'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.