MORAL RULES

Ever since human society developed into relatively large groups, moral conditioning has tended to institutionalize certain forms of behaviour and to reject other patterns of behaviour as abnormal or dangerous.

One of the principles of many religions is that of judgement. Your deeds will be judged by the gods or by the spirits. The exegetes interpret the divine will to decide what is good and what is bad: what are the sins that condemn to “hell” and what are the actions and martyrdoms that grant a chair in the heavens? The sinner is caught by the judgement of the elders and by the anger of the spirits. One of the first elements of proto-religion may well be that of exercising social pressure on human behaviour by granting merits and appreciation for acts that are useful to society and guaranteeing punishment for breaking rules.

A group of nineteen engraved monuments in Dordogne, France, which are about 30,000 years old, may represent an early case of recorded moral rules. According to a recent study they appear to indicate the totemic regulations for mating (Anati 2007b).