Several thousand years ago, people lived in small, hunter-gatherer groups of about two hundred people or so. Because they hadn't yet discovered the benefit of agriculture, finding sources of food consumed all of their time. They had to continuously be on the move, chasing migrating animals, staying ahead of changing weather patterns and staying out of the way of predators, so their numbers were relatively small.

Many believe that studying the way groups of lesser apes, and chimpanzees behave socially gives an approximate indication of human behavior during this time. What is surprising is that it is much different than social human behavior today.

In each group of pre-historic humans, there were a few "alpha men." These were the strongest, the best hunters, and the best fighters. These few men received an overly large percentage of the resources, and fathered most of the children. As they grew older, they were naturally replaced by younger males. This type of behavior can still be seen today, in tribes such as the Yanomamo in the Rainforests of Brazil.  Many geneticists believe that a large proportion of humans today are descended from only a small percentage of our ancestors, which supports this widely held belief.

So what happened when agriculture was invented? Man could afford to stay in one place, as food became a dependable and renewable resource. Societies naturally grew larger and larger, as crops became larger and larger. This presented a problem. The old social model didn't seem to work any more, simply because there were too many "alpha" men fighting over resources. This caused a lot of problems in this new type of larger society.

What was the solution? Religion. Religion was a relatively new set of beliefs, that most anthropologists believe came into being right around the same time as large societies. Religion teaches rules that make a large society more stable. No stealing, only one woman per man, no lying. Don't covet your neighbor's wife. And religion also came up with an ingenious way of enforcing these rules on the general population: There is an all knowing, all seeing God that will bring punishment on you if you violate these rules.

It is a perfectly designed system that allowed these large, primitive societies to grow into the great civilizations of our common human past. None of the magnificent accomplishments would have been possible had it not been for the creation of religion. What is even more impressive is that this new system of rules likely arose organically, on its own, without any overt social engineering, as people are sometimes led to believe. It's as if the collective mind of mankind has a self-generating idea resource to keep it growing, prospering and improving.

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