RT Article
T1 Primates and Religion: A Biological Anthropologist's Response to J. Wentzel Van Huyssteen's Alone in the World?
JF Zygon
VO 43
IS 2
SP 451
OP 466
A1 King, Barbara J.
LA English
PB Wiley-Blackwell
YR 2008
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1827960108
AB Abstract. For a biological anthropologist interested in the prehistory of religion, J. Wentzel van Huyssteen's book is welcome and resonant. Van Huyssteen's central thesis is that humans' capacity for spirituality emerges from a transformation of cognition and emotions that takes place in the symbolic realm, within Homo sapiens and apart from biology. To his thesis I bring to bear three areas of response: the abundant cognitive and emotional capacities of living apes and extinct hominids; the role of symbolic ritual in the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens; and the closely intertwined nature of biology and culture in the workings of evolutionary change.
K1 Ritual
K1 Religion
K1 Primates
K1 hominids
K1 Evolution
K1 Emotion
K1 apes
DO 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2008.00927.x