Toward a Unified Theory of Ancestor Worship: A Cross-Cultural Study

While ancestor worship has long figured in anthropological studies, there is little by way of large-scale, comparative research to probe the antecedents of this religion. Also, there has been a tendency to lump the varieties of ancestor worship in a single category. The study reported here was designed to explore the antecedents of ancestor worship both as to its occurrence and type (otiose, active, or supportive ancestor worship). Descent type, conjugal formation and marriage type were hypothesized to be the antecedents of ancestor worship with each of these, in turn, being a function of the pattern of subsistence (agricultural level). Data from 114 societies, most of which are included in the Human Relations Area Files, support the hypotheses. But marriage type (the incidence of polygyny) was a relatively weak element in the rise of ancestor worship. The complexity of conjugal formation and the degree of emphasis on tracing descent through one parental line were found to affect the degree to which the ancestors are believed to be active in human life.