The rise of Civilization parallels the rise of the State.
As does the displacement of Polytheism by Monotheism. Monotheism is better for Big Business!

To use an old saying: R'amen

I think religions are an interesting topic of study as a sociological phenomenon.

Religion certainly was invented 1st by the shamans who tricked women into being raped and tricked boys into getting violent with other tribes to rape their women steal their valuables....if you read Hebrew the word is " lord " = law giver and believers xian & muslim mistranslated that into gawd .... the gawds were big warriors and generals who believers said would come back from the dead bigger with better weapons to kill their enemies....it is all bragging bullshit rewarding believers with raping virgins

Civilizations rise and it causes a greater need to control. The question arises as to what you can get out of this control also. Sound familiar?

It may not be surprising, but it is necessary to conduct such empirical research. I think it is a great piece of research - multidensional in so many ways

No shit, Sherlock!

Was a good read, Thanks. Even from the title, it seemed like it would make sense. Esp the fact of larger societies being able to hide 'ones actions'. Then having a all seeing being around to make sure you are behaving makes sense.

Yes, not shocking, but good confirmation.
My conceptions of the motivation behind notions of moralizing god(s) are informed or underscored by two research works: Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind," and Ryan & Jetha's "Sex at Dawn."

The former postulates that the rise of consciousness itself required humans to be able to reliably recognize thought in their heads as being their own. Humans appear to have apparently long been able to hallucinate,-- visual, auditorial, olfactory, tactile. Perhaps original gods were extremely personal, just the voices in our head. "Big" gods would have simply amounted to chieftans or other overlords deciding to make underlings adopt and worship only that overlord's personal god, and that boss would speak onbehalf of said god. Voila! Social control.

The Sex book is really about the rise of moralizing about sexuality. It points out that the rise of agriculture was key to much of the rest--agriculture for the first time making both wealth accumulation and dense population centers possible, as well as the rise of many awful illnesses. With that, greed, jealousy, aggression all became common and collective shared gods became a ready means for the advantaged few to control or manage threat from the disadvantaged.

Oh, and the rise of aggriculture was also the key to women sliding from free agent status down to mere chattel for men, and it led to soil fertility and ecological health being destroyed, but those are entirely separate but fun discussions.

It was only after grasses mutated into grains that you could have people didn't work. Sure before that, you had specialized artisans like ironworkers or axe makers but only when you have surplus food can priests and such leach off society.

Good article, kind of what you would expect, but good to have meta proof.

I believe humans worshiped nature spirits look before any god concepts.