Believing in one god was basically a survival hack for ancient tribes that moved around a lot but still needed to stay organized.
By analyzing 1,000 pre-industrial societies, researchers found that 'local' gods became a liability for groups that moved frequently. Monotheism provided a portable, universal moral framework that allowed complex groups to maintain social order while migrating across different lands.
The Ecological-Institutional Origins of Monotheism
SSRN · 6363638
This study advances the evolutionary sociology of religion by distinguishing between specific and general religious capital. We argue that monotheism emerges as an adaptive structural equilibrium driven by two complementary selection pressures: mobility, which renders localized specific religious capital maladaptive, and complexity, which demands the economies of scope provided by general religious capital. To test this, we construct a global measure of historical monotheism using oral tradition