Human uniqueness: A general theory

The extensive, persistent ecological dominance of humans is unprecedented. We display a highly derived social adaptation involving uniquely extensive cooperation among nonclose Kin. Further, humans possess adaptive capabiliti es, including language, high cognitive function, and technological virtuosi ty not previously seen on this planet. Moreover, this suite of properties e merged and was refined very rapidly on a geological time scale. These diver se features of humans present what is referred to as the "human uniqueness problem. "A theoretical interpretation of these phenomena is one of the lar gest remaining challenges to the scientific enterprise. While many interpre tations have been proposed-several containing important individual insights -none has yet proven robust or complete. A straightforward resolution of the human uniqueness problem is proposed. I t is argued that coalitional enforcement is necessary and sufficient to all ow extensive nonkin cooperation, leading to all major elements of human uni queness. Coalitional enforcement arose uniquely in humans when the animals that founded the Home clade acquired the ability to kill or injure conspeci fics from a substantial distance. This resulted from the evolution of homin id virtuosity at accurate, high-momentum throwing and clubbing; previously supposed to be adaptations for hunting, predator defense or individual aggr ession. No previous animal could reliably kill or injure conspecifics remot ely. This ability dramatically reduced the individual cost of punishing non cooperative behavior by allowing these costs to be distributed among multip le cooperators. The capacity for coalitional enforcement drove the evolutio n of a cooperative social adaptation stably and autocatalytically from the origin of incipient Home about 2 million years ago through to the present m oment-including socially supported, ultimately spectacular refinements in w eaponry and social monitoring with attendant increases in efficiency of coa litional enforcement and thus in the extent of human cooperation. Its detai ls rendered this evolutionary process very rapid. This theory is believed to be robust and relatively complete. For example, coalitional enforcement is necessary and sufficient to allow for the evolut ion of language in an ape. Further, given the likely functional organizatio n of the ancestral vertebrate mind, the coalitional enforcement hypothesis predicts, in addition to genetic information the emergence of a second stre am of design information in Home, susceptible to Darwinian selection. A nov el source of design information has long been suspected on empirical and in tuitive grounds to be responsible for the uniquely high level of human adap tive sophistication. The unprecedented cognitive power of human minds is al so predicted by these implications of the theory. Lastly, the "cognitive ex plosion" associated with the relatively recent appearance of Behaviorally m odern humans is predicted by the theory, as is the increasing size of human political units. The coalitional enforcement hypothesis and its immediate implications now e nable the formerly elusive unification of diverse fields of study, includin g human biology, psychology, linguistics, paleontology, archaeology, anthro pology, history, and economics. Copyright (C) 1999 by The University of Chi cago. All rights reserved.