Study suggests shamans acted as the first professional class in human society
The names may vary — medicine man, witch doctor, holy man, prophet — but the notion of the shaman, someone who uses trance to commune with the supernatural and effect real-world change, is one that crosses virtually all cultural boundaries. The question of why is among the central puzzles of anthropology. At least part of the answer lies with the way humans — from hunter-gatherer tribes in the rainforest to people living in a modern city — are wired to think about the world and other humans, contends Manvir Singh, a graduate student in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, whose paper was published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Singh’s paper, along with more than two dozen commentaries from researchers in a host of fields, argues that shamanism develops as specialists compete to provide magical services to their community. The outcome is a set of...