Human Pasts, Global Futures: Trauma or Wellness? A Lecture by Darcia Narvaez, PhD
This lecture is the first in the Nested World Fall 2025 Lecture Series by Darcia Narvaez, PhD. This is the first lecture in the Certified Nesting Ambassador Program that launched in January 2026.
Learn more about the Nesting Ambassador Program at www.NestedWorld.org.
Learn more about our Communal Evolved Nest in the Nested World Learning Center.
What is our Evolved Nest?
The Evolved Nest is a North Star guide for human development, for child raising, and for growing and maintaining our cooperative human nature. Just as the North Star has dependably guided explorers across seas and continents for thousands of years, our unchanging, millions year-old Evolved Nest, provides a baseline for “species-typical”, normal human lifeways. Our Evolved Nest is an interlocking set of practices that include the Communal Evolved Nest for everyone, with special attention to babies and children, the Intergenerational Nest, and the Cosmic Nest.
Just as the North Star has dependably guided explorers across seas and continents for thousands of years, our unchanging, millions year-old Evolved Nest, provides a baseline for “species-typical”, normal human lifeways. It follows the Cycle of Cooperative Companionship and a wellness-promoting pathway.
The Evolved Nest components, what we need to thrive, are shared practices around the world in hunter-gatherer civilization (where humanity spent 99% of its genus history). We identify nine components and list them in the Evolved Nest Learning Center. For everyone of all ages, the Evolved Nest includes a welcoming social climate, multiple bonded nurturers, warmly responsive relationships, positive touch (no negative touch), self-directed play with multiple aged mates, nature immersion and connection, and restorative healing practices. For young children, the Evolved Nest consists of soothing perinatal experiences (gestation, birth, and postnatal) and extensive child-directed breastfeeding.
The Evolved Nest, or evolved developmental niche, is the ecological system of care provided by families, teachers, and communities that aligns with the maturational schedule of the child, satiating the evolved needs of infants and children, allowing them to flourish and develop the deep connection and compassion not possible with our Dominant Worldview and its Cycle of Competitive Detachment and its trauma-inducing pathway. Nestedness supports health, well-being, sociality, and compassionate morality throughout life. Well-nested children and adults demonstrate social and moral flexibility, adapting to situations and others with emotional and spiritual intelligence, reflecting our original brilliance and Kinship Worldview.