The Economic Origin and Evolution of Monotheism

• In Event: 20869 - Evolution, Biology, and Sociology

Abstract

This study investigates the origin and evolution of the heterogeneity of religious forms by empirically examining how historical economic subsistence has shaped subsequent religious patterns. I compile a large interdisciplinary dataset that encompasses multiple assessments of historical economic subsistence across 1,265 ethnic groups and 958 linguistic groups in pre-industrial societies. My findings reveal that pastoralism is uniquely associated with the emergence of monotheism, whereas reliance on hunting, gathering, and fishing tends to correlate with polytheistic systems, and variations in agricultural subsistence do not yield significant differences in religious forms. I further demonstrate that societal liquidity is a key mechanism in this process: pastoralists, who mostly rely on constant transhumance, require a more mobile and extend God rather than multiple localized and context-dependent deities. An agent-based model illustrates how societal liquidity facilitates the spread of monotheism. By linking ethnolinguistic identifiers with a series of contemporary survey and census data, I demonstrate that historical economic subsistence continues to exert a lasting influence on the contemporary religious landscape. Overall, this study underscores the economic roots of cultural patterns and reforms throughout history.

Author

• Lang Luo, Center for Social Research at Peking Univ