Collective rituals involve the coordination of intentions and actions and have been shown to promote the alignment of emotional states and social identities. However, the mechanics of achieving group-level synchrony is yet unclear. We report the results of a naturalistic study in the context of an Islamic congregational prayer that involves synchronous movement. We used wearable devices to capture data on body posture, autonomic responses and spatial proximity to investigate how postural alignment and shared arousal intertwine during this ritual. The findings reveal a dual process at play: postural alignment appears to be more localized, with worshippers synchronizing their movements with their nearest neighbours, while physiological alignment operates on a broader scale, primarily driven by the central role of the religious leader. Our findings underscore the importance of interpersonal dynamics in collective gatherings and the role of physical co-presence in fostering connections among participants, with implications extending to our understanding of group dynamics across various social settings.This article is part of the theme issue \'Minds in movement: embodied cognition in the age of artificial intelligence\'.

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UNASSIGNED: Male circumcision (MC) is a practice involving the surgical excision of the foreskin to expose the glans and it is often performed for religious reasons. Ritual circumcision is frequently carried out by unqualified practitioners in inadequate settings, which can also lead to the death of the individual.
UNASSIGNED: A 28-day-old infant was undergoing circumcision by a man that performed the circumcision using a razor blade. During the same day, the child experienced continuous bleeding from the wound and, finally, died after about 20 hours. At autopsy, a cutaneous sharp injury was revealed with ablation of the foreskin and part of the penile body. The lesion had irregular and jagged margins, with diffuse hemorrhagic infiltration. The glans and upper fascia of the penis appeared edematous and hyperemic and there were abundant hemorrhagic infiltrations in the frenulum area. The child\'s death was attributed to hemorrhagic shock in a child undergoing genital mutilation surgery. The finding of a significant hemorrhagic infiltration of the frenulum region indicated that the frenular artery had been severed.
UNASSIGNED: Around 35% of ritual male circumcisions are performed clandestinely in Italy, and typically by unqualified practitioners. In such events, the forensic investigation of the injuries inflicted on the victim allows for determining whether the procedure was performed appropriately or not, to verify the existence of a causal link between the procedure itself and the death of the individual.

This study aims to determine the experiences of Muslim people with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (DM) about Ramadan in Türkiye. This phenomenological study was conducted with 30 Muslim people with Type 2 DM. The data were collected by holding in-depth individual interviews with a semi-structured interview form and analyzed using Colaizzi\'s seven-stage analysis and the MAXQDA-20 program. As a result, three main themes with 12 categories were determined as follows: (i) \"the month of Ramadan and the meaning of fasting\", (ii) \"the effects of fasting\", and (iii) \"coping with difficulties\". The participants stated that the month of Ramadan is one of the pillars of Islam and that it includes worshiping, finding peace, completing oneself in the religious sense, purifying oneself from sins, resting physically and spiritually, and appreciating the meaning of hunger, thirst, and blessings. However, some people reported that there was social pressure when they did not fast. Health professionals should provide people with DM with regular and safe training specific to Ramadan, establish support groups, and cooperate with religious officials (imams) to meet their religious demands.

Previous research suggests that sharing emotionally intense experiences with others, for example by undergoing dysphoric collective rituals together, can lead to \"identity fusion,\" a visceral feeling of oneness that predicts group cohesion and self-sacrifice for the group. In this pre-registered research, we provide the first quantitative investigation of identity fusion following participation in a national funeral, surveying 1632 members of the British public. As predicted, individuals reporting intense sadness during Queen Elizabeth II\'s funeral exhibited higher levels of identity fusion and pro-group commitment, as evidenced by generosity pledges to a British Monarchist charity. Also consistent with our hypotheses, feelings of unity in grief and emotional sharedness during the event mediated the relationship between sadness intensity and pro-group commitment. These findings shed light on importance of collective rituals in fostering group cohesion, cooperation, and the dynamics of shared emotional experiences within communities.

In societies without writing, ethnographically known rituals have rarely been tracked back archaeologically more than a few hundred years. At the invitation of GunaiKurnai Aboriginal Elders, we undertook archaeological excavations at Cloggs Cave in the foothills of the Australian Alps. In GunaiKurnai Country, caves were not used as residential places during the early colonial period (mid-nineteenth century CE), but as secluded retreats for the performance of rituals by Aboriginal medicine men and women known as \'mulla-mullung\', as documented by ethnographers. Here we report the discovery of buried 11,000- and 12,000-year-old miniature fireplaces with protruding trimmed wooden artefacts made of Casuarina wood smeared with animal or human fat, matching the configuration and contents of GunaiKurnai ritual installations described in nineteenth-century ethnography. These findings represent 500 generations of cultural transmission of an ethnographically documented ritual practice that dates back to the end of the last ice age and that contains Australia\'s oldest known wooden artefacts.

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Ancient DNA shows continuity between living and ancient Maya communities.

Tefillin are Jewish ritual artifacts consisting of leather cases, containing inscribed slips, which are affixed with leather straps to the body of the tefillin practitioner. According to current Jewish ritual law, the tefillin cases and straps are to be colored black. The present study examines seventeen ancient tefillin cases discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls in caves in the Judean Desert. All seventeen cases display grain surfaces with a very dark, nearly black appearance. We start with a hypothesis that the cases were intentionally colored black in antiquity using either a carbon-based or iron-gall-based paint or dye. The aim of this study is to test this hypothesis by subjecting these tefillin cases to a battery of examinations to assess the presence of carbon and iron used as pigments, and of organic materials which may have been used as binding agents in a paint. The tests deployed are: (1) macroscopic and microscopic analyses; (2) multispectral imaging using infrared wavelengths; (3) Raman spectroscopy; (4) Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR); and (5) scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy. The results of these tests found no traces of carbon-based or iron-gall-based pigments, nor of organic compounds which may have served as binders in a paint. These results suggest that our posited hypothesis is unlikely. Instead, results of the SEM examination suggest it more likely that the black color on the surfaces of the tefillin cases is the result of natural degradation of the leather through gelatinization. The Judean Desert tefillin likely represent tefillin practices prior to when the rabbinic prescription on blackening tefillin was widely practiced. Our study suggests that the kind of non-blackened tefillin which the later rabbis rejected in their own times may well have been quite common in earlier times.