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PRIMATES AND RELIGION: A BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGIST'S RESPONSE TO J. WENTZEL VAN HUYSSTEEN'S ALONE IN THE WORLD?
Author(s) -
King Barbara J.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
zygon®
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.222
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1467-9744
pISSN - 0591-2385
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2008.00927.x
Subject(s) - homo sapiens , realm , cognition , evolutionary theory , epistemology , prehistory , spirituality , anthropology , sociology , environmental ethics , philosophy , biology , history , archaeology , neuroscience , medicine , alternative medicine , pathology
. 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.