Vojtěch Kaše and Tomáš Glomb contributed to the discussion on the relationship between affluence on the rise of moralizing religions in Religion, Brain & Behavior through the commentary of the target article by Peter Turchin, Harvey Whitehouse et al.
This is one of the results of their Czech Science Foundation project affiliated with Masaryk University and the University of West Bohemia (The Cultural Evolution of Moralizing Religions in the Ancient Mediterranean: A Distant Reading Approach).
The article by Kaše and Glomb (Affluence, agricultural productivity and the rise of moralizing religion in the ancient Mediterranean, https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2022.2065350 is a reaction to the target article by Peter Turchin, Harvey Whitehouse et al. "Explaining the rise of moralizing religions: a test of competing hypotheses using the Seshat Databank" (https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2022.2065345).
Kaše and Glomb claim that the authors of the target article are oversimplifying their approach to history when they model trends in prosperity and affluence as continuously rising throughout the past. Kaše and Glomb demonstrate on quantitative epigraphic analysis and on existing scholarship that there were significant fluctuations in affluence in the context of the ancient Mediterranean.
CEDRR members Aleš Chalupa and Tomáš Hampejs visited Tomáš Glomb at the Religious Networks in Antiquity workshop that he co-organized with Francesca Mazzilli, Eivind Seland, and The Connected Past initiative at the University of Bergen as part of his Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (June 7-8, 2022).
Anestis Karasaridis has succeeded with his grant proposal “The Antonine Plague in Rome: Comparative Modeling of Different Pathogens” in the grant competition for doctoral students (IGA) organized by Masaryk University.
