How Complex were Ancient Societies and Religions?
An Ancient Historian’s Response to “Complex Societies Precede Moralizing Gods throughout World History” (Whitehouse et al. 2019)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jch.39573Keywords:
Big Data, Cognitive Science of Religion, Cultural Evolution, social complexity, Roman history, ancient religionAbstract
Whitehouse et al. (2019) recently concluded their groundbreaking big-data historical research by stating that “moralizing gods” followed in the wake of early increases in social complexity, rather than preceding and paving the way for such increases. According to these results, it was doctrinal (group) rituals that helped facilitate an increase in social complexity and (religious) identity. The idea of a “supernatural punishment” came later, helping to maintain the existing cooperation in societies once those societies reached a certain size. However, the focus on big data in the pursuit of these questions runs the risks of leading to oversimplifications and presuppositions. I will draw on examples from Roman religion that appear in the Seshat dataset to illustrate some critical points, and will point out some problems concerning cooperation and social complexity that follow from the way in which the historical evidence is handled and, thus, merged into the databank.
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