Evolution of social cognition

Until recently, cultural evolution has been regarded as the teleological move to a greater level of hierarchy. Research based upon the principle of heterarchy – “... the relation of elements to one another when they are unranked or when they possess the potential for be-ing ranked in a number of different ways” (Crumley 1995:3) changes the picture. The opposite of heterarchy would be a condition in society in which relationships in most con-texts are ordered mainly according to one principal hierarchical relationship. This organiza-tional principle may be called “homoarchy”. Homoarchy and heterarchy represent the most universal “ideal” (generalized) principles and basic trajectories of socio-cultural organiza-tion. There are no universal evolutionary stages: cultures can be (generally) heterarchical or homoarchical having an equal level of complexity. A culture could change its basic organ-izational principle without transition to another complexity level. Alternativity also exists within each of the types.

Kinship plays a foundational role in organizing human social behavior on both local and more global scales. Hence, any adequate account of the evolution of human sociality must include an account of the evolution of human kinship. This article aims to make progress on the latter task by providing a few key pieces of an evolutionary model of kinship systems. The article is especially focused on the connection between primate social cognition and the origins of kinship systems. I argue that early conceptions of kinship in our line were very likely scaffolded by preexisting forms of primate social cognition. It was only later, as linguistic resources increased in our line, and as human social life grew more complex, that these conceptions came to resemble kin categories as we now know them. I conclude by situating “kin cognition” within a broader cognitive science framework for studying capacities that reflect both innate knowledge and human cultural learning.