NYTimes review of ‘The Faith Instinct‘:
Hunter-gatherers were egalitarian and, shamans aside, had direct access to the divine.
But when humans began to farm and to settle in cities and states, religion became hierarchical.
Priests emerged, turning unwritten rules and chummy gods into opaque instruments of surveillance and power. Church bureaucracies created crucial social institutions but also suppressed the more ecstatic aspects of worship, especially music, dance and trance.