ABSTRACT
It has often been said that the origins of religion, cognition and culture are beyond the ken of modern man. And yet, it is the most interesting, challenging and provocative of topics in the natural and human sciences. Perhaps our origins are no longer as murky today as in previous centuries. e past twenty-ve years have startled the world with major advances in a number of disciplines and sciences: evolutionary psychology, cognitive archaeology, neuroscience, ethology, developmental psychology, social psychology, cognitive linguistics, palaeoanthropology and genetics. ese advances have signi- cantly impacted on comparative religion and have led to the establishment of a burgeoning new eld called the cognitive science of religion. is new eld has succeeded in casting new light on age-old problems.
