1 “… the archaeological record suggests that their [Neanderthal] burials were an accidentally adopted behavior for hygienic reasons …”
In spite of earlier misleading reports of Neanderthal “bear cults,” burials, and so on. there is in fact no substantial evidence that they had any symbolic behavior or produced any symbolic objects. The burials may simply have been a way of discouraging hyenas from invading their camps. The actual data are slightly more ambiguous than I suggest here, the interested reader might refer to: Mithen, S. (2001). The evolution of imagination: An archaeological perspective. SubStance 30(1&2): 28–54.
2 “… no known human culture lacks religion.”
In contemporary society we see that not everyone subscribes to religious beliefs, but this is a relatively new state, as a consequence of greater freedoms of thought in demo cratic societies. In the old days, if you didn’t believe in the state-or community-sanctioned religion, you were typically killed.
3 “… religion is more than a meme …”
See Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
4 “… anything that is universal to human culture is likely to contribute to human survival.”
Durkheim, É. (1965). The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, translated by J. W. Swain. New York: The Free Press, p. 87. (Original work published 1912.)
5 “Rituals involve repetitive movement.”
This is notwithstanding the advice of the Bigelow Tea Company, written on the outside of their tea bags (one of which I am steeping in a cup right now), to “indulge in the ancient ritual of drinking green tea.” Drinking tea may be a habit, it may even be part of some ceremonies, but it doesn’t qualify as a ritual in the strict sense.
6 “… Rappaport defined ritual as ‘acts of display through which one or more participants transmit information …’”
Rappaport, R. A. (1971). The sacred in human evolution. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 2, p. 25.
7 “Most children enter a stage of development … in which they show phases of ritual behaviors …”
Boyer, P. and P. Liénard. (2006). Why ritualized behavior? Precaution Systems and action parsing in developmental, pathological and cultural rituals. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29(6): 1–56.
8 “… many children connect their ad hoc rituals to the supernatural or to magic …”
See: Evans, D. W., M. E. Milanak, B. Medeiros, and J. L. Ross. (2002). Magical beliefs and rituals in young children. Child Psychiatry and Human Development 33(1): 43–58.
9 “… ritual adds a sense of order, constancy, and familiarity …”
Dulaney, S., and A. P. Fiske. (1994). Cultural rituals and obsessive-compulsive disorder: Is there a common psychological mechanism? Ethos 22(3): 243–283.
Zohar, A. H., and L. Felz. (2001). Ritualistic behavior in young children. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 29(2): 121–128.
10 “Oxytocin … has been found to be connected to the performance of ritual …”
Leckman, J. F., R. Feldman, J. E. Swain, V. Eicher, N. Thompson, and L. C. Mayes. (2004) Primary parental preoccupation: Circuits, genes, and the crucial role of the environment. Journal of Neural Transmission 111(7): 753–771.
11 “From an adaptation perspective, this order makes any intrusion by an outsider immediately and clearly visible.”
Boyer, P., and P. Liénard. (2006). Why ritualized behavior? Precaution Systems and action parsing in developmental, pathological and cultural rituals. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29(6): 10.
12 “The basal ganglia store chunks or summaries of motor behavior …”
Canales, J. J., and A. M. Graybiel. (2000). A measure of striatal function predicts motor stereotypy. Nature Neuroscience 3(4): 377–383. Graybiel, A. M. (1998). The basal ganglia and chunking of action repertoires. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory 70(1–2): 119–136.
Rauch, S. L., P. J. Whalen, C. R. Savage, T. Curran, A. Kendrick, H. D. Brown, et al. (1997). Striatal recruitment during an implicit sequence learning task as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Human Brain Mapping 5(2): 124–132.
Saxena, S., A. L. Brody, K. M. Maidment, E. C. Smith, N. Zohrabi, E. Katz, et al. (2004). Ce re bral glucose metabolism in obsessive-compulsive hoarding. American Journal of Psychiatry 161(6): 1038–1048. Saxena, S., A. L. Brody, J. M. Schwartz, and L. R. Baxter. (1998). Neuroimaging and frontal-subcortical circuitry in obsessive-compulsive disorder. British Journal of Psychiatry (Suppl. 35): 26–37.
13 “All higher animals have a ‘security-motivation’ system …”
Szechtman, H., and E. Woody. (2004). Obsessive-compulsive disorder as a disturbance of security motivation. Psychological Review 111(1): 111–127.
14 “The display aspect of single rituals …”
Fiske, A. P., and N. Haslam. (1997). Is obsessive-compulsive disorder a pathology of the human disposition to perform socially meaningful rituals? Evidence of similar content. Journal of Ner vous and Mental Disease 185(4): 211–222.
15 “… the fear-security-motivation system was ‘built’ thousands or tens of thousands of years ago …”
Boyer, P., and P. Liénard. (2006). Why ritualized behavior? Precaution systems and action parsing in developmental, pathological and cultural rituals. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29(6): 1–56.
See also: Sapolsky, R. (1994). Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. New York: Henry Holt.
16 “… the ancient Devr ritual of the Kotas …”
Wolf, R. K. (2006). The Black Cow’s Footprint: Time, Space, and Music in the Lives of the Kotas of South India. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
I thank Bianca Levy for finding and summarizing this ritual.
17 “… fifth in Kyrie of the Catholic Mass …”
Missa Jubilate Deo.(XI–XIII cent.) Kyrie from Mass XVI, 200. Audio and score available at http://www.adoremus.org/Kyrie.html.
18 “For the Mbuti people, the forest is benevolent and powerful, and their music is the language with which they communicate with the spirit of the forest …”
Feld, S. (1996). Pygmy POP: A genealogy of schizophonic mimesis. Yearbook for Traditional Music 28: 1–35.
Turnbull, C. (1961). The Forest People. New York: Simon and Shuster.
Turnbull, C. (1965). Wayward Servants: The Two Worlds of the African Pygmies. Garden City, NY: Natural History Press.
19 “‘Its [Pygmy music’s] most striking features, apparently common to all groups …”
Cooke, P. (1980). Pygmy music. In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 15th edition p. 483.
20 “The pygmies famously resisted efforts by a few unwittingly condescending anthropologists to render them as ‘primitives.’”
Feld, S. (1996). Pygmy POP: A genealogy of schizophonic mimesis. Yearbook for Traditional Music 28: 1–35.
21 “‘Even religion today has lost its ability to pull us out—now it’s all warrior gods.’”
Joni added: “The Genesis story, originally, was about the Earth Mother; all the primitives believe this, and I’m a primitive at heart too. It’s the smarter myth, the original one. They’re all myths, but of all of the myths, that’s the one that is most intelligent for living on this planet: ‘Earth Mother gives birth to Creation without a sire.’ Then that evolved into ‘Earth Mother gave birth to the planet with a sire,’ which devolved into—these are all de-evolutionary—‘Earth Mother is killed.’ Eventually, it comes down to the last one, which is ‘Father gives birth to the planet without a mother.’ So here we are in this goddessless situation; out of balance, no more Mother Earth or Father Sky. Mother Earth got killed off and what we ended up with is a narcissistic, war-loving, woman-hating religion, and that’s what Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are. They try to teach it otherwise, but they aren’t. It’s a fundamental hatred of the feminine principal and a domination of it.”
22 “Every human society that historians and anthropologists have uncovered has had some form of religion …”
Rappaport, R. A. (1971). The sacred in human evolution. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 2: 23–44.
23 “Three emotions in particular are associated with religious ecstasy: dependence, surrender, and love.”
Otto, R. (1923). The Idea of the Holy, translated by J. W. Harvey. London: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1917.)
24 “[Dependence, surrender, and love] are believed innately present in animals and human infants.”
Erikson, E. (1968). The development of ritualization. In The Religious Situation, edited by D. Cutler. Boston: Beacon, pp. 711–733.
Rappaport, R. A. (1971). The sacred in human evolution. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 2: 23–44.
25 “… the details of musical syntax remain to be worked out …”
An ambitious effort to do so began with the landmark publication of: Lerdahl, F., and R. Jackendoff. (1983). A Generative Theory of Tonal Grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
26 “[Psalm 131’s] Middle Eastern, minorish sound, with odd, exotic intervals, evokes stone buildings and walled cities.”
The melody of the original has been lost, but in a synagogue service in a small, remote village of Israel—Bet Shemesh—I heard it sung by Moroccan Jews who have lived as a close community for many centuries. The melody sounded to be as ancient as the song itself, a beautiful, harmonic minor with delicate ornamentation. This may have been quite close to what David himself had written.
27 “‘… But because He designed us, He knows what we need.’”
The scientist or atheist will ask then, “If God was truly not an egotist, why would he create in us a need for him?” This debate is beyond the scope of this book, but the interested reader may wish to read Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell. Dennett, D. C. (2006). Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. New York: Viking.