PRIMATES AND RELIGION: A BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGIST'S RESPONSE TO J. WENTZEL VAN HUYSSTEEN'S ALONE IN THE WORLD?

Author: King, Barbara J.¹

Source: Zygon, Volume 43, Number 2, June 2008 , pp. 451-466(16)

Publisher: Blackwell Publishing

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Abstract:

For a biological anthropologist interested in the prehistory of religion, J. Wentzel van Huyssteen's book is welcome and resonant. Van Huyssteen's central thesis is that humans' capacity for spirituality emerges from a transformation of cognition and emotions that takes place in the symbolic realm, within Homo sapiens and apart from biology. To his thesis I bring to bear three areas of response: the abundant cognitive and emotional capacities of living apes and extinct hominids; the role of symbolic ritual in the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens; and the closely intertwined nature of biology and culture in the workings of evolutionary change.

Keywords: apes; emotion; evolution; hominids; primates; religion; ritual

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2008.00927.x

Affiliations: 1: Professor of Anthropology at the College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23187;, Email: bjking@wm.edu.

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