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Review
. 2023 May 17:5:e15.
doi: 10.1017/ehs.2023.13. eCollection 2023.

Why did doctrinal religions first appear in the Northern Subtropical Zone?

R I M Dunbar  1
Affiliations
Review

Why did doctrinal religions first appear in the Northern Subtropical Zone?

R I M Dunbar. Evol Hum Sci. .

Abstract

Doctrinal religions that involve recognised gods, more formal theologies, moral codes, dedicated religious spaces and professional priesthoods emerged in two phases during the Neolithic. Almost all of these appeared in a narrow latitudinal band (the northern Subtropical Zone). I suggest that these developments were the result of a need to facilitate community bonding in response to scalar stresses that developed as community sizes increased dramatically beyond those typical of hunter-gatherer societies. Conditions for population growth (as indexed by rainfall patterns and the difference between pathogen load and the length of the growing season) were uniquely optimised in this zone, creating an environment of ecological release in which populations could grow unusually rapidly. The relationship between latitude, religion and language in contemporary societies suggests that the peculiar characteristics of the northern (but not the southern) Subtropical Zone were especially favourable for the evolution of large scale religions as a way of enforcing community cohesion.

Keywords: Holocene; language evolution; latitude; pathogen load; scalar stress.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author declares no conflicts of interest.

Figures

None
Graphical abstract
Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Place of origin of the main phase-2 doctrinal religions. Dashed line is the Equator. The solid lines either side demarcate the Tropics, and the grey-shaded areas are the subtropical zones. [Image: see text] Place of origin of the Abrahamic religions: 1, Christianity (c. 30 AD); 2, Judaism (c. 2500 BP); 3, Islam (c. 600 AD); 4, Mandaeanism (c. 100 AD); 5, Manicheism (c. 250 AD). Druze (c. 1000 AD) and Bahai (c. 1850 AD) faiths are considered derivatives of Islam. [Image: see text] Other monotheistic religions in Asia (left to right): Yazidis (Y) (c. 1150 AD), Zoroastrianism (Z) (fourth millennium BP), Sikhism (S) (c. 1500 AD) and, in Shang Dynasty China, Shangdi (fourth millennium BP) and its derivative Mohism (c.2400 BP). [Image: see text] Non-theistic world religions with belief in a ‘universal force (principle)’: Jainism (c. 3000 BP) and Buddhism (c. 2500 BP). [Image: see text] Monotheistic tribal religions: (a) Atenism (XVIIIth Dynasty, Pharaonic Egypt, fourth century BP); and (b) two groups of largely pastoralist tribes that have their origin in the central Nile valley – the Cushitic tribes (including the Oromo, Somali, Boran, Rendille and others) now inhabiting central Ethiopia, Somalia and northern Kenya (solid lines), and the Nilotic tribes (including the Anuak, Shilluk, Acholi, Luo, Samburu, Maasai and others) now mainly inhabiting southern Sudan and western East Africa (dashed line). [Image: see text] Major state polytheistic religions: Hinduism (northern India) and Shinto (Japan). [Image: see text] Polytheistic state religions in the New World: Maya (250–1700 AD) and Aztec (1325–1520 AD) empires (southern Mexico); Tiwanaku (Bolivia; 600–1000 AD) and Inca (Peru/Bolivia; 1200–1530 AD) empires. [Image: see text] Confucianism and Daoism, third millennium BP China.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Estimated total female population size during the Holocene, from a genetic coalescent-based analysis applied to mtDNA haplogroups. SE Europe HG: hunter–gatherer genetic lineages with founders in Near East (a proxy for populations in the northern Subtropical Zone); W Africa farmer: genetic lineages for descendent farming populations in West Africa associated mainly with the Bantu expansion; S Africa HG: southern African hunter–gatherer lineages. [Image: see text] First evidence for farming in West Africa; [Image: see text] first evidence for farming in northern Subtropical Zone. Redrawn after Gignoux et al. (2011).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
(a) Length of growing season (unfilled symbols, solid line: number of consecutive days when lake water temperature is >9°C) and current disease load (filled symbols, long dashed line: VBPD, summed vector-borne and parasitic diseases) as a function of latitude for various Northern Hemisphere sites. Values are given as standard deviations (standardised to sample mean) so as to allow them to be compared directly. These are well-known geophysical relationships, but I illustrate them here with data from a specific set of sites for disease load (from Bonds et al., 2012), with growing season length matched for the same sites calculated with the equation from from Håkanson and Boulion (2001). Growing season length is largely a function of temperature (and hence seasonality), whereas disease load is largely a function of rainfall (and hence humidity). The grey bar demarcates the Subtropical Zone. (b) Difference between standard deviate (from mean value) for growing season and standard deviate for disease load for each of the sites in (a), plotted against site latitude. The grey lines define the Subtropical Zone; the hatched bar indicates the range of latitudes within which growing season is maximised with respect to disease load. Note that the optimal zone extends from the Tropic of Cancer (latitude 23.5° N) across the Subtropical Zone through to about latitude 42° N: this would include Spain, Sicily, Greece and Turkey.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
(a) Number of religions per million population and (b) number of languages per million population for individual countries plotted against the latitude of the country's capital city. Filled symbols: Northern Hemisphere countries; unfilled symbols: Southern Hemisphere countries. Solid line is the regression for the Northern Hemisphere countries only; long dashed line is the regression for Southern Hemisphere countries. Regression analyses: (a) log10-religions/million: Northern Hemisphere, r2 = 0.412 F1,47 = 32.9, p<0.0001; Southern Hemisphere: r2 = 0.004, F1,20 = 0.001, p = 0.778; (b) log10-languages/million: Northern Hemisphere, r2 = 0.367; F1,47 = 27.3, p < 0.0001; Southern Hemisphere, r2 = 0.002; F1,20 = 0.035, p = 0.854. The vertical grey lines demarcate the Subtropical Zones. Sources: religions, Fincher and Thornhill (2008); languages, Nettle (1999).
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