Religious congregation may have drawn hunter-gatherers into settled agriculture

Evidence

An analysis of the blades made of volcanic ash found on the site suggests that it attracted pilgrims from a wide range of locations. This raises the possibility that the temple was an early cosmopolitan center. Schmidt argues that the initial religious impulse to periodically congregate and worship among at least some hunter-gatherer groups in the Middle East might have led to semipermanent settlements around the sacred area. People likely continued to lead a hunter-gatherer existence, possibly for a long time. Eventually, however, settlements swelled. Hunting and gathering cannot feed large populations. This might have created the impetus for experimentation with an agricultural lifestyle in addition to hunting. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 392

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the reader’s analytical thesis: the fumi-e ritual weaponizes public religious display to disrupt solidarity — here, public religious display (pilgrimage/worship) is the originating force that binds strangers before any material economy does. Same causal mechanism, sign reversed.
• SEED: A ‘worship as gravitational center’ essay: sacred sites as early urban attractors, from Göbekli Tepe to medieval cathedrals to pilgrimage economies.