The evolution of ritual: Communicating cooperative intentions drove the selection of collective ritual in hominins
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Collective ritual is one of the universals of the human behavioral repertoire, however, its omnipresence repeatedly puzzled evolutionary scholars because ritual participation requires substantial resource investments while seemingly not providing any apparent immediate benefits. We examine whether collective ritual could have evolved as a complex signaling system facilitating mutualistic cooperation. First, we identify similarity signals, coalitional signals, and signals of commitment to collective action as the main building blocks of the contemporary signaling systems in hunter-gatherers. Second, we trace the presence of possibly homologous cooperative signals in non-human primates and review the archeological record for the earliest evidence of ritualized signals in past hominins. Subsequently, we add the proximate level to our analysis pinpointing the distinctive neurocognitive structures necessary for human ritualized signals and compare their estimated dating with the dating of the increased socio-ecological pressures on collective action in the Pleistocene. Synthesizing this evidence, we sketch a possible timeline for the evolution of ritualized cooperative signals and identify further areas of investigation that would advance this evolutionary model. |
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