A NATURALISTIC THEORY OF ARCHAIC MORAL ORDERS

Cultural evolution, producing group-level adaptations, is more problem atic than the cultural evolution of individually confirmable skills, b ut is probably has occurred. The "conformist transmission," described by Boyd and Richerson (1985), leads local social units to become homog eneous in anadaptive, as well as adaptive, beliefs. The resulting intr agroup homogeneity and intergroup heterogeneity makes possible a cultu ral selection of adaptive group ideologies. All archaic urban, divisio n-of-labor social organizations had to overcome aspects of human natur e produced by biological evolution, due to the predicament of genetic competition among the cooperators. The universal norms found in archai c moral systems are seen as curbs to this human nature, reinforced by beliefs in invisible sanction systems and rewarding and punishing afte rlives (as in heaven or reincarnation). Perhaps the ubiquity of lavish ly wasteful royal funerals is to be explained as contributing to this function.