Science Confirms Our Ancestors’ Intuitions*

Our ancestors were deeply intelligent. About two million years ago we evolved cooperative child raising, which fosters big social brains and distinguishes us from chimpanzees.

It is time to remember what our ancestors intuited and science now confirms.

1.     We are biosocial. That is, our biology is shaped by our social experiences and our sociality is rooted in our biology. A faulty biology leads to a faulty sociality.

2.     Our experiences in the womb matter. Full support of expectant mothers is vital for community wellbeing. A stressed expectant mother grows a stress reactive, irritable offspring.

3.     Most of our humanity is grown postnatally. You name it: self-regulation of numerous systems; receptive intelligence; sociality; compassionate morality; earth-wise life skills…all sorts of capacities are molded by the biology of love that our ancestors followed.

4.     Humans are highly immature at full-term birth. At least 75% of brain volume grows postnatally. It takes humans about 30 years to reach adulthood. Mentoring and support are needed all along the way.

5.     Over millions of years humans evolved a nurturing system, the evolved nest, that fosters healthy development. The evolved nest helps babies meet basic needs for self-organization and growth, fostering thriving, resilience and unique potential.

6.     Threat reactivity is fostered by early toxic stress. Lack of evolved nested care is toxic to sociality. Neuroception refers to how in each new situation we each rapidly (in milliseconds) determine whether we feel safe or unsafe. When one feels unsafe, blood flow shifts away from higher order thinking and from openness to experience, decreasing learning, undermining the development of social and emotional intelligence.

7.     Human morality is biologically rooted. When we meet basic needs and promote thriving, we promote health and prosociality. Those with higher Evolved Nest History (ENH) show greater social engagement, less aggression and less emotional detachment from others. Those with greater scores on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) show less social engagement and greater emotional detachment from others.

8.     Our ancestors followed humanity’s Wellness-Promoting Pathway. We can study still extant African hunter-gatherer civilization which has been around for at least 150,000 years. We can see in hunter-gatherer civilization the pathway our ancestors followed and that many other species follow, leading to species survival, wellness and flourishing.

a)    Provide for basic needs of infants through the evolved nest. Provide for the basic needs of all throughout the lifespan.

b)    This leads to health at all levels (physiological, psychological and social) and optimal species nature.

c)     Humans then develop heartmindedness, virtuous functioning through the integration of physiology, psyche, spirit, and action. This occurs at both the individual and community levels.

d)    The result is a set of individuals and communal practices that are cooperative and compassionate, inclusive of other Earth entities (animals, plants, waterways, mountains) and that foster cultural perpetuity.

9.     Our ancestors practiced Deep Nestedness. Our ancestors practiced more than developmental nestedness (provision of the evolved nest in babyhood and throughout life). The evolved nest must be accompanied by horizontal nestedness, a respect for the ancestors and future generations and the rest of non-present Earth community members. Horizontal nestedness is also accompanied by vertical nestedness, earth-centered living according to Nature’s laws, and practices and sensibilities that support cosmic connectedness. This deep nestedness then is necessary for human futures.

The evolved nest represents a key infrastructure for human development. According to the anthropological theory of cultural materialism (Harris, 1979), infrastructure is key to cultural change. As evolved nest provision was degraded across millennia by hierarchical civilization and industrialization, social structures and superstructures (cultural narratives, beliefs, etc.) developed to maintain the system. These often did not include vertical nor horizontal nestedness. To change society towards one focused on the wellbeing of Life instead of money, we must restore evolved nest provision to the young and deep nestedness for all.

*This post is based on a talk I gave recently at the Association for Moral Education conference in Queens, NY, called “Grounding Moral Development in Evolution, Neurobiology & Culture.”