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Question

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Why We Became Religious

and The Evolution of the

Spirit World

Marvin Harris

The following selection by anthropologist Marvin Harris originally appeared as two separate

essays, one entitled "Why We Became Religious," the other "The Evolution of the Spirit World."

In the first essay, Harris comments on the fascinating possibility of religion among nonhuman

species. He also discusses the concept of mana (an inherent force or power), noting that, although

the concepts of superstition, luck, and charisma in Western cultures closely resemble mana, they

are not really religious concepts. Rather, according to Harris, the basis of all religious thought is

animism, the universal belief that we humans share the world with various extracorporeal, mostly

invisible beings. Harris closes the first essay with some thoughts on the concept of an inner being-

a soul-pointing out that in many cultures people believe a person may have more than one.

In "The Evolution of the Spirit World," Harris advances the notion that spiritual beings found

in modern religions are also found in the religions of prestate societies. Thus, he briefly examines

religious thought and behavior pertaining to ancestor worship at varying levels of societal complex-

ity, starting with band-and-village societies, the earliest of human cultures. Next, Harris notes the

importance of recently deceased relatives in the religions of more complexly developed societies,

such as those based on gardening and fishing. Chiefdoms represent an even higher level of devel-

opment, one in which greater specialization arose, including a religious practitioner who paid

special attention to the chief's ancestors. Finally, Harris observes that, with the development of

early states and empires, dead ancestors assumed a place of great prominence alongside the gods.

Marvin Harris (1927-2001) was a tremendous popularizer of anthropology, thanks to the

accessible writing style of his works for students and the general public. He helped develop the

theoretical perspective known as cultural materialism, often emphasizing the relationship between

culture and ecology.

Human social life cannot be understood apart from

the deeply held beliefs and values that in the short

Pages 397-407 from OUR KIND by Marvin Harris. Copyright

1989 by Marvin Harris. Reprinted by permission of

HarperCollins Publishers.

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run, at least, motivate and mobilize our transactions

with each other and the world of nature. So let me...

confront certain questions concerning our kind's reli-

gious beliefs and behavior.

First, are there any precedents for religion in non-

human species? The answer is yes, only if one accepts 26 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY OF RELIGION

a definition of religion broad enough to include "su-

perstitious" responses. Behavioral psychologists

have long been familiar with the fact that animals can

acquire responses that are falsely associated with re-

wards. For example, a pigeon is placed in a cage into

which food pellets are dropped by a mechanical

feeder at irregular intervals. If the reward is deliv-

ered by chance while the bird is scratching, it begins

to scratch faster. If the reward is delivered while a

bird happens to be flapping its wings, it keeps flap-

ping them as if wing-flapping controls the feeder.

Among humans, one can find analogous supersti-

tions in the little rituals that baseball players engage

their caps,

in as they come up to bat, such as touching

spitting, or rubbing their hands. None of this has any

real connection with getting a hit, although constant

repetition assures that every time batters get hits,

they have performed the ritual. Some minor phobic

behavior among humans also might be attributed to

associations based on coincidental rather than contin-

gent circumstances. I know a heart surgeon who tol-

erates only popular music piped into his operating

room ever since he lost a patient while classical com-

positions were being played.

Superstition raises the issue of causality. Just how

do the activities and objects that are connected in su-

perstitious beliefs influence one another? A reason-

able, if evasive, answer is to say that the causal

activity or object has an inherent force or power to

achieve the observed effects. Abstracted and gener-

alized, this inherent force or power can provide the

explanation for many extraordinary events and for

success or failure in life's endeavors. In Melanesia,

people call it mana. Fishhooks that catch big fish,

tools that make intricate carvings, canoes that sail

safely through storms, or warriors who kill many en-

emies, all have mana in concentrated quantities. In

Western cultures, the concepts of luck and charisma

closely resemble the idea of mana. A horseshoe pos-

sesses a concentrated power that brings good luck. A

charismatic leader is one who is suffused with great

powers of persuasion.

But are superstitions, mana, luck, and charisma

religious concepts? I think not. Because, if we define

religion as a belief in any indwelling forces and pow-

ers, we shall soon find it difficult to separate religion

from physics. After all, gravity and electricity are also

unseen forces that are associated with observable ef-

fects. While it is true that physicists know much more

about gravity than about mana, they cannot claim to

have a complete understanding of how gravity

achieves its results. At the same time, couldn't one

mana, luck, and charisma

argue that superstitions,

are also merely theories of causality involving physi-

happen to

cal forces and powers about which we

have incomplete understanding as vet?

True, more scientific testing has gone into the

study of gravity than into the study of mana, but the

degree of scientific testing to which a theory has

been subjected cannot make the difference between

whether it is a religious or a scientific belief. If it did,

then every untested or inadequately tested theory in

science would be a religious belief (as well as every

scientific theory that has been shown to be false dur-

ing the time when scientists believed it to be true!).

Some astronomers theorize that at the center of each

galaxy there is a black hole. Shall we say that this is a

religious belief because other astronomers reject

such a theory or regard it as inadequately tested?

It is not the quality of belief that distinguishes re-

ligion from science. Rather, as Sir Edward Tylor was

the first to propose, the basis of all that is distinctly

religious in human thought is animism, the belief

that humans share the world with a population of

extraordinary, extracorporeal, and mostly invisible

beings, ranging from souls and ghosts to saints and

fairies, angels and cherubim, demons, jinni, devils,

and gods.

Wherever people believe in the existence of one

or more of these beings, that is where religion exists.

Tylor claimed that animistic beliefs were to be found

in every society, and a century of ethnological re-

search has yet to turn up a single exception. The

most problematic case is that of Buddhism, which

Tylor's critics portrayed as a world religion that

lacked belief in gods or souls. But ordinary believers

outside of Buddhist monasteries never accepted the

atheistic implications of Gautama's teachings. Main-

stream Buddhism, even in the monasteries, quickly

envisioned the Buddha as a supreme deity who had

been successively reincarnated and who held sway

over a pantheon of lower gods and demons. And it

was as fully animistic creeds that the several variet-

ies of Buddhism spread from India to Tibet, South-

east Asia, China, and Japan.

Why is animism universal? Tylor pondered the

question at length. He reasoned that if a belief re-

curred again and again in virtually all times and HARRIS WHY WE BECAME RELIGIOUS AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD 27

places, it could not be a product of mere fantasy.

Rather, it must have grounding in evidence and in

experiences that were equally recurrent and univer-

sal. What were these experiences? Tylor pointed to

dreams, trances, visions, shadows, reflections, and

death. During dreams, the body stays in bed; yet an-

other part of us gets up, talks to people, and travels

to distant lands. Trances and drug-induced visions

also bring vivid evidence of another self, distinct and

separate from one's body. Shadows and mirror im-

ages reflected in still water point to the same conclu-

sion, even in the full light of normal wakefulness.

The concept of an inner being-a soul-makes sense

of all this. It is the soul that wanders off when we

sleep, that lies in the shadows, and that peers back at

us from the surface of the pond. Most of all, the soul

explains the mystery of death: a lifeless body is a

body permanently deprived of its soul.

Incidentally, there is nothing in the concept of

soul per se that constrains us to believe each person

has only one. The ancient Egyptians had two, and so

do many West African societies in which both patri-

lineal and matrilineal ancestors determine an indi-

vidual's identity. The Jívaro of Ecuador have three

souls. The first soul-the mekas-gives life to the

body. The second soul-the arutam-has to be cap-

tured through a drug-induced visionary experience

at a sacred waterfall. It confers bravery and immu-

nity in battle to the possessor. The third soul-the

musiak-forms inside the head of a dying warrior

and attempts to avenge his death. The Dahomey say

that women have three souls; men have four. Both

sexes have an ancestor soul, a personal soul, and a

mawn soul. The ancestor soul gives protection dur-

ing life, the personal soul is accountable for what

people do with their lives, the mawn soul is a bit of

the creator god, Mawn, that supplies divine guid-

ance. The exclusively male fourth soul guides men to

positions of leadership in their households and lin-

eages. But the record for plural souls seems to belong

to the Fang of Gabon. They have seven: a sound in-

side the brain, a heart soul, a name soul, a life force

soul, a body soul, a shadow soul, and a ghost soul.

Why do Westerners have only one soul? I cannot

answer that. Perhaps the question is unanswerable. I

accept the possibility that many details of religious

beliefs and practices may arise from historically spe-

cific events and dividual choices made only once

and only in one culture and that have no discernible

cost-benefit advantages or disadvantages. While a

belief in souls does conform to the general principles

of cultural selection, belief in one rather than two or

more souls may not be comprehensible in terms of

such principles. But let us not be too eager to declare

any puzzling feature of human life forever beyond

the pale of practical reason. For has it not been our

experience that more research often leads to answers

that were once thought unattainable?

The Evolution of the Spirit World

All varieties of spirit beings found in modern reli-

gions have their analogues or exact prototypes in the

religions of prestate societies. Changes in animistic

beliefs since Neolithic times involve matters of em-

phasis and elaboration. For example, band-and-

village people widely believed in gods who lived on

top of mountains or in the sky itself and who served

as the models for later notions of supreme beings as

well as other powerful sky gods. In Aboriginal

Australia, the sky god created the earth and its

natural features, showed humans how to hunt and

make fire, gave people their social laws, and showed

them how to make adults out of children by perform-

ing rites of initiation. The names of their quasi-

supreme beings-Baiame, Daramulum, Nurunderi-

could not be uttered by the uninitiated. Similarly, the

Selk'nam of Tierra del Fuego believed in "the one

who is up there." The Yaruro of Venezuela spoke of a

"great mother" who created the world. The Maidu of

California believed in a great "slayer in the sky."

Among the Semang of Malaysia, Kedah created ev-

erything, including the god who created the earth

and humankind. The Andaman Islanders had Puluga

whose house is the sky, and the Winnebago had

"earthmaker."

Although prestate peoples occasionally prayed to

these great spirits or even visited them during

trances, the focus of animistic beliefs generally lay

elsewhere. In fact, most of the early creator gods ab-

stained from contact with human beings. Having

created the universe, they withdraw from worldly

affairs and let other lesser deities, animistic beings,

and humans work out their own destinies. Ritually,

the most important category of animistic beings was

the ancestors of the band, village, and clan or other

kinship groups whose members believed they were

bonded by common descent. 28 THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY OF RELIGION

People in band-and-village societies tend to

have short memories concerning specific individu-

als who have died. Rather than honor the recent

dead, or seek favors from them, egalitarian cultures

often place a ban on the use of the dead person's

name and try to banish or evade his or her ghost.

Among the Washo, a native American foraging

people who lived along the border of California

and Nevada, souls of the dead were angry about

being deprived of their bodies. They were danger-

ous and had to be avoided. So the Washo burned

the dead person's hut, clothing, and other personal

property and stealthily moved their camp to a

place where they hoped the dead person's soul

could not find them. The Dusun of North Borneo

curse a dead person's soul and warn it to stay away

from the village. Reluctantly, the soul gathers up

belongings left at its grave site and sets off for the

land of the dead.

But this distrust of the recent dead does not ex-

tend to the most ancient dead, not to the generality

of ancestor spirits. In keeping with the ideology of

descent, band-and-village people often memorial-

ize and propitiate their communal ancestral spirits.

Much of what is known as totemism is a form of

diffuse ancestor worship. Taking the name of an

animal such as kangaroo or beaver or a natural phe-

nomenon such as clouds or rain in conformity with

prevailing rules of descent, people express a com-

munal obligation to the founders of their kinship

group. Often this obligation includes rituals in-

tended to nourish, protect, or assure the increase of

the animal and natural totems and with it the health

and well-being of their human counterparts. Ab-

original Australians, for example, believed that

they were descended from animal ancestors who

traveled around the country during the dream-time

at the beginning of the world, leaving mementos of

their journey strewn about before turning into peo-

ple. Annually, the descendants of a particular to-

temic ancestor retraced the dream-time journey. As

they walked from spot to spot, they sang, danced,

and examined sacred stones, stored in secret hiding

places along the path taken by the first kangaroo or

the first witchetty grub. Returning to camp, they

decorated themselves in the likeness of their totem

and imitated its behavior. The Arunta witchetty-

grub men, for instance, decorated themselves with

strings, nose bones, rattails, and feathers, painted

their bodies with the sacred design of the witchetty

grub, and constructed a brush hut in the shape of

the witchetty-grub chrysalis. They entered the hut

of the journey they had made. Then the

and sang

head men came shuffling and gliding out, followed

by all the rest, in imitation of adult witchetty grubs

undifferentiated com-

munity of ancestral spirits keep a close watch on

their descendants, ready to punish them if they

commit incest or if they break the taboos against eat-

ing certain foods. Important endeavors-hunting,

gardening, pregnancy, warfare-need the blessings

of a group's ancestors to be successful, and such

blessings are usually obtained by holding feasts in

the ancestors' honor according to the principle that

a well-fed ancestor is a well-intentioned ancestor.

Throughout highland New Guinea, for example,

people believe that the ancestral spirits enjoy eat-

ing pork as much as living persons enjoy eating it.

To please the ancestors, people slaughter whole

herds of pigs before going to war or when celebrat-

ing important events in an individual's life such as

marriage and death. But in keeping with a big-man

redistributive level of political organization, no

one claims that his or her ancestors merit special

emerging from a chrysalis.

In most village societies an

treatment.

Under conditions of increasing population,

greater wealth to be inherited, and intrasocietal com-

petition between different kin groups, people tend to

pay more attention to specific and recently deceased

relatives in order to validate claims to the inheri-

tance of land and other resources. The Dobuans,

South Pacific yam gardeners and fishermen of the

Admiralty Islands, have what seems to be an incipi-

ent phase of a particularized ancestor religion.

When the leader of a Dobuan household died, his

children cleaned his skull, hung it from the rafters of

their house, and provided it with food and drink.

Addressing it as "Sir Ghost," they solicited protec-

tion against disease and misfortune, and through

oracles, asked him for advice. If Sir Ghost did not

cooperate, his heirs threatened to get rid of him. Ac-

tually, Sir Ghost could never win. The death of his

children finally proved that he was no longer of any

use. So when the grandchildren took charge, they

threw Sir Ghost into the lagoon, substituting their

own father's skull as the symbol of the household's

new spiritual patron. HARRIS WHY WE BECAME RELIGIOUS AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE SPIRIT WORLD |

With the development of chietdoms, ruling clites

employed specialists whose job was to memorize the

names of the chief's ancestors. To make sure that the

remains of these dignitaries did not get thrown away

like Sir Ghost's skull, paramount chiets built elabo-

nate tombs that preserved links between generations

in a tangible form. Finally, with the emergence of

states and empires, as the rulers' souls rose to take

their places in the firmament alongside the high

gods, their mummified mortal remains, surrounded

by exquisite furniture, rare jewels, gold-encrusted

chariots and other preciosities, were interred in gi-

gantic crypts and pyramids that only a true god

could have built.

Study Question

What are some of the ways in which beliefs in

souls, gods, and other spiritual beings vary among

societies?

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