Reconceptualizing the Human Social Niche

In this paper we present a reconceptualization of the social dimension of the human niche and the evolutionary process that brought it into existence. We agree with many other evolutionary approaches that a key aspect of the human niche is a social environment consisting primarily of cooperating and altruistic individuals, not a Hobbesian social environment of “war of all against all.” However, in contrast to the conception of this social...