Author(s): Dimitris Xygalatas

Sociology | Anthropology

A pioneering anthropologist takes readers on a journey through the rich tapestry of human ritual - showing how and why our most irrational behaviors are a key driver of our success. "A fascinating well-researched book about a fascinating subject. You will learn a lot." (Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace).

Ritual is one of the oldest, and certainly most enigmatic, threads in the history of human culture.  It presents a profound paradox: people ascribe the utmost importance to their rituals, but few can explain why they are so important. Apparently pointless ceremonies pervade every documented society, from handshakes to hexes, hazings to parades.  Before we ever learned to farm, we were gathering in giant stone temples to perform elaborate rites and ceremonies.  And yet, though rituals exist in every culture and can persist nearly unchanged for centuries, their logic has remained a mystery - until now.

In Ritual, pathfinding scientist Dimitris Xygalatas leads us on an enlightening tour through this shadowy realm of human behavior.  Armed with cutting-edge technology and drawing on discoveries from a wide range of disciplines, he presents a powerful new perspective on our place in the world.  In birthday parties and coronations, in silent prayer, in fire-walks and terrifying rites of passage, in all the bewildering variety of human life, Ritual reveals the deep and subtle mechanisms that bind us together.

Review: 'The great mystery of human behavior is ritual. How do we explain circumcisions, debutante balls, hazing, royal coronations, and fire-walking? Dimitris Xygalatas is a brilliant polymath and this fascinating book explores this question through a mix of scientific research, evolutionary theorizing, and deep immersion into cultures with gruesome and painful rituals. An important intellectual contribution and a true delight to read' - Paul Bloom, author

'An elegantly simple and deeply persuasive argument which generalises to other forms of delusional belief.' - Professor Mark Solms, author

'From the firewalking ceremonies of Greece to the terrifying rites of Amazonia, the anthropologist-cum-psychologist Dimitris Xygalatas leads readers on a whitewater tour of the new science of rituals, exploring and explaining how and why all human societies engage in seemingly senseless, repetitive and obscure customs that integrate rhythm, dance, music, pain and sacrifice. Rich in ethnographic detail, personal narratives and psychological experiments, Rituals tell us how we can use this new science, and the wisdom embedded in ancient traditions, to elevate our lives, improve our health and strengthen our communities' - Joe Heinrich, Professor and Chair of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, and author

'One of the best studies of ritual in years. In elegant, clean prose, Xygalatas draws on traditional ethnography and contemporary social science to show that rituals play a central role in the way we define who we are and in the health of our bodies. The book is a superb introduction both to classic anthropological theory and the modern science that extends its insights. Xygalatas shows that humans are indeed the ritual species' - Tanya Marie Luhrmann, author

'Why do people walk on hot coals, scarify themselves, pierce their bodies with sharp objects, fast, kneel, handle poisonous snakes, endure hours of boring sermons on their days off? Like the question of how dosing ourselves with alcohol, a low-grade neurotoxin, has persisted and endured so long as a practice among human cultures, the prevalence of pragmatically useless and yet often costly and painful rituals across human cultures is a mystery hiding in plain sight. Armed with new tools, such as biometric sensors and hormone sampling, Xygalatas reveals the inner workings and crucial functions of ritual, which explain both its antiquity and ubiquity ... An entertaining and engaging introduction to the cognitive science of ritual by one of the pioneers of the field' - Edward Slingerland, author

Author Biography: Dimitris Xygalatas is an anthropologist and cognitive scientist at the University of Connecticut. He has spent his career studying rituals all over the world, combining ethnographic observations with novel scientific experiments. Xygalatas has published over 100 articles, and has been interviewed about his pioneering work by the Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Forbes, PBS, the History Channel and others. He has a particular interest in walking through fire.