de Waal

Emotional Fossils – II – “too harsh for a human being”

Filed under: Emotional Fossils, Evolution of Emotion, Evolutionary psychology, Group Selection | 7 Comments

Having determined that the various mental illnesses were all reflective of evolved segments of normal emotion, and that the majority of these illness – the anxiety and depression disorders – reflected motivation by aversion to the fears of separation and being trapped, I concluded that much of normal human behavior is inhibitory of primate aggression …

Read More

Monogamy: Ardi and the Ants

Filed under: Evolution of Emotion, Evolutionary psychology, Monogamy, Sexual Selection | 3 Comments

Ardipithecus ramidus, nicknamed Ardi, is arguably the most significant fossil find in the history of paleoanthropology due to its completeness and antiquity – 4.4 M. years, just 1.6 M. years after the last common ancestor with Chimpanzees.  The theoretician of the group, Owen Lovejoy hypothesized that the reduction in the size of the male canine …

Read More