Norenzayan et al. suggest that moral deities emerged to forestall free-riding and foster long-term planning and long-range social and economic exchange among anonymous strangers well before the Axial Age, making the emergence of large-scale societies possible (Roes Reference Roes1995). Nevertheless, the power of moralizing deities to punish and reward, as well as the scope of selflessness and compassion, expanded greatly with the spread of universalizing religions along the long-range trading routes of middle Eurasia, which came to be known (post-Axially) as the “Silk Road,” linking the Atlantic to the Pacific via large-scale empires that became contiguous (Greco-Roman, Seleucid-Parthian, Bactrian-Kushan, Chinese) (Atran Reference Atran2010a).
Yet, according to Baumard et al. (Reference Baumard, Hyafil, Morris and Boyer2015), increased wealth made religious morality possible rather than the other way around. Baumard and colleagues selected eight regions of antiquity, from Mesopotamia to Mesoamerica, and looked at the several variables in each region over time, concentrating on energy capture per capita and moral notions of “personal transcendence.” They argue that critical moral developments in Greece (Stoicism, Skepticism), North India (Buddhism, Jainism) and North China (Confucianism, Taoism) all sprouted like Athena from the head of Zeus within a narrow 200-year time span in the Axial Age (500–300 BC) once energy capture per capita reached a critical threshold.
Apart from the very tentative historical estimates of energy capture, key developments in some of these traditions predate the Axial Age by hundreds of years. For example, Stoicism shares several important elements with metaphysical concepts of the Akkadian Empire (ca. 2334–2154 BC), such as logos-related notions of divine reason, command, and order (Lawson Reference Lawson and Whiting2001). Zoroastrianism, one of the first monotheistic religions (excluded from Baumard et al.’s analysis), first emerged in the Achaemenid era of the sixth century BC; however, it has strong roots in Indo-Iranian culture of the Heroic Age (beginning 1500 BC; Foltz Reference Foltz2004). The Epic of Gilgamesh (2200–1700 BC) introduces several moral parables later taken up by Hellenic, Assyrian, and Judaic religions concerning: the corrupting influence of power and the drive for lasting glory, the meaning of friendship, the humbling inevitability of death, and, above all, the realization that no individual, however powerful, can transcend the obligations and limits imposed by society and the cosmos (Abusch Reference Abusch2001).
Although Baumard et al. treat all of the regions in their analysis as if they were statistically independent, that cannot be justified historically: For example, the Achaemenid Empire encompassed parts of five of the eight presumed “independent cultural regions”: Greece, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and South Asia. In fact, rulers promulgated Axial religions to foster the integration and unification of large-scale multiethnic empires, involving myriad smaller states, cultures, and religious traditions. As Cyrus the Great put it: “If God requires reverence, so does the human race, and you must treat all people with benevolence” (Hedrick Reference Hedrick2006, p. 294). Without a common moral framework and foundation for long-range social and material exchanges between strangers with often antagonistic prior cultural traditions, it is difficult to see how a single social and economic order could develop in the first place (Atran & Henrich Reference Atran and Henrich2010).
Morality creates trust, which allows credit for long-term trade, investment, and the production of wealth. In Babylonia, Hammurabi's moral code preceded by nearly 500 years the first recorded loans on the security of mortgages and advanced deposits (1300 BC), and by nearly 1,000 years the emergence of coined money (800–600 BC), whose trustworthiness resides in the state rather than the reputations of individuals (Graeber Reference Graeber2012). To be sure, as Norenzayan et al. allow, the scope of moral concern likely increased with the scale of cooperation during the Axial Age involving, for the first time, people from potentially any ethnicity who elected to join, or were pressed into, one of the universalizing religions.
The Axial religions surveyed by Baumard et al. (Reference Baumard, Hyafil, Morris and Boyer2015) are marked by doctrines of denial of immediate worldly pleasures for lasting spiritual goals, made possible by increased wealth and freedom from everyday want. And this asceticism is equated with “personal transcendence” and morality. But why are religions that treat relationships between people and nature as duty bound not “moral,” as many pre-Axial religions were, with their costly rituals teaching the moral order of societies-in-their-environments (Rappaport Reference Rappaport1999)? Indeed, anthropological and psychological studies of modern hunter-gatherers and nonliterate societies indicate that personal preferences differ markedly from beliefs in supposed spiritual preferences (Taylor Reference Taylor2008), with the latter likely representing the accumulated wisdom of generations for long-term social and economic planning (Atran & Medin Reference Atran and Medin2008).
Finally, although a society may fall back below the tipping point of caloric threshold for asceticism, as Baumard et al. (Reference Baumard, Hyafil, Morris and Boyer2015) have determined it, and need not suffer absolute loss of asceticism because it had previously passed that point, it is nevertheless puzzling for their account why it is that the poorest people and societies (Norris & Inglehart Reference Norris and Inglehart2011), as well as those on the front lines of war (Beit-Hallahmi Reference Beit-Hallahmi1997) are by and large the most concerned with moralizing religion in today's world – given that these are the people and societies most pressed to satisfy immediate needs.
In sum, historical, anthropological, and psychological studies support a central claim of Norenzayan et al. – namely, that the universalizing and spreading of moralizing religions, represented by Big Gods, helped critically to manage problems of trust and control for ever-increasing social interdependence, and need for long-term economic planning among strangers. Evidence points to moralizing deities well before the Axial Age; however, their scope of concern increased with – indeed likely made possible – large-scale cooperation in the Axial Age and thereafter.
Norenzayan et al. suggest that moral deities emerged to forestall free-riding and foster long-term planning and long-range social and economic exchange among anonymous strangers well before the Axial Age, making the emergence of large-scale societies possible (Roes Reference Roes1995). Nevertheless, the power of moralizing deities to punish and reward, as well as the scope of selflessness and compassion, expanded greatly with the spread of universalizing religions along the long-range trading routes of middle Eurasia, which came to be known (post-Axially) as the “Silk Road,” linking the Atlantic to the Pacific via large-scale empires that became contiguous (Greco-Roman, Seleucid-Parthian, Bactrian-Kushan, Chinese) (Atran Reference Atran2010a).
Yet, according to Baumard et al. (Reference Baumard, Hyafil, Morris and Boyer2015), increased wealth made religious morality possible rather than the other way around. Baumard and colleagues selected eight regions of antiquity, from Mesopotamia to Mesoamerica, and looked at the several variables in each region over time, concentrating on energy capture per capita and moral notions of “personal transcendence.” They argue that critical moral developments in Greece (Stoicism, Skepticism), North India (Buddhism, Jainism) and North China (Confucianism, Taoism) all sprouted like Athena from the head of Zeus within a narrow 200-year time span in the Axial Age (500–300 BC) once energy capture per capita reached a critical threshold.
Apart from the very tentative historical estimates of energy capture, key developments in some of these traditions predate the Axial Age by hundreds of years. For example, Stoicism shares several important elements with metaphysical concepts of the Akkadian Empire (ca. 2334–2154 BC), such as logos-related notions of divine reason, command, and order (Lawson Reference Lawson and Whiting2001). Zoroastrianism, one of the first monotheistic religions (excluded from Baumard et al.’s analysis), first emerged in the Achaemenid era of the sixth century BC; however, it has strong roots in Indo-Iranian culture of the Heroic Age (beginning 1500 BC; Foltz Reference Foltz2004). The Epic of Gilgamesh (2200–1700 BC) introduces several moral parables later taken up by Hellenic, Assyrian, and Judaic religions concerning: the corrupting influence of power and the drive for lasting glory, the meaning of friendship, the humbling inevitability of death, and, above all, the realization that no individual, however powerful, can transcend the obligations and limits imposed by society and the cosmos (Abusch Reference Abusch2001).
Although Baumard et al. treat all of the regions in their analysis as if they were statistically independent, that cannot be justified historically: For example, the Achaemenid Empire encompassed parts of five of the eight presumed “independent cultural regions”: Greece, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and South Asia. In fact, rulers promulgated Axial religions to foster the integration and unification of large-scale multiethnic empires, involving myriad smaller states, cultures, and religious traditions. As Cyrus the Great put it: “If God requires reverence, so does the human race, and you must treat all people with benevolence” (Hedrick Reference Hedrick2006, p. 294). Without a common moral framework and foundation for long-range social and material exchanges between strangers with often antagonistic prior cultural traditions, it is difficult to see how a single social and economic order could develop in the first place (Atran & Henrich Reference Atran and Henrich2010).
Morality creates trust, which allows credit for long-term trade, investment, and the production of wealth. In Babylonia, Hammurabi's moral code preceded by nearly 500 years the first recorded loans on the security of mortgages and advanced deposits (1300 BC), and by nearly 1,000 years the emergence of coined money (800–600 BC), whose trustworthiness resides in the state rather than the reputations of individuals (Graeber Reference Graeber2012). To be sure, as Norenzayan et al. allow, the scope of moral concern likely increased with the scale of cooperation during the Axial Age involving, for the first time, people from potentially any ethnicity who elected to join, or were pressed into, one of the universalizing religions.
The Axial religions surveyed by Baumard et al. (Reference Baumard, Hyafil, Morris and Boyer2015) are marked by doctrines of denial of immediate worldly pleasures for lasting spiritual goals, made possible by increased wealth and freedom from everyday want. And this asceticism is equated with “personal transcendence” and morality. But why are religions that treat relationships between people and nature as duty bound not “moral,” as many pre-Axial religions were, with their costly rituals teaching the moral order of societies-in-their-environments (Rappaport Reference Rappaport1999)? Indeed, anthropological and psychological studies of modern hunter-gatherers and nonliterate societies indicate that personal preferences differ markedly from beliefs in supposed spiritual preferences (Taylor Reference Taylor2008), with the latter likely representing the accumulated wisdom of generations for long-term social and economic planning (Atran & Medin Reference Atran and Medin2008).
Finally, although a society may fall back below the tipping point of caloric threshold for asceticism, as Baumard et al. (Reference Baumard, Hyafil, Morris and Boyer2015) have determined it, and need not suffer absolute loss of asceticism because it had previously passed that point, it is nevertheless puzzling for their account why it is that the poorest people and societies (Norris & Inglehart Reference Norris and Inglehart2011), as well as those on the front lines of war (Beit-Hallahmi Reference Beit-Hallahmi1997) are by and large the most concerned with moralizing religion in today's world – given that these are the people and societies most pressed to satisfy immediate needs.
In sum, historical, anthropological, and psychological studies support a central claim of Norenzayan et al. – namely, that the universalizing and spreading of moralizing religions, represented by Big Gods, helped critically to manage problems of trust and control for ever-increasing social interdependence, and need for long-term economic planning among strangers. Evidence points to moralizing deities well before the Axial Age; however, their scope of concern increased with – indeed likely made possible – large-scale cooperation in the Axial Age and thereafter.