Big God prosocial religions contributed to, not merely resulted from, large-scale societies

Evidence

This hypothesis, which sees prosocial religions with Big Gods as a contributing factor (rather than merely as a side-effect of settled agriculture), fits better with the other observations discussed in this book. It is consistent with the psychological evidence that supernatural monitoring, and credible displays of faith to watchful deities, encourage cooperation, contribute to trust, and enable collective action among groups of strangers. It is also consistent with the historical evidence from the written record pointing to the role that these belief-ritual religious complexes played in the establishment of long-distance trade. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 393

Categorization

• XREF: Ties the Göbekli case back to the supernatural-monitoring and credible-display mechanisms the reader is linking to Rodrigues and the fumi-e.