From supernatural punishment to big gods to puritanical religions: clarifying explanatory targets in the rise of moralizing religions

Abstract

We applaud the authors ’ impressive e ff ort in compiling the Seshat database, as well as the remark-able Analytic Narratives they produced on supernatural punishment. This project undeniably helps the fi eld advance towards testing historical predictions of cultural evolutionary theories — including by sparking key methodological discussions (Beheim et al., 2021; Slingerland et al., 2020). The target article ’ s fi ndings, should they be con fi rmed (see Purzycki et al., 2022 this issue), bring important new information regarding the role of warfare, pastoralism, and agricultural productivity in pre-dicting the rise moralizing religions.