The publication of this paper in Nature was retracted in July 2021 following the submission of a Matters Arising article by another research group concerning the analysis of missing data. For more details, please see the following link.
Retraction Note: Complex societies precede moralizing gods throughout world history | Nature
Additionally, a revised version of this paper was published in Religion, Brain & Behavior in June 2022. For more details, please see the following link.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2153599X.2022.2074085
March 22, 2019
Keio University
An international collaborative research group, including Project Associate Professor Patrick Savage of the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies at Keio University, Professor Harvey Whitehouse and Professor Peter Francois of the University of Oxford, and Professor Peter Turchin of the University of Connecticut, has constructed a large-scale database on human evolutionary history called "Seshat" and conducted big data analysis on it. They have revealed the possibility that the evolution of social complexity caused the emergence of religions and the belief in "gods" around the world. The results of this research were published in the British scientific journal "Nature" on March 20 (local time).
The research group has built and publicly released an open-access database named Seshat, containing historical record data of human evolution spanning 10,000 years (over 200,000 historical records from more than 400 polities worldwide). They also conducted big data analysis of Seshat to scientifically test why humans evolved to cooperate in large-scale, complex societies. The results of the study showed that, contrary to existing theories, the "belief in gods" emerged as a result of the evolution of "social complexity." This finding, discovered through the collaboration of anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, mathematicians, evolutionary theorists, and computer scientists, suggests that the advancement of big data analysis is transforming our understanding of the history and origins of human evolution.
For the full press release, please see below.