted Catholics, patriotic Japanese, and others—face the same basic problem of identifying who can be trusted to remain as a group member. The more of one’s life is wrapped up with one’s group, the more crucial it is to be able to identify group members correctly, and not to be deceived by someone who seeks temporary advantage by claiming to share your ideals but really doesn’t. If that man carrying a Boston Red Sox banner, whom you had accepted as a fellow Red Sox fan, suddenly cheers when the New York Yankees hit a home run, you’ll find it humiliating but not life-threatening. But if he’s a soldier next to you in the front line and he drops his gun (or turns it on you) when the enemy attacks, your misreading of him may cost you your life.

  That’s why religious affiliation involves so many costly displays to demonstrate the sincerity of your commitment: sacrifices of time and resources, enduring of hardships, and other costly displays that I’ll discuss later. One such display might be to espouse some irrational belief that contradicts the evidence of our senses, and that people outside our religion would never believe. If you claim that the founder of your church had been conceived by normal sexual intercourse between his mother and father, anyone else would believe that too, and you’ve done nothing to demonstrate your commitment to your church. But if you insist, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he was born of a virgin birth, and nobody has been able to shake you of that irrational belief after many decades of your life, then your fellow believers will feel much more confident that you’ll persist in your belief and can be trusted not to abandon your group.

  Nevertheless, it’s not the case that there are no limits to what can be accepted as a religious supernatural belief. Scott Atran and Pascal Boyer have independently pointed out that actual religious superstitions over the whole world constitute a narrow subset of all the arbitrary random superstitions that one could theoretically invent. To quote Pascal Boyer, there is no religion proclaiming anything like the following tenet: “There is only one God! He is omnipotent. But he exists only on Wednesdays.” Instead, the religious supernatural beings in which we believe are surprisingly similar to humans, animals, or other natural objects, except for having superior powers. They are more far-sighted, longer-lived, and stronger, travel faster, can predict the future, can change shape, can pass through walls, and so on. In other respects, gods and ghosts behave like people. The god of the Old Testament got angry, while Greek gods and goddesses became jealous, ate, drank, and had sex. Their powers surpassing human powers are projections of our own personal power fantasies; they can do what we wish we could do ourselves. I do have fantasies of hurling thunderbolts that destroy evil people, and probably many other people share those fantasies of mine, but I have never fantasized existing only on Wednesdays. Hence it doesn’t surprise me that gods in many religions are pictured as smiting evil-doers, but that no religion holds out the dream of existing just on Wednesdays. Thus, religious supernatural beliefs are irrational, but emotionally plausible and satisfying. That’s why they’re so believable, despite at the same time being rationally implausible.

  Religion’s function of explanation

  Religion has changed its functions with time over the course of the history of human societies. Two of its oldest functions have variously decreased or almost disappeared among citizens of Westernized societies today. Conversely, several of its major modern functions scarcely existed in small-scale hunter-gatherer and farming societies. Four functions that were formerly weak or non-existent rose to peak importance and have now been declining again. These changes of religion’s functions during its evolution are similar to the changes of function of many biological structures (such as fish electric organs) and forms of social organization during biological evolution.

  I shall now discuss what are proposed by various scholars as seven major functions of religion, to conclude by asking whether religion is becoming obsolete or is likely to survive and, if the latter, which functions will sustain its persistence. I’ll consider these seven functions roughly in the inferred sequence of their appearance and disappearance during the history of societal evolution, starting with functions prominent early in human history but less so now, and ending with functions originally absent but prominent recently or now.

  An original function of religion was explanation. Pre-scientific traditional peoples offer explanations for everything they encounter, of course without the prophetic ability to distinguish between those explanations that scientists today consider natural and scientific, and those others that scientists now consider supernatural and religious. To traditional peoples, they are all explanations, and those explanations that subsequently became viewed as religious aren’t something separate. For instance, the New Guinea societies in which I have lived offer many explanations for
bird behavior that modern ornithologists consider perceptive and still accurate (e.g., the multiple functions of bird calls), along with other explanations that ornithologists no longer accept and now dismiss as supernatural (e.g., that songs of certain bird species are voices of former people who became transformed into birds). Origin myths, like those of tribal people and of the book of Genesis, are widespread to explain the existence of the universe, people, and language diversity. The ancient Greeks, who identified correct scientific explanations for many phenomena, incorrectly invoked gods as supernatural agents to explain sunrises, sunsets, tides, winds, and rain. Creationists, and the majority of Americans today, still invoke God as a “First Cause” who created the universe and its laws and thus accounts for their existence, and who also created every plant and animal species, including the human species. But I’m not aware of creationists continuing to evoke God to explain every sunrise, tide, and wind. Many secular people today, while attributing to God the universe’s origin and its laws, accept that the universe, once thus created, has thereafter run with little or no divine interference.

  In modern Western society, religion’s original explanatory role has increasingly become usurped by science. The origins of the universe as we know it are now attributed to the Big Bang and the subsequent operation of the laws of physics. Modern language diversity is no longer explained by origin myths, such as the Tower of Babel or the snapping of the lianas holding the New Guinea ironwood tree, but is instead considered as adequately explained by observed historical processes of language change, as I shall discuss in Chapter 10. Explanations of sunrises, sunsets, and tides are now left to astronomers, and explanations of winds and rain are left to meteorologists. Bird songs are explained by ethology, and the origin of each plant and animal species, including the human species, is left to evolutionary biologists to interpret.

  For many modern scientists, the last bastion of religious explanation is God-as-First-Cause: science seemingly can have nothing to say about why the universe exists at all. From my freshman year at Harvard College in 1955, I recall the great theologian Paul Tillich defying his class of hyper-rational undergraduates to come up with a scientific answer to his simple question: “Why is there something, when there could have been nothing?” None of my classmates majoring in the sciences could give Tillich any answer. But they in turn would have objected that Tillich’s own answer “God” consisted merely of putting a name on his lack of an answer. In fact, scientists are working now on Tillich’s question and have proposed answers.

  Defusing anxiety

  The next function of religion that I’ll discuss is another one that was probably strongest in early societies: religion’s role in defusing our anxiety over problems and dangers beyond our control. When people have done everything realistically within their power, that’s when they are most likely to resort to prayers, rituals, ceremonies, donations to the gods, consulting oracles and shamans, reading omens, observing taboos, and performing magic. All of those measures are scientifically ineffective at producing the desired result. However, by preserving the fiction and convincing ourselves that we are still doing something, aren’t helpless, and haven’t given up, we at least feel in charge, less anxious, and able to go on to make our best effort.

  Our craving for relief from feeling helpless is illustrated by a study of religious Israeli women, carried out by anthropologists Richard Sosis and W. Penn Handwerker. During the 2006 Lebanon War the Hizbollah launched Katyusha rockets against the Galilee region of northern Israel, and the town of Tzfat and its environs in particular were hit by dozens of rockets daily. Although siren warnings while rockets were en route alerted Tzfat residents to protect their own lives by taking refuge in bomb shelters, they could do nothing to protect their houses. Realistically, that threat from the rockets was unpredictable and uncontrollable. Nevertheless, about two-thirds of the women interviewed by Sosis and Handwerker recited psalms every day to cope with the stress of the rocket attacks. When they were asked why they did so, a common reply was that they felt compelled “to do something” as opposed to doing nothing at all. Although reciting psalms does not actually deflect rockets, it did provide the chanters with a sense of control as they went through the semblance of taking action. (Of course, they themselves did not give that explanation; they did believe that reciting psalms can protect one’s house from destruction by a rocket.) Compared to women in the same community who did not recite psalms, the psalm reciters had less difficulty falling asleep, had less difficulty concentrating, were less inclined to bursts of anger, and felt less anxious, nervous, tense, and depressed. Thus, they really did benefit, by reducing the risk that natural anxiety over uncontrollable danger would cause them to endanger themselves in a different way by doing something foolish. As all of us who have been in situations of unpredictable and uncontrollable danger know, we do become prone to multiply our problems by thoughtlessness if we can’t master our anxiety.

  This function of religion, at its peak already in early religious societies, would have decreased as societies increased their control over life’s course, through state government growing stronger and decreasing the frequency of violence and other dangers, states becoming increasingly able to avert famines by distributing stored food, and (in the last two centuries) the development of science and technology. But it’s hardly the case that traditional people were largely helpless. Instead, they impress us with their ability to use their observations and their experience so as to leave as little room for chance as possible. For instance, New Guineans and other traditional farmers know dozens of varieties of sweet potatoes or other crops, where and how best to grow each one, and how to weed, fertilize, mulch, drain, and irrigate. When !Kung men and other hunters go hunting, they study and interpret animal tracks, thereby estimate the number and distance and speed and direction of movement of their prey, and observe the behavior of other animal species that provide clues to prey presence. Fishermen and sailors without compasses or other instruments can still navigate by understanding movements of the sun and stars, winds, ocean currents, reflections on clouds, seabirds, ocean bioluminescence, and other indicators of position. All peoples post defenses and remain alert against enemy attacks, and form alliances and plan ambushes to attack the enemy first.

  But for traditional peoples, even more than for us moderns, there are limits to their effectiveness, and large areas beyond their control. Crop yields are affected by unpredictable droughts, rainfall, hail, wind storms, cold temperatures, and insect pests. There is a large role of chance in the movements of individual animals. Most illnesses lie beyond traditional control because of the limits of traditional medical knowledge. Like the Israeli women who recited psalms but couldn’t control the paths of the rockets, much also remains beyond the control of traditional peoples after they have done their best. They, and we, rebel against remaining inactive and doing nothing. That makes them and us anxious, feeling helpless, prone to make mistakes, and unable to put out our best efforts. That’s where traditional peoples, and still often we today, resort to prayer, rituals, omens, magic, taboos, superstitions, and shamans. Believing that those measures are effective, they and we become less anxious, calmer, and more focused.

  One example, studied by the ethnographer Bronislaw Malinowski, comes from the Trobriand Islands near New Guinea, where villagers catch fish in two types of locations requiring different fishing methods: in the sheltered, calm inner lagoon, where one dumps poison into a patch of water and then just picks up the stunned or dead fish; and in the open sea, spearing or netting fish while paddling a canoe through waves and surf. Lagoon fishing is safe, easy, and offers predictable yields; open-sea fishing is dangerous and unpredictable, with large bonanzas if a shoal of fish happens to be running at that particular time and place, but with little profit and much personal risk if one doesn’t happen to encounter a shoal that day. The islanders perform elaborate magical rituals before embarking on open-sea fishing in order to secure safety and success, because m
uch doubt remains even after they have laid the best plans based on experience. But no magic is associated with lagoon fishing: one merely sets out and does it, without uncertainty or anxiety about the predictable result.

  Another example is provided by !Kung hunters, whose expertise seems to leave nothing to chance. Little !Kung boys start playing with tiny bows and arrows from the time that they can walk, and begin hunting with their fathers when they reach adolescence. At evening campfires men recount over and over their previous hunts, listen to each other’s stories about who saw what animals where in recent days, and plan the next hunt accordingly. During the hunt itself they remain attuned to sights and sounds of animals and of birds whose behavior may betray the presence of animals, as well as scrutinizing tracks to learn what animal passed by, and where it is likely to be found and to be heading now. One might imagine that these masters of desert hunting skills would have no need for magic. In fact, though, when hunters set out in the morning, there is always a big element of anxiety-provoking uncertainty about where prey will happen to be on that particular morning.

  Some !Kung men deal with their anxiety by consulting oracle disks supposed to prophesy what direction will be most promising, and what prey they should be prepared for. Those disks are sets of five or six thin circles of antelope leather graded in diameter from two to three inches, each with its own name and with a recognizable top and bottom. Each man owns a set. A man stacks the disks on the palm of his left hand with the largest disk on top, shakes and blows on the disks, asks a question in a loud ritualized voice, then throws the disks on a garment spread on the ground. A diviner interprets the pattern of disks on the ground according to features that include whether or not they overlap, and which disks land top up or bottom up. The interpretation of the pattern seems to follow few fixed rules, except that disks 1 through 4 landing upside down predict the successful killing of a game animal.