It is a common thread through many of the world 's dominant religions that those who do not follow the same faith are barbarians . Yet new research has now challenged the conventional idea that belief in a powerful and judgmental God is necessary to form large , complex civilisations . Anthropologists have found that belief in supreme deities often emerged after complex societies had already formed . The stone heads on Easter Island ( shown above ) are thought by some to represent ancestors of people living there and could be an example of where the belief system helped drive the emergence of complex society . The scientists studied the development of religion and cultures on Pacific islands that make up Austronesia . They examined 96 ancient Austronesian cultures - including those on Fiji , Tonga , Hawaii and Samoa - that had not had contact with Abrahamic religions like Christianity and Islam . They often form a central part of most biblical stories , but it appears that floods , famines and plagues may have also helped to start belief in some gods in the first place . Researchers at North Carolina State University found that belief in all-powerful and moralising gods tended to appear at times of hardship in human history . They claim that believing in such a supreme deity helps to ensure people within a society live by certain moral rules that are necessary when living in harsh environments or in times of hardship . The researchers studied the origins of 583 religious societies around the world . They compared these to climate , rainfall and plant growth data for each area to build up a historical picture of the conditions each society was living in . The findings may help to shed light on how religions such as Christianity , Judaism and Islam first emerged and why stories of hardship play such a central role . Dr Joseph Watts , an expert in cultural evolution at the University of Auckland in new Zealand , said : 'We found 22 instances of high political complexity through out historically and geographically distant regions of Austronesia . 'The results presented here cast doubt on the widely held view that moralizing high gods facilitate the emergence of political complexity . 'Although beliefs in moralising high gods do co-evolve with political complexity , believes follow rather than drive political complexity . ' Instead the researchers found that belief in systems of supernatural punishment - such as vengeful spirits - tended to precede the emergence of complex societies and civilisations on the islands . These tended to be belief in anthropomorphic beings such as the spirits of dead ancestors . The researchers found that 37 of the cultures sampled had beliefs of this type while just six believed in supreme deities . Those that believed in a single all-powerful god tended to be clustered in southeast Asia including the Bontok and Tagbanwa cultures in the Philippines , the Batak Toba people of North Sumatra , the Manggarai tribes of Flores in Indonesia . The names of their gods are Lumawig , Mangindusa , Mulajadi na Bolon and Mori Karaeng respectively . The researchers then used trees of evolutionary connections between cultures , deduced from earlier studies of linguistic relationships , to explore how the societies were inter-related and exchanged ideas . Islam is often seen as having been a civilising influence on Arab culture in the past and millions now make the pilgrimage to Mecca , shown above , every year . But the new research suggests that ancient religions like this that believe in an all powerful God may have emerged after complex cultures had already begun to grow . Native Hawaiians evolved a politically complex society but without belief in a supreme deity . Instead the had a belief system that worked around the representations like wooden Ki ' i statues , like those pictured above . They were then able to model how the different religions influenced the development of the political structure and cultural complexity in each society . Writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B , Dr Watts and his colleagues said : 'For beliefs in systems of supernatural punishment , however , the beliefs seem to help political complexity to emerge , although by no means guarantee it . 'We suggest that the concept of moralising high gods diffused as part of a suite of traits arising from cultural exchange between complex societies . ' Christianity has had a history of trying to convert those of other faiths that were considered heathens but it the latest research suggests that supernatural beliefs played a greater role in civilisation than was thought . However , Mark Pagel , an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading , told Nature that he believed the key to increasing political complexity was language not religion . He said that societies became more complex as networks of trade and reputation emerged . Instead he said that all powerful gods perhaps were useful as a tool to help those in power to cement their grip on a society . He said : 'As soon as you have a large society generating lots of goods and services , this wealth can be put to use by someone who can grab the reins of power . 'The most immediate way to do this is to align yourself with a supreme deity and then make lists of things people can and can not do , and these become ‘ morals ’ when applied to our social behaviour . '
Scientists at the University of Auckland studied 97 Pacific island cultures . Belief in an all-powerful God was found to not be a civilising influence . Religions that followed supreme deities emerged after complex societies . Instead belief in supernatural and vengeful spirits drove civilised cultures .