The evolutionary origin of human hyper-cooperation.

Proactive, that is, unsolicited, prosociality is a key component of our hyper-cooperation, which in turn has enabled the emergence of various uniquely human traits, including complex cognition, morality and cumulative culture and technology. However, the evolutionary foundation of the human prosocial sentiment remains poorly understood, largely because primate data from numerous, often incommensurable testing paradigms do not provide an adequate basis for formal tests of the various functional hypotheses. We therefore present the results of standardized prosociality experiments in 24 groups of 15 primate species, including humans. Extensive allomaternal care is by far the best predictor of interspecific variation in proactive prosociality. Proactive prosocial motivations therefore systematically arise whenever selection favours the evolution of cooperative breeding. Because the human data fit this general primate pattern, the adoption of cooperative breeding by our hominin ancestors also provides the most parsimonious explanation for the origin of human hyper-cooperation.

Behaviour and the concept of "heritability" axioms of an ethological refutation.

This paper discusses the widespread use of heritability calculations in recent behaviour research including behaviour genetics. In the sequel, a radical criticism concerning the basic axioms of the underlying, more general concept itself is presented. The starting point for testing the proclaimed universal validity of this concept stems from a fictitious yet realistic example taken from learning research. The theoretical result, based on the application of the conventional reasoning in this field, states that developmental processes--and learning is only one specific case out of an immense number of similar behavioural mechanisms--can neither be adequately described nor causally explained with sufficient reliability within the context of the heredity paradigm. On the contrary, an inherent inconsistency of the concept itself when applied to behaviour processes is demonstrated. Finally, a conceptual alternative involving a systems-theoretical approach to the problem is presented: In such a perspective it is the concept of "cognition" which represents the adequate explanatory theorem--a theorem in which quantitative processing of "information" from the environment is clearly revealed to belong to a subordinate level of living organization.