The Role of Ontogeny in the Evolution of Human Cooperation

Abstract

To explain the evolutionary emergence of uniquely human skills and motivations for cooperation, Tomasello et al. (2012, in Current Anthropology 53(6):673–92) proposed the interdependence hypothesis. The key adaptive context in this account was the obligate collaborative foraging of early human adults. Hawkes (2014, in Human Nature 25(1):28–48), following Hrdy (Mothers and Others, Harvard University Press, 2009), provided an alternative account for the emergence of uniquely human cooperative skills in which the key was early human infants’ attempts to solicit care and attention from adults in a cooperative breeding context. Here we attempt to reconcile these two accounts. Our composite account accepts Hrdy’s and Hawkes’s contention that the extremely early emergence of human infants’ cooperative skills suggests an important role for cooperative breeding as adaptive context, perhaps in early Homo. But our account also insists that human cooperation goes well beyond these nascent skills to include such things as the communicative and cultural conventions, norms, and institutions created by later Homo and early modern humans to deal with adult problems of social coordination. As part of this account we hypothesize how each of the main stages of human ontogeny (infancy, childhood, adolescence) was transformed during evolution both by infants’ cooperative skills “migrating up” in age and by adults’ cooperative skills “migrating down” in age.

Corepresentation During Joint Action in Marmoset Monkeys (Callithrix jacchus)

“…Humans are a hyper-cooperative species, and the evolution of human cooperation and its underlying mechanisms continue to be a matter of debate (Richerson et al, 2016;Tomasello & Gonzalez-Cabrera, 2017). Our goal was therefore to investigate whether one such mechanism, namely action corepresentation during joint action, may be present in another highly cooperative primate species, the common marmoset monkey (Callithrix jacchus).…”

Empathic Communication in Cooperative Play of 2 and 3 Year Olds

“…All this organizes and incites new actions and meanings in continuous unfolding, resulting, among other things, from the recognition and acceptance of the affective dispositions of the interactants. Therefore, empathic communication plays a functional role in peer interactions: it encourages the sharing of intentionality -an essential process for the construction and development of collective play (Tomasello & Gonzalez-Cabrera, 2017).…”

“…Cooperative play is characterized by the negotiation and coordination of the enterprise around the same theme. This process would suggest an ability to share intentionality (Tomasello & Gonzalez-Cabrera, 2017).…”

Evolution and Ontogenesis: The Deontic Niche of Human Development

“…An important step occurred around 400,000 years ago, when early hominins were forced to hunt together (Tomasello & Gonzalez-Cabrera, 2017, added that cooperative breeding and collaborative foraging were also important). Collaborative hunting required joint intentionality, the ability to form a joint goal with a partner: to form a "we."…”