For a long time, evolutionary studies have been dominated by Western male scientists. Maybe it is not that surprising that their main hypotheses about the specific pathways of our hominid ancestors focussed on competition, hierarchies, warfare, weapon-and-tool-making and hunting. Unfortunately, the most obvious differences between our species and our primate relatives went largely unnoticed: No chimpanzee or orang-utan could entrust her children e.g. to a birthday party or kindergarten in the hands of non-kin others (the biological term being "alloparental care" - childcare beyond mother and father). Their offspring would risk to be attacked and killed. Therefore, other primate mothers tend to carry and shield their offspring for longer stretches of time, which led to extended spans between births wile restricting times of childhood.

Human hominid ancestors evolved by cooperative Childcare!

How did our ancestors manage to shorten birth intervals while expanding the times of childhood (used e.g. for brain development)? They evolved cooperative childcare! A prime among the global universals of hunters and gatherers is the contribution of non-parents to the raising of kids beyond the nuclear family. As the African proverb knows to our day: "It takes a village to raise a child."

With her new book "Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding", Sarah Blaffer Hrdy did this (inter-species and global cultural) comparison in such a profound way that I would recommend it to anyone seriously interested in the evolution of Homo sapiens. It's an eye-opener!

The Evolutionary Function of Religious Beliefs

What about the relevance in the field of evolutionary studies of religion? It is tremendous! Most of the classic hypotheses (including those of Darwin himself) focussed on religious intra-group cooperation in the fields of hunting and warfare. But Hrdy rightfully observes that religious mythologies is legitimizing distinct family models and organizing cooperative childcare. E.g. Mother Church (!) provided assistance and later education to families and children (including the often-quoted "widows and orphans"), as did the Muslim Umma (from arab. umm = mother). Religious personnel is frequently called in the terms of as-if kin, e.g. as Father (Pater), Mother, Brother, Sister, the "Nun" etymological closely related to the "Nanny".

If you look at Europe and beyond, religious communities are increasingly focussing on their central competences - successful religions bestowing massive reproductive advantages upon their adherents in contrast to the less-reproducing seculars. We don't have to speculate about the evolutionary mechanism: We are able to observe it, today and worldwide.

And in one of the upcoming posts, I plan to report (and to admit) how the consequences of these observations and a new and recent experimental study led me to abandon a cherished hypothesis.