Ancestors, Territoriality, and Gods

This books sets out to explain how and why religion came into being. Todaythis question isas fascinating as ever, especially since religion has moved to the centre of socio-political relationships. In contrast to the current, butincomplete approaches from disciplines such as cognitive science and psychology, the present authors adopt a new approach, equally manifest and constructive,that explainsthe origins of religion based strictly on behavioural biology. They employ accepted research resultsthat remove all need forspeculation. Decisive factors for the earliest demonstrations of religion arethus territorial behaviour and ranking, coping with existential fears, and conflict solution with the help of rituals. Thesein turn, in a process of cultural evolution,are shown to be the roots ofthe historical and contemporary religions.