The coevolution of ritual and society: New ¹⁴ C dates from ancient Mexico

Abstract

New 14 C dates from Oaxaca, Mexico, document changes in religious ritual that accompanied the evolution of society from hunting and gathering to the archaic state. Before 4000 B.P. in conventional radiocarbon years, a nomadic egalitarian lifeway selected for unscheduled (ad hoc) ritual from which no one was excluded. With the establishment of permanent villages (4000 -3000 B.P.), certain rituals were scheduled by solar or astral events and restricted to initiates͞social achievers. After state formation (2050 B.P.), many important rituals were performed only by trained full-time priests using religious calendars and occupying temples built by corvé e labor. Only 1,300 -1,400 years seem to have elapsed between the oldest known ritual building and the first standardized state temple.calendars ͉ Oaxaca

The Evolution of Religion: How Cognitive By-Products, Adaptive Learning Heuristics, Ritual Displays, and Group Competition Generate Deep Commitments to Prosocial Religions

“…Recent finds indicate that rituals became much more formal, elaborate, and costly as societies developed from foraging bands into chiefdoms and states (Marcus and Flannery 2004;cf. Whitehouse 2004).…”

Rapid evolution of ritual architecture in central Polynesia indicated by precise 230 Th/U coral dating

“…The first emergence of formal ritual architecture (shrines and temples) is usually associated with the rise of complex chiefdoms and early states (1). In the Oaxaca Valley of Mesoamerica, a developmental sequence of ritual architecture has been traced archaeologically over 1,300 y (2). Here we present a contrastive case from central Polynesia, demonstrating very rapid elaboration of temple architecture in a highly stratified chiefdom society.…”

“…1). The lack of abrasion on the delicate verrucae of the Acropora branches indicates that the corals were collected while living, from the nearby lagoons and fringing reef (2). In both coastal and inland marae, Porites coral blocks were cut and dressed and incorporated into the front facings of ahu along with prismatic basalt dikestones.…”

Human cremation in Mexico 3,000 years ago

“…At the Feathered Serpent Pyramid at Teotihuacan, 77% of the burials with known arm positions had their arms crossed behind their backs, which was one of the reasons for concluding that they were human sacrifices (37). It is also The discovery of human cremation Ϸ3,000 years ago in the Mixteca Alta is important because it suggests that later methods of marking social status in mortuary contexts have roots deep in prehistory, at a time when hereditary inequality was first emerging (41). This result, and the cultural continuity it suggests, has broader implications.…”