Towards an Evolutionary Science of Sacred Architecture: When Atmosphere Meets Narrative

Early human ancestors had protosacred experiences—awe from a mountain, serenity from a grove—long before they had language, architecture, or religion. Depending on an individual's mental set, such experiences could create a sense of ultimacy later interpreted as religious. The cultural evolution of language enabled humans to become question-askers and storytellers, able to pose existential questions and offer group-accepted answers through narratives and ritual scripts. This transition allowed the design of architected sacred spaces that fostered shared community and sacred experience. The paper relates affordances and atmospheres to the aesthetics of space, emphasizing atmospheric flow during rituals, and offers examples from diverse religions and suggestions for empirical investigations.

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Abstract

This paper forwards the claim that our early human ancestors had protosacred experiences long before they had languages, architecture, or religions. A mountain may create feelings of awe while a grove in the forest may create feelings of serenity. In some circumstances (and very much dependent on the mental set of the individual), such protosacred experiences may create a sense of ultimacy that may be interpreted by the faithful as a religious experience in terms of their own beliefs. We chart an evolutionary account of the path of human ancestors from experiences of the protosacred to the diversity of religions, with a focus on the emergence of culturally varied architected sacred spaces designed to offer a religious group a sense of shared community and the sacred in the experience of their religion. We argue that the cultural evolution of languages was necessary for this transition. It made our species both Homo quaerens (the humans who ask questions) and Homo narrans (the humans who tell stories), able to ask existential questions and to offer answers that a group could accept. The answers took the form of narratives and scripts for ritual behaviors that could harmonize the community with the world around and beyond it. We suggest that both affordances and atmospheres relate to the aesthetics of space, stressing the atmospheric flow as the performance of various rituals proceeds. This paper offers examples from diverse religions or cosmologies and closes with suggestions for a range of empirical and experimental investigations to address the hypotheses raised herein.