The cultural evolution of shamanism

Shamanism—including medicine-men, mediums, and prophets—is a near-universal feature of human societies, especially among hunter-gatherers, and is often considered the first profession, the earliest institutionalized division of labor beyond age and sex. This paper proposes a cultural evolutionary theory explaining why shamanism consistently develops and exhibits recurrent features worldwide, why it professionalizes early even without other specialization, and how social conditions shape its form. The theory argues that shamanism adapts to people's intuitions by convincing observers that a practitioner can influence unpredictable, significant events. The shaman ostensibly transforms during initiation and trance, violating folk-intuitions of humanness to assure group-members of interaction with invisible forces controlling uncertain outcomes. Entry requirements persist because credibility depends on transformation, unlike problems with identifiable solutions where credibility hinges on results.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Shamans, including medicine-men, mediums, and the prophets of religious movements, recur across human societies. Shamanism also existed among nearly all documented hunter-gatherers, likely characterized the religious lives of many ancestral humans, and is often proposed by anthropologists to be the “first profession”, representing the first institutionalized division of labor beyond age and sex. This paper proposes a cultural evolutionary theory to explain why shamanism consistently develops, and in particular, (1) why shamanic traditions exhibit recurrent features around the world, (2) why shamanism professionalizes early, often in the absence of other specialization, and (3) how shifting social conditions affect the form or existence of shamanism. According to this theory, shamanism is a set of traditions developed through cultural evolution that adapts to people’s intuitions to convince observers that a practitioner can influence otherwise unpredictable, significant events. The shaman does this by ostensibly transforming during initiation and trance, violating folk-intuitions of humanness to assure group-members that he or she can interact with the invisible forces that control uncertain outcomes. Entry requirements for becoming a shaman persist because the practitioner’s credibility depends on them “transforming”. This contrasts with dealing with problems that have identifiable solutions (like building a canoe), where credibility hinges on showing results and outsiders can invade the jurisdiction by producing the outcome. Shamanism is an ancient human institution that recurs because of the capacity of cultural evolution to produce practices adapted to innate psychological tendencies.