Volume 49, Number 17 · November 7, 2002
The Religious Success Story
By Jared Diamond
Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society
by David Sloan Wilson
University of Chicago Press, 268 pp., $25.00
That story was related to me by Sikari people, a tribe of six hundred New Guineans. The story exemplifies a widespread class of myths called origin myths, familiar to us through accounts of the Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel in the Bible's Book of Genesis. Despite those parallels with Judeo-Christian religions, traditional Sikari society lacked churches, priests, and sacred books. Why is the Sikari belief system so reminiscent of Judeo-Christian religions in its origin myth, yet so different in other respects?
Review, 4435 words
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