Gods, spirits and witches as the cause of thunderstorms and wars: Supernatural explanations exist worldwide and are timeless, a new study shows. When the inclination to this belief is particularly widespread – and what function it has.
Father of the gods Zeus angrily swings his hammer. The impact can be heard on the ground as thunder. This is how Greek mythology explains how thunderstorms form. However, seeing supernatural forces as the cause of natural phenomena was widespread not only in ancient Greece but worldwide. This is the conclusion reached by a group led by social psychologist Joshua Conrad Jackson from Northwestern University. The team published their study in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.