Someone told me about an idea from the book Weirdest People in the World.

We have rule of law partially based on a foundation of the idea that God can see what everyone does.^[ih]

That allowed shifts from kin based to a market economy where you have faith in laws, and we have faith people will follow it.

The innovations that made religions global were "god can see your thoughts" and "an infinite afterlife".^[ii]

These two ideas were step changes that increased a given religion's power by orders of magnitude.