The cultural evolution of shamanism
Summary
Shamanism, including medicine-men, mediums, and prophets, recurs across human societies and likely characterized ancestral humans. This paper proposes a cultural evolutionary theory explaining why shamanism consistently develops and professionalizes early. The theory argues shamanism is a set of traditions adapted to people's intuitions, convincing observers a practitioner can influence unpredictable events by ostensibly transforming during initiation and trance, violating folk-intuitions of humanness. Entry requirements persist because credibility depends on transformation, unlike problems with identifiable solutions where outsiders can invade by producing outcomes.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Shamanism recurs across human societies because cultural evolution produces practices adapted to innate psychological tendencies, specifically by convincing observers a practitioner can influence unpredictable events through ostensible transformation. |
Abstract
Shamans, including medicine-men, mediums, and the prophets of religious movements, recur across human societies. Shamanism also existed among nearly all documented hunter-gatherers, likely characterized the religious lives of many ancestral humans, and is often proposed by anthropologists to be the “first profession”, representing the first institutionalized division of labor beyond age and sex. This paper proposes a cultural evolutionary theory to explain why shamanism consistently develops, and in particular, (1) why shamanic traditions exhibit recurrent features around the world, (2) why shamanism professionalizes early, often in the absence of other specialization, and (3) how shifting social conditions affect the form or existence of shamanism. According to this theory, shamanism is a set of traditions developed through cultural evolution that adapts to people’s intuitions to convince observers that a practitioner can influence otherwise unpredictable, significant events. The shaman does this by ostensibly transforming during initiation and trance, violating folk-intuitions of humanness to assure group-members that he or she can interact with the invisible forces that control uncertain outcomes. Entry requirements for becoming a shaman persist because the practitioner’s credibility depends on them “transforming”. This contrasts with dealing with problems that have identifiable solutions (like building a canoe), where credibility hinges on showing results and outsiders can invade the jurisdiction by producing the outcome. Shamanism is an ancient human institution that recurs because of the capacity of cultural evolution to produce practices adapted to innate psychological tendencies.