- University of Oxford, with the help of research partner HighPots, analyzes influence of religions on civilizations among 414 different societies over the past 10,000 years.
- As part of the EU research project Horizon2020, HighPots received the award "Best Technology Partner for Cultural Studies".
Challenges
The HighPots team faced an impressive list of challenges at the start of the analysis:
- Analyzing millions of raw data sets in different formats from 414 societies and 30 religions over a period of 10,000 years.
- The determination of the uniqueness of religion according to the definitions of historians and anthropologists.
- Recognizing when a "simple" society turns into a complex and "civilized" society, despite the determination of concrete parameters including tolerance values.
- Determining which criteria play a role for strong/weak dependencies and to what extent a religion can have any influence at all on social complexity.
- And finally, in the initial project phase, the evaluation of data quality and data veracity
Another hurdle was Brexit, which meant the project had to be accelerated. We met this challenge by changing our research methods and increasing the number of staff.
Procedure
The university chose HighPots because we could provide the track record and successful completion of similar projects, e.g. for the Lab for Information and Decision Systems located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Using combined data mining and data analytics techniques, we worked with the researchers to identify relevant data sources, some of which the university had spent decades compiling through elaborate scanning processes.
Many religions were eliminated, in part because they did not differ drastically from one another, were too close in time or geography, or because the data volumes were insufficient.
In the end, 30 of over 400 religions remained. The situation was similar for the societies. In the end, 414 societies out of more than 4,000 remained. This is because the prerequisite for the analysis is that complex civilizations also form from simple societies; for this to happen, a society must exist for many hundreds of years.
- Analyzing millions of raw data sets of different formats from 414 societies, 30 religions in a time span of 10,000 years.
- Determining the uniqueness of religion according to the definitions of historians and anthropologists.
- Recognizing at what point a "simple" society transforms into a complex and "civilized" society, despite determining concrete parameters including tolerance values.
- To determine which criteria play a role for strong/weak dependencies and to what extent a religion can have any influence at all on the complexity of society.
- And finally, in the initial phase of the project, the evaluation of data qualities and data truths
Another hurdle was also the Brexit, which dictated an acceleration of the project. We met this challenge by changing an investigation method and adding more staff.
Results
After completion of the analysis, the following results were obtained:
- The majority of all societies created powerful gods at a certain level of complexity
- The first deities and supernatural authorities responsible for ethics and morality emerged about 2850 years before Christ.
- Complex social relations grew 5x faster in societies without religion than in societies with religion
Religions supported the formation of civilizations, especially in the early periods when societies were being formed. After a certain point, a level of reached civilization (complexity level), religions hinder the civilizational advancement, so that these societies could form only with difficulty.
It is assumed that the rules of religions (e.g. in Christianity as the “10 commandments”) enable the formation of a society in the first place, but slow down enlightenment in the further course of social development.
“My department at the EU has been working with HighPots since 2014. HighPots supports EU research projects in the fields of culture and education as a scientific and technological service provider for universities and institutes in the European Union. The excellent scientific contribution of HighPots has been appreciated by research institutions and ensured the successive expansion of strategic partnerships in recent years.”
The full data are now publicly available in the Seshat data space.
The complete results have been published in Nature.
Conclusion
- We can learn from the results that complex societies can develop even when humans are left to their own devices with their selfish behavior - that is, without the knowledge of a moral supernatural authority.
- But this is the case in very few situations; the development of many complex societies shows the belief in gods or supernatural instances. This can possibly be explained psychologically. Most readers know the feeling when they have succeeded in legally outsmarting someone else. In the first moment the joy is present, but already a short time later the bad conscience comes. This bad conscience comes from the fact that there could be a supernatural instance (e.g., karma) that cannot be tricked; an instance that can punish during life or after death.
