Storytellers promoted cooperation among hunter-gatherers before advent of religion

[Voltaire2]

Storytelling promoted co-operation in hunter-gatherers prior to the advent of organised religion, a new UCL study reveals.

The research shows that hunter-gatherer storytellers were essential in promoting co-operative and egalitarian values before comparable mechanisms evolved in larger agricultural societies, such as moralising high-gods.

Storytellers were also more popular than even the best foragers, had greater reproductive success, and were more likely to be co-operated with by other members of the camp, according to the research published today in Nature Communications.

The researchers, led by Daniel Smith, Andrea Migliano and Lucio Vinicius from UCL's Department of Anthropology and funded by the Leverhulme Trust, based their findings on their study of the Agta, an extant hunter-gatherer group descended from the first colonisers of the Philippines more than 35,000 years ago.

They asked three elders to tell them stories they normally told their children and each other, resulting in four stories narrated over three nights. They found the stories about humanised natural entities such as animals or celestial bodies promoted social and co-operative norms to co-ordinate group behaviour.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171205120029.htm

[guillaumeb]

1. What promotes group cooperation promotes survival.

There is abundant literature regarding this point.

[Voltaire2]

2. Sure. So religion was just evolved story-telling.

And its function was to promote group cooperation. No supernatural beings need apply.

[guillaumeb]

3. You have the right to this opinion, which, interestingly enough,

happens to coincide with your belief, or your feeling if you will, that there are no gods.

[marylandblue]

5. If a story-telling society has no gods

But only anthropomorphic animals and objects, is it really a religion?

[guillaumeb]

8. Ask the members of that society what their beliefs are.

My suggestion.

[marylandblue]

9. This is a question about your beliefs, not theirs

[guillaumeb]

10. No, as framed, it is a question about a (presumed) hypothetical

society.

Edited to add: who am I, or you, to tell another person/social group how to label their beliefs?

[marylandblue]

11. It's in response to the article which stated

they told anthropomorphic story but had no moralising gods. And I am telling them how to label their beliefs. I am asking about how you would translate their beliefs into your own belief system. You have stated that we have had religion for 300,000 years. But if that religion consisted solely of animism or anthropomorphism, as the authors contend this one does, would you call that religion? As for the animistic people themselves, they often don't even have a word for religion, they just have the things they do and always did.

[guillaumeb]

12. If these people have no word for religion,

it could be that religion is such a natural and ever present part of their lives that they see no need to wall it off.

And this is a study of 1 tiny society, and as such, is hardly representative of anything else. To imply that this 1 society is somehow representative of every extinct hunter gatherer society strikes me as a ridiculous leap of illogic.

[marylandblue]

13. I do agree that they see no reason to wall off religion

But they don't seem to have any gods. It's standard anthropological practice to study the few remaining hunter gatherer societies and assume that paleolithic ones were similar. Otherwise why would you say we've had religion for 300,000 years? All we have is a few bones from that time. Not an ideal scientific practice, but we have nothing else.

[guillaumeb]

14. They might be spiritual without being formally religious.

Like people who identify as spiritual but not formally religious. Showing how difficult it is to define people.

[marylandblue]

15. Then your contention that we've had religion for 300,000 years is meaningless

It amounts to: a group of people we've never seen did whatever they did and we have no idea what it was.

[guillaumeb]

16. Not my contention.

The contention of many anthropologists and other scientists.

Argue with them if you wish.

[marylandblue]

17. You've made the claim, so it is your contention as well

I don't disagree with it, but you seemed to have trouble with how the evidence was derived - which is basically by looking at modern hunter-gatherer societies and assuming earlier societies were similar.

[MineralMan]

4. Tell us a story, Moishe! Please..

Very well, I will tell you the story of Noach and the animal boat. Listen closely..

No, Moishe...Not that one again. Tell us the one about Elisha and the bears.

Oh, very well, then...

[DavidDvorkin]

6. Well, it would have been MoshEH at the time

Not Moishe.

[MineralMan]

7. OK. Thanks!