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You mustn't think religion is confined to human beings: religion, meaning ritual behaviour functioning to create emotional commitments -- there is plenty of it. You find it in a group of hunting dogs about to go out for the day, in a group of birds about to migrate, and in some very odd circumstances in chimpanzees. Chimpanzees go in for a thing called a rain dance. Usually the adult males perform it: they jump up and down, they shout, tghey pull branches off trees, they go berserk. Nobody really knows what the function is.
There is one anecdote about a rain dance that really fascinates me. A group is going through the forest and they come to a waterfall, and the alpha male, and he only, proceeds to perform a rain dance. He splashes, he shouts, he throws rocks -- it;s a big deal. What I think is going on is that he is recruiting a force of nature to strengthen his own personal position, increasing his own prestige by allying himself with something "out there". Isn't that what priests do?
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Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England
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