Coevolution of religious and political authority in Austronesian societies

• Authors: Oliver Sheehan, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; Joseph Watts, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; Russell D Gray, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; Jospeh Bulbulia, University of Auckland; Scott Claessens, University of Auckland; Erik J Ringen, Emory University; Quentin D Atkinson, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
• Journal Title: Nature Human Behaviour
• Volume: Volume 7, Number 1
• Publisher: Nature Research | 2022-11-10, Pages 38-45
• Type of Work: Article | Final Publisher PDF
• Publisher DOI: http://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01471-y
• Keywords: Anthropology; Religion

Abstract

Authority, an institutionalized form of social power, is one of the defining features of the large-scale societies that evolved during the Holocene. Religious and political authority have deep histories in human societies and are clearly interdependent, but the nature of their relationship and its evolution over time is contested. We purpose-built an ethnographic dataset of 97 Austronesian societies and used phylogenetic methods to address two long-standing questions about the evolution of religious and political authority: first, how these two institutions have coevolved, and second, whether religious and political authority have tended to become more or less differentiated. We found evidence for mutual interdependence between religious and political authority but no evidence for or against a long-term pattern of differentiation or unification in systems of religious and political authority. Our results provide insight into how political and religious authority have worked synergistically over millennia during the evolution of large-scale societies.