Big Gods

How did human societies scale up from tight-knit groups of hunter-gatherers to the large, anonymous, cooperative societies of today - even though anonymity is the enemy of cooperation How did organized religions with 'Big Gods' - the great monotheistic and polytheistic faiths - spread to colonize most minds in the world In Big Gods, Ara Norenzayan makes the surprising argument that these fundamental puzzles about the origins of civilization answer each other.