Science & the Big Questions

Why Are Some Religions More Popular Than Others?

Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism are followed by roughly 75 percent of the global population. What made these religions, with billions of believers, so successful while others fizzled?

The Crux, Discover

Topics: Belief Cooperation Cultural Evolution Evolution of Religion Morality

What Made Us Unique

How we became a different kind of animal.

Scientific American

Topics: Animal Studies Cognition Cognitive Development Cultural Evolution Human Uniqueness Kevin Laland Social Behavior Social Learning

Creating God

An in-depth look at a provocative idea about the origin and purpose of the world’s religions.

Hidden Brain, NPR

Topics: Azim Shariff Belief Cooperation Cultural Evolution Evolution of Religion Faith Religiosity Ritual Trust

Why Social Science Needs Evolutionary Theory

The lack of willingness to view human cognition and behavior as within the purview of evolutionary processes has prevented evolution from being fully integrated into the social science curriculum.

Nautilus

Topics: Cognition Cristine Legare Cultural Evolution Evolutionary Theory Social Behavior Social Learning

Neuroscience and the Roots of Human Connections

Humans work together on enormous scales to build complex tools as large as cities and create social networks that span the globe. What is the key to our success?

World Science Festival

Topics: Animal Studies Cultural Evolution Social Behavior Social Cognition Social Learning

Did Human Sacrifice Help People Form Complex Societies?

The debate over how well ritual killings maintained social order.

The Atlantic

Topics: Cultural Evolution Evolution of Religion Power Ritual Scientific Study of Religion Social Inequality Violence

Culture and the Mind: A New Theory of Human Intelligence

What role might culture play in intelligence? And how does human culture differ from culture found in other animals?

Science Weekly, The Guardian

Topics: Animal Studies Cultural Evolution Human Uniqueness Intelligence Kevin Laland Language Social Learning

Who First Buried the Dead?

Evidence of burial rites by the primitive, small-brained Homo naledi suggests that symbolic behavior is very ancient indeed.

Aeon

Topics: Cultural Evolution Death Human Evolution Human Uniqueness Ritual

Less Unique Than We Think

The idea that humans are special bumps up against Darwin’s great insight: the continuity of all life. David Barash reviews The Creative Spark by Agustín Fuentes and Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony by Kevin N. Laland.

The Wall Street Journal

Topics: Cognition Cooperation Creativity Cultural Evolution Human Uniqueness Imagination

Would a Crumbling of Faith Really Make Humanity Less Moral?

If people figured out how to get along before religion, asks Frans de Waal, do we really need it?

Big Think

Topics: Cultural Evolution Morality Scientific Study of Religion

A Scientist’s New Theory: Religion Was Key to Humans’ Social Evolution

In humans’ mysterious journey to become intelligent, socializing creatures like no other in the animal world, one innovation played an essential role: religion. That’s the theory that a preeminent evolutionary scientist is setting out to prove.

The Washington Post

Topics: Cultural Evolution Scientific Study of Religion Social Networks

How Human Sacrifice Helped to Enforce Social Inequality

How could something as costly as human sacrifice have been so common in early societies? And why did these rituals need to be so dramatic and gory?

Aeon

Topics: Cultural Evolution Demography Ritual Social Inequality