ABSTRACT
The capacity for religion is an outcome of Darwinian selection on the anatomy and neuroanatomy of hominins to make them more capable of forming social bonds and group-level solidarities. The evolution of religion is seemingly tied to the first reorganization of the primal horde by Type-1 Spencerian selection pressures. Type-1 Spencerian selection pressures push on populations to resolve particular adaptive problems for which there are no existing sociocultural variants capable of managing these problems. Spencerian selection pressures operate at two levels: person-level pressures that, when viewed collectively, becomes population-level pressures generated by the common needs that all humans as evolved apes possess and corporate-unit level, where selections for new types of corporate units to solve adaptive problems that all populations of humans confront: production, reproduction, regulation, and distribution. Darwinian selection over millions of years produced a more social and group-oriented ape through selection on subcortical and neocortical areas of the brain.
