http://www.wm.edu/news/index.php?id=7362
King sees pre-human precursor to religion
News · W&M News · Faculty stories · Barbara King
Author: Joe McClain, Source: W&M News
Date: Feb 15, 2007
King poses with her new book. By Joe McClain.

King poses with her new book. By Joe McClain.

Distinctions and definitions are important in understanding the work of
Barbara King, the Class of 2007 Professor of Anthropology at the College
and the author of the book Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins
of Religion. The book explores evidence of behavior among extinct hominids
and modern, living apes that, King says, are the root of what eventually
became religious practice.

Some of the distinctions are small, if vital. For instance, there’s a
“rule of tail” separating apes from monkeys, because, in general, monkeys
have tails but apes do not. King is adamant that although certain
behaviors among chimpanzees might superficially resemble human religious
acts, chimps are not religious.

“Could you even call it proto-religious?” she said in an interview. “Well,
no! I’m going to reject the premise of that question. What chimps do is
chimplike, and I embrace the ‘chimpness’ of it all, but for a scientist,
it’s a big mistake to project human feelings onto what these chimps are
doing.”

Maybe most important among the distinctions to King—for she sometimes
writes it in large letters on the blackboard on the first day of class—is
a basic fact of life involving our relationship to other primates: We did
not evolve from the apes. Apes and humans, rather, share a common
ancestor.

In the genesis of religion, a concept King refers to as “belongingness”
serves as the equivalent of eohippus or the hominid fossil called “Lucy.”
The need for belongingness, she writes, is “a fundamental characteristic
of all primates.” Evolving God draws on King’s extensive experience
observing the social dynamics of primate groups in the wild and in zoos.

“I am convinced that apes are highly sensitive and tuned in to one
another, starting with infancy, when a baby starts to negotiate with its
mother about its needs,” she writes. Many passages about adult-child
interaction contain references to King’s own experiences as a mother.

From belongingness stem what King refers to as “early precursors to
religion” such as empathy, meaning-making, rule-following and imagination.
She cites observed examples among ape groups and evidence of such
precursors in sites associated with hominids and Neanderthals.

One intriguing artifact discussed in Evolving God is a piece of jasperite
known as the Makapansgat cobble. Found in a South African cave known to
have been used by australopithecine hominids millions of years ago, the
stone bears natural marks that resemble two faces.

“Look one way and a modern face is clearly visible,” King writes. “Turn
the cobble around, and the face that appears looks, at least to modern
eyes, very much like that of an ancient hominid.” She says the cobble was
likely carried into the cave by hominids, although she is careful to note
alternative explanations. “It is probable that the Makapansgat hominids
would have recognized the facelike features in the cobble,” she writes,
“and might have been intrigued enough to collect, and even curate, the
cobble as a result.”

If hominids did indeed collect the Makapansgat cobble, she said, it could
represent a sense of self-awareness and meaning-making, but she is
unwilling to go as far as some of her colleagues who suggest the stone
represents evidence of early-hominid spirituality.

For King, the “tipping point” of spiritual and religious development is
found in Neanderthal burial sites. To enter the world of the species King
calls “arguably the most fascinating hominids of all” is to enter a world
clearly containing symbolism and ritual.

“When Neanderthals and Homo sapiens are coexisting in the world, they both
are involved in burial of the dead, but the Neanderthals—just as much as
our own species—are doing this with apparent emotion,” King said. “There
is evidence of grave goods, grave markers, ceremonies at the grave site.
This has never happened before; it’s unprecedented in prehistory. You just
don’t see it among australopithecines or early Homo species.”

King says that the evidence of the care that went into Neanderthal burial
sites very likely represent a spiritual component of Neanderthal life. Her
William and Mary undergraduates, she says, often challenge her on the
point.

“My students ask me some very good questions,” she said. “They ask,
‘Couldn’t it just be hygienic? Couldn’t it be to avoid predators?’” She
answers, “You need a grave for that, but you don’t need bones arranged
very carefully in the grave, a fire over the grave, marked antlers on top
of the grave.”

Evolving God came out of a request posed by an editor at Doubleday/Random
House, and King stresses that she was awarded a William and Mary faculty
research leave to write the book. “It would have taken me so much longer
otherwise,” she said.