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Parasite stress is not so critical to the history of religions or major modern group formations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2012

Scott Atran
Scott Atran
Affiliation:
UMR 8129, CNRS / Institut Jean Nicod – Ecole Normale Supérieure, 75005 Paris, France. Satran@umich.eduhttp://sitemaker.umich.edu/satran/home
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Abstract

Fincher & Thornhill's (F&T's) central hypothesis is that strong in-group norms were formed in part to foster parochial social alliances so as to enable cultural groups to adaptively respond to parasite stress. Applied to ancestral hominid environments, the story fits with evolutionary theory and the fragmentary data available on early hominid social formations and their geographical distributions. Applied to modern social formations, however, the arguments and inferences from data are problematic.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , April 2012 , pp. 79 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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