The Shakers - and their Importance for Evolutionary Studies

In a recent post and article, I wrote about the high-fertile Old Order Amish and their reproductive success. The United Believers in Christ's Second Appearing commonly called The Shakers are another religious tradition proving that religiosity is able to influence human fertility: They lived all-celibate, with the numbers of births nearly about zero. In fact, the Shakers flourished throughout the 18th and first half of the 19th century due to proselytizing and the adoption of poor children. But finally, the interactive rules of biocultural evolution won out: Without reproducing, the traditions and communities began to overage and to dwindle inevitably.

Today, all Shaker communities safe one have been dissolved, although some of them are retained as museums for the public.

But then, small traces of their cultural heritage have been adopted by the wider American culture, such as the renowned Shaker Furniture and some music and poems they believed to be gifts of God.

Powerful Example in Evolutionary Studies

The comparison of traditions such as the Shakers and the Old Order Amish are presenting a powerful example concerning the biocultural evolution of religiosity and religions. While religiosity is offering a biological potential of network and community formation including effects on fertility levels, most of the resulting religions (more exactly: religious traditions) tend to fail in cultural evolution due to the lack of adherents.

Only those religious traditions that manage to retain their numbers by higher-than-average numbers of children will survive the competitive process - thereby benefitting religious believers with higher reproductive success.

And as religiosity is partially heritable as any other biocultural trait, the evolutionary process is still going on.The reproductive performance is linking biological traits and cultural traditions. As contemporary biologists try to explain to the public by various means: Survival without reproduction is no evolutionary success.