The Human Hearth and the Dawn of Morality

Abstract

Stunned by the implications of Colagè's analysis of the cultural activation of the brain's Visual Word Form Area and the potential role of cultural neural reuse in the evolution of biology and culture, the authors build on his work in proposing a context for the first rudimentary hominin moral systems. They cross‐reference six domains: neuroscience on sleep, creativity, plasticity, and the Left Hemisphere Interpreter; palaeobiology; cognitive science; philosophy; traditional archaeology; and cognitive archaeology's theories on sleep changes in Homo erectus and consequences for later humans. The authors hypothesize that the human genome, when analyzed with findings from neuroscience and cognitive science, will confirm the evolutionary timing of an internal running monologue and other neural components that constitute moral decision making. The authors rely on practical modern philosophers to identify continuities with earlier primates, and one major discontinuity—some bright white moral line that may have been crossed more than once during the long and successful tenure of Homo erectus on Earth.

Evolution of Religious Capacity in the Genus Homo: Trait Complexity in Action Through Compassion

“…It is not until the later stages of hominin evolution, in which enhanced working memory, external storage of information, visuospatial reckoning with expanded frontal and parietal lobes, and the executive functions of planning and decision making, together allow the emergence of theologically based religious capacity and congruent capabilities such as compassion. If it is true, as we have proposed, that Homo erectus had a rudimentary moral capacity (Rappaport and Corbally ; ), then the species also had glimmers of these emerging higher level functions. Still, they were not fully developed until Homo sapiens .…”

Evolution of Religious Capacity in the Genus Homo: Origins and Building Blocks

“…Similarly, no human must learn to read in order for the cognitive capacity that allows us to learn to read to be a trait of our species (cf. Colagè ; Rappaport and Corbally ).…”

“…This emergence occurred by chance until very late in human evolution, when cognitive feedback loops developed to facilitate the fixation of some advantageous cognitive adaptations. We explore these loops several times in these articles, and have previously done so for the emergence of morality in Homo erectus (Rappaport and Corbally ).…”

“…Again, because the sequence of human cognitive evolution has emerged as a major issue, it is a central topic of the second article. We build toward that in the first article, and make good use of earlier articles in Zygon (Rappaport and Corbally ; ; ). Together, they place a rudimentary moral capacity at around 1–1.5 million years ago with Homo erectus .…”

“…Of course, changes in many systems were involved in the lengthening of childhood in human evolution, including relatively late cognitive maturation (cf. Thompson‐Schill, Ramscar, and Chrysikou ; Rappaport and Corbally , 861). In this exploration of the evolutionary building blocks leading toward religious capacity in the genus Homo we will refer repeatedly to the many and important consequences of this change in developmental pace.…”