Settled Life Speeds Social And Religious Evolution

New Scientist ^ | 12-13-2004 | Emma Young

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Settled life speeds social and religious evolution

13 December 2004

Emma Young

The shift from nomadic life to settled village life can lead to a rapid development of religious and social complexity and hierarchy, according to a detailed chronology of the Valley of Oaxaca in Mexico. Only about 1300 years separate its oldest ritual buildings - simple ‘men’s huts’ - and the first standardised temples of the Zapotec state, an archaeological study suggests.

“This is the first study to show how the co-evolution of social and religious complexity occurred, and what steps were involved,” says Joyce Marcus at the University of Michigan, US, who led the work.

Marcus and colleague Kent Flannery radiocarbon-dated sites from the valley. The oldest ritual site, a cleared area 20 metres long and 7 m wide, is about 8600 years old. This “dancing ground” might also have been used by local nomadic hunter-gatherers for initiation rites, or even athletic competition.

Nearby is evidence of debris from shelters, and it is likely that rituals were held here during times when the maximum number of families could participate, the pair says. Other evidence of pre-village ritual comes from beheaded, cooked and cannibalised individuals who were buried in a cave with baskets of harvested wild plants about 160 kilometres to the northwest of the site, about 7000 years ago.

Emerging elite

Permanent villages were established in the valley about 3500 years ago, at which time solar and astral events could be used to schedule some ritual events. Within about 150 years, one-room ritual buildings appear, each with the same orientation. These were probably men’s houses, to which all initiated men were admitted, the researchers suggest.

About 3100 years ago, the population of the largest village in the valley rose to roughly 1000 - and there are clear signs of an emerging elite. The upper classes appear to have lived in large homes, deformed their skulls as a sign of nobility and began to control smaller villages close by.

During this period, men’s houses were replaced with temples, which are likely to have been run by part-time religious specialists. Rituals of temple sanctification, and an increase in ritual blood-letting and human sacrifice also appear around this time, the researchers say.

The next step in social evolution, about 2450 years ago, was the formation of the Zapotec state. Temples were also altered, gaining second rooms, which were probably living quarters for full-time priests.

It had previously been only assumed that religious ritual and society evolved together. This is the first detailed case history to back this co-evolution. “We need to see similar studies in other parts of the world where high civilisation was reached, to see if this model holds,” says Marcus.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0408551102)

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show how the co-evolution of social and religious complexity occurred

Please add the word "allegedly" between "complexity" and "occurred"