IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v532y2016i7598d10.1038_nature17159.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ritual human sacrifice promoted and sustained the evolution of stratified societies

Author

Listed:
  • Joseph Watts

    (School of Psychology, University of Auckland)

  • Oliver Sheehan

    (School of Psychology, University of Auckland
    Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History)

  • Quentin D. Atkinson

    (School of Psychology, University of Auckland
    Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History)

  • Joseph Bulbulia

    (School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies, Victoria University of Wellington)

  • Russell D. Gray

    (School of Psychology, University of Auckland
    Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
    Research School of the Social Sciences, Australian National University
    Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution)

Abstract

Phylogenetic methods were applied to a cross-cultural database of traditional Austronesian societies to test the link between ritual human sacrifice and the origins of social hierarchy—the presence of sacrifice in a society stabilized social stratification and promoted inherited class systems.

Suggested Citation

  • Joseph Watts & Oliver Sheehan & Quentin D. Atkinson & Joseph Bulbulia & Russell D. Gray, 2016. "Ritual human sacrifice promoted and sustained the evolution of stratified societies," Nature, Nature, vol. 532(7598), pages 228-231, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:532:y:2016:i:7598:d:10.1038_nature17159
    DOI: 10.1038/nature17159
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17159
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature17159?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yo Nakawake & Kosuke Sato, 2019. "Systematic quantitative analyses reveal the folk-zoological knowledge embedded in folktales," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-10, December.
    2. Sarah M. Leisterer-Peoples & Susanne Hardecker & Joseph Watts & Simon J. Greenhill & Cody T. Ross & Daniel B. M. Haun, 2021. "The Austronesian Game Taxonomy: A cross-cultural dataset of historical games," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-11, December.
    3. Joshua Conrad Jackson & Marieke van Egmond & Virginia K Choi & Carol R Ember & Jamin Halberstadt & Jovana Balanovic & Inger N Basker & Klaus Boehnke & Noemi Buki & Ronald Fischer & Marta Fulop & Ashle, 2019. "Ecological and cultural factors underlying the global distribution of prejudice," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(9), pages 1-17, September.
    4. Alexandre Hyafil & Nicolas Baumard, 2022. "Evoked and transmitted culture models: Using bayesian methods to infer the evolution of cultural traits in history," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(4), pages 1-21, April.
    5. Mitkidis, Panagiotis & Ayal, Shahar & Shalvi, Shaul & Heimann, Katrin & Levy, Gabriel & Kyselo, Miriam & Wallot, Sebastian & Ariely, Dan & Roepstorff, Andreas, 2017. "The effects of extreme rituals on moral behavior: The performers-observers gap hypothesis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 1-7.
    6. Joshua Conrad Jackson & Danica Dillion & Brock Bastian & Joseph Watts & William Buckner & Nicholas DiMaggio & Kurt Gray, 2023. "Supernatural explanations across 114 societies are more common for natural than social phenomena," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 7(5), pages 707-717, May.
    7. Oliver Sheehan & Joseph Watts & Russell D. Gray & Joseph Bulbulia & Scott Claessens & Erik J. Ringen & Quentin D. Atkinson, 2023. "Coevolution of religious and political authority in Austronesian societies," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 7(1), pages 38-45, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:532:y:2016:i:7598:d:10.1038_nature17159. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.