For you atheists out there, I’m pretty sure this confirms most of your suspicions…
Researchers have now backed up claims that religion has caused fights and wars for over two millennia.
A new anthropological study of several archaeological sites around Mexico dating back to 700BC have apparently contradicted long-held beliefs that a religious system united ancient societies.
Researchers from the University of Colorado and the University of Central Florida are even going as far as saying that it had the completely opposite effect.
They spent years doing field research in the Valley of Oaxaca and Rio Verde valley and Professor Arthur A.Joyce and Associate Professor Sarah Barber discovered that local religious rituals helped tie together strong community links- but this delayed the development of larger institutions.
The researchers studied the period from roughly 700BC to 250AD and they found that the elite dominated religious life and therefore controlled the connections between communities and their Gods- which led to severe conflict.
This fighting in the lower Rio Verde valley eventually led to the major decline of these regional power centres with grand temples being built by 100AD being abandoned only a century later.
Professor Joyce from the University of Colorado said:
In both the Valley of Oaxaca and the Lower Río Verde Valley, religion was important in the formation and history of early cities and states, but in vastly different ways. Given the role of religion in social life and politics today, that shouldn’t be too surprising.
Thanks science, not you though religion…
