article_snippet.sent: Study uncovered a link between belief in God and other societal characteristics, such as a strong social hierarchy.
article_snippet.sent: ’ Together with other experts, Russell Gray, a professor at the University of Auckland and a founding director of the Max Planck Institute for History and the Sciences in Jena, Germany found that communities that believe in a high, controlling God or gods who enforce a moral code, tend to live in politically complex groups with a social hierarchy beyond the local community - and often tend to animals.
article_snippet.sent: While the emergence of religion has long been explained as a result of either culture or environmental factors, the study by the National Evolutionary Synthesis Centre (Nescent) in Durham, North Carolina, implies that it arises from a mixture of ecological, historical, and cultural factors.
article_snippet.sent: It began when evolutionary ecologist Dr Botero plotted ethnographic data of societies that believe in moralising, high gods and found that high gods global distribution is quite similar to a map of cooperative breeding in birds.
article_snippet.sent: Dr Botero took the link to mean that ecological factors must play a part in the spread of religion, and another study has recently found a connection between a belief in moralising gods and group cooperation.
article_snippet.sent: Professor Gray said: ‘Although some aspects of religion appear maladaptive, the near universal prevalence of religion suggests that there's got to be some adaptive value and by looking at how these things vary ecologically, we get some insight.’
article_snippet.sent: While the emergence of religion has long been explained as a result of either culture or environmental factors, the study  implies that the study   arises from a mixture of ecological, historical, and cultural factors.
highlights_snippet.sent: Research also uncovered link between a belief in high gods who enforce a moral code and  a strong social hierarchy .