Did Morality First Evolve in Homo erectus?
Article Sidebar
Published:
Dec 21, 2016
Keywords:
cognitive science culture evolution Homo erectus hominin Left Hemisphere Interpreter (LHI) neuroscience paleoanthropology scavenging sociability sociality
Main Article Content
Abstract
With findings from cognitive science, neuroscience, information science, and paleoanthropology, an anthropologist and astronomer-priest team take a new look at the nature of morality, and suggest parameters that are often very different from the philosophical and theological literatures. They see morality as a biologically-based arbitration mechanism that works along a timeline with a valence of good to bad. It is rational, purposeful, social, and affected by emotion but not dominated by it. The authors examine the age and sex structure, family roles, environment, cognition, and lifeway of Homo erectus, an early hominin who arose 1.9 million years ago, and propose that he had a rudimentary moral system that his biology and culture enabled – but only after he learned to control fire. Hearths gave rise to an intense, social, emotional, experiential context where belief systems could be learned by youth before they achieved adult cognition.
Article Details
How to Cite
Rappaport, M. B., & Corbally SJ, C. (2016). Did Morality First Evolve in Homo erectus?. Philosophical Problems in Science (Zagadnienia Filozoficzne W Nauce), (61), 105–131. Retrieved from https://zfn.edu.pl/index.php/zfn/article/view/360
Issue
Section
Proceedings of the PAU Commission on the Philosophy of Science
References
Aiello, Leslie C., and Dunbar, Robin I. M., 1993. Neocortex Size, Group Size, & the Evolution of Language. Current Anthropology, 34(2), pp. 184-193.
Barnard, Alan, 2008. The Co-evolution of Language & Kinship. In: Nicholas J. Allen, Hilary Callan, Robin Dunbar, & Wendy James, Eds., Early Human Kinship; From Sex to Social Reproduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 232-43.
Berna, Francesco, Goldberg, Paul, Kolska Horwitz, Liora, Brink, James, Holt, Sharon, Bamford, Marion and Chazan, Michael, 2012. Microstratigraphic Evidence of in situ Fire in the Acheulean Strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(20), pp. E1215-E1220.
Burton, Frances D., 2009. Fire; The Spark That Ignited Human Evolution. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Carey, James R., 2003. Longevity: The Biology & Demography of Life Span. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Table 9.3 Evolved Life Span of Ancestral Hominids & Modern Humans. p. 215.
Cochran, Gregory, and Harpending, Henry, 2009. The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution. New York: Basic Books.
Colagè, Ivan, 2015. The Human Being Shaping & Transcending Itself: Written Language, Brain, & Culture. Zygon; Journal of Religion and Science, 50(4), pp. 1002-1021.
Coolidge, Frederick. L., and Wynn, Thomas, 2009. The Rise of Homo sapiens; The Evolution of Modern Thinking. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Coolidge, Frederick L., Wynn, Thomas, Overmann, Karenleigh A., and Hicks, James M., 2015. Cognitive Archaeology and the Cognitive Sciences. In: Emiliano Bruner, ed. Human Paleoneurology. New York: Springer.
De Waal, Frans. 2009. Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Dunbar, Robin, 1996. Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language. London: Faber & Faber. Fig. 4, Grooming Time Predicted for Individual Fossil Hominid Populations Plotted Against Time.
Edwards, Erika J., Osborne, Colin P., Strömberg, Caroline A. E., Smith, Stephen A. and C4 Grasses Consortium, 2010. The Origins of C4 Grasslands: Integrating Evolutionary and Ecosystem Science. Science, 238, pp. 587-591.
Gazzaniga, Michael S., 1999. “The Interpreter Within: The Glue of Conscious Experience.” Dana Foundation web site, April 1. http://www.dana.org/Cerebrum/Default.aspx?id=39343#sthash.I7zCiFeL.dpuf
Gazzaniga, Michael S., 2006. The Ethical Brain: The Science of Our Moral Dilemmas. New York: Harper.
Gazzaniga, Michael S., Ivry, Richard B., and Mangun, George R., 2014. Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind, 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Harris, Eugene E., 2015. Ancestors in Our Genome; The New Science of Human Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harris, Sam, 2010. HuffPost Books, The Blog. “Moral Confusion in the Name of ‘Science.’” Original: 05/29/2010 05:12 am ET. Updated: May 25, 2011. Based on a 2010 TED conference presentation.
Harris, Sam, 2011. The Moral Landscape; How Science Can Determine Human Values. New York: Free Press.
Hawkes, Kristen, 2003. Grandmothers & the Evolution of Human Longevity. American Journal of Human Biology, 15(3): 380-400. doi:10.1002/ajhb.10156. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12704714
Hawkes, Kristen, 2004. Human Longevity: The Grandmother Effect. Nature, 428 (6979), pp. 128-129.
Kitcher, Philip. 2009. Ethics & Evolution: How to Get Here from There. In: Frans De Waal, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 120-139.
Korsgaard, Christine. 2009. Morality & the Distinctiveness of Human Action. In: Frans De Waal, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 98-119.
Lahdenperä, M., Lummaa, V., Helle, S., Tremblay, M., and Russell, A. F., 2004. Fitness Benefits of Prolonged Postreproductive Lifespan in Women. Nature, 428(6979), pp. 178–181. doi:10.1038/nature02367. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15014499
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 1974. Structural Anthropology, New York: Basic Books.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 1975. The Raw and the Cooked. New York: Harper & Row.
Opie, Kit, and Camilla Power. 2008. Grandmothering and Female Coalitions; A Basis for Matrilineal Priority? In: Early Human Kinship; From Sex to Social Reproduction. Nicholas J. Allen, Hilary Callan, Robin Dunbar, & Wendy James, eds. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 168-186.
Rappaport, Margaret Boone, and Christopher Corbally. 2016. The Human Hearth and the Dawn of Morality. Zygon; Journal of Religion and Science 51(4), December.
Rappaport, Margaret Boone, and Christopher Corbally. 2015. Matrix Thinking: An Adaptation at the Foundation of Human Science, Religion, and Art. Zygon; Journal of Religion and Science, 50(1), March, pp. 84-112.
Ripley, Brad, Donald, Gillian, Osborne, Colin P., Abraham, Trevor and Martin, Tarryn, 2010. Experimental Investigation of Fire Ecology in the C3 and C4 subspecies of Alloteropsis semialata. Journal of Ecology, 98(5), pp. 1196-1203.
Stringer, Chris, 2012. Lone Survivors: How We Came to Be the Only Humans on Earth. New York: Times Books. Especially, Ch. 5, “Behaving in a Modern Way: Mind Reading & Symbols.”
Templeton, Alan R., 2005. Haplotype Trees and Modern Human Origins. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, 48, pp. 33-59.
Thompson-Schill, Sharon L., Ramscar, Michael, and Chrysikou, Evangelia G., 2009. Cognition Without Control: When a Little Frontal Lobe Goes a Long Way. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(5), pp. 259-263.
Van Slyke, James A., 2011. The Cognitive Science of Religion. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing.
Varki, Ajit, and Altheide, Tasha, K., 2005. Comparing the Human and Chimpanzee Genomes: Searching for Needles in a Haystack. Genome Research, 15, pp. 1746-1758.
Williams, George C., 1957. Pleiotropy, Natural Selection, and the Evolution of Senescence. Evolution, 11(4), pp. 398-411. doi:10.2307/2406060. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2406060.
Wrangham, Richard, 2010. Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. New York: Basic Books.
Barnard, Alan, 2008. The Co-evolution of Language & Kinship. In: Nicholas J. Allen, Hilary Callan, Robin Dunbar, & Wendy James, Eds., Early Human Kinship; From Sex to Social Reproduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 232-43.
Berna, Francesco, Goldberg, Paul, Kolska Horwitz, Liora, Brink, James, Holt, Sharon, Bamford, Marion and Chazan, Michael, 2012. Microstratigraphic Evidence of in situ Fire in the Acheulean Strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(20), pp. E1215-E1220.
Burton, Frances D., 2009. Fire; The Spark That Ignited Human Evolution. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Carey, James R., 2003. Longevity: The Biology & Demography of Life Span. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Table 9.3 Evolved Life Span of Ancestral Hominids & Modern Humans. p. 215.
Cochran, Gregory, and Harpending, Henry, 2009. The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution. New York: Basic Books.
Colagè, Ivan, 2015. The Human Being Shaping & Transcending Itself: Written Language, Brain, & Culture. Zygon; Journal of Religion and Science, 50(4), pp. 1002-1021.
Coolidge, Frederick. L., and Wynn, Thomas, 2009. The Rise of Homo sapiens; The Evolution of Modern Thinking. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Coolidge, Frederick L., Wynn, Thomas, Overmann, Karenleigh A., and Hicks, James M., 2015. Cognitive Archaeology and the Cognitive Sciences. In: Emiliano Bruner, ed. Human Paleoneurology. New York: Springer.
De Waal, Frans. 2009. Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Dunbar, Robin, 1996. Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language. London: Faber & Faber. Fig. 4, Grooming Time Predicted for Individual Fossil Hominid Populations Plotted Against Time.
Edwards, Erika J., Osborne, Colin P., Strömberg, Caroline A. E., Smith, Stephen A. and C4 Grasses Consortium, 2010. The Origins of C4 Grasslands: Integrating Evolutionary and Ecosystem Science. Science, 238, pp. 587-591.
Gazzaniga, Michael S., 1999. “The Interpreter Within: The Glue of Conscious Experience.” Dana Foundation web site, April 1. http://www.dana.org/Cerebrum/Default.aspx?id=39343#sthash.I7zCiFeL.dpuf
Gazzaniga, Michael S., 2006. The Ethical Brain: The Science of Our Moral Dilemmas. New York: Harper.
Gazzaniga, Michael S., Ivry, Richard B., and Mangun, George R., 2014. Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind, 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Harris, Eugene E., 2015. Ancestors in Our Genome; The New Science of Human Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harris, Sam, 2010. HuffPost Books, The Blog. “Moral Confusion in the Name of ‘Science.’” Original: 05/29/2010 05:12 am ET. Updated: May 25, 2011. Based on a 2010 TED conference presentation.
Harris, Sam, 2011. The Moral Landscape; How Science Can Determine Human Values. New York: Free Press.
Hawkes, Kristen, 2003. Grandmothers & the Evolution of Human Longevity. American Journal of Human Biology, 15(3): 380-400. doi:10.1002/ajhb.10156. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12704714
Hawkes, Kristen, 2004. Human Longevity: The Grandmother Effect. Nature, 428 (6979), pp. 128-129.
Kitcher, Philip. 2009. Ethics & Evolution: How to Get Here from There. In: Frans De Waal, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 120-139.
Korsgaard, Christine. 2009. Morality & the Distinctiveness of Human Action. In: Frans De Waal, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 98-119.
Lahdenperä, M., Lummaa, V., Helle, S., Tremblay, M., and Russell, A. F., 2004. Fitness Benefits of Prolonged Postreproductive Lifespan in Women. Nature, 428(6979), pp. 178–181. doi:10.1038/nature02367. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15014499
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 1974. Structural Anthropology, New York: Basic Books.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 1975. The Raw and the Cooked. New York: Harper & Row.
Opie, Kit, and Camilla Power. 2008. Grandmothering and Female Coalitions; A Basis for Matrilineal Priority? In: Early Human Kinship; From Sex to Social Reproduction. Nicholas J. Allen, Hilary Callan, Robin Dunbar, & Wendy James, eds. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 168-186.
Rappaport, Margaret Boone, and Christopher Corbally. 2016. The Human Hearth and the Dawn of Morality. Zygon; Journal of Religion and Science 51(4), December.
Rappaport, Margaret Boone, and Christopher Corbally. 2015. Matrix Thinking: An Adaptation at the Foundation of Human Science, Religion, and Art. Zygon; Journal of Religion and Science, 50(1), March, pp. 84-112.
Ripley, Brad, Donald, Gillian, Osborne, Colin P., Abraham, Trevor and Martin, Tarryn, 2010. Experimental Investigation of Fire Ecology in the C3 and C4 subspecies of Alloteropsis semialata. Journal of Ecology, 98(5), pp. 1196-1203.
Stringer, Chris, 2012. Lone Survivors: How We Came to Be the Only Humans on Earth. New York: Times Books. Especially, Ch. 5, “Behaving in a Modern Way: Mind Reading & Symbols.”
Templeton, Alan R., 2005. Haplotype Trees and Modern Human Origins. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, 48, pp. 33-59.
Thompson-Schill, Sharon L., Ramscar, Michael, and Chrysikou, Evangelia G., 2009. Cognition Without Control: When a Little Frontal Lobe Goes a Long Way. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(5), pp. 259-263.
Van Slyke, James A., 2011. The Cognitive Science of Religion. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing.
Varki, Ajit, and Altheide, Tasha, K., 2005. Comparing the Human and Chimpanzee Genomes: Searching for Needles in a Haystack. Genome Research, 15, pp. 1746-1758.
Williams, George C., 1957. Pleiotropy, Natural Selection, and the Evolution of Senescence. Evolution, 11(4), pp. 398-411. doi:10.2307/2406060. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2406060.
Wrangham, Richard, 2010. Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. New York: Basic Books.