On the origin of collective ritual

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Authors

KUNDT Radek LANG Martin

Year of publication 2022
Type Appeared in Conference without Proceedings
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
Description Treating collective ritual as a complex signaling system facilitating mutualistic cooperation, we propose an evolutionary model of its origin in the hominin lineage. For our model, we first synthesize the literature dealing with hunter-gatherer ethnography and hominin archaeology and identify similarity signals, coalitionary signals, and signals of commitment to collective action as the main building blocks of the signaling system. As a next step, we turn to primatology and paleoanthropology to investigate these signals in non-human primates and past hominins. Adding the proximate level to our analysis, we pinpoint distinctive neurocognitive mechanisms scaffolding the three types of ritual signals and track down the mechanisms` presence. Finally, we connect this evidence with the prevalent socio-ecological selective pressures for cooperative communication and suggest that by the arrival of H. Sapiens collective ritual already constituted crucial adaptation overcoming collective action problems.
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