Zoon politikon: The evolutionary origins of human socio-political systems
Open accessAbstract
We deploy the most up-to-date evidence available in various behavioral fields in support of the following hypothesis: The emergence of bipedalism and cooperative breeding in the hominin line, together with environmental developments that made a diet of meat from large animals adaptive, as well as cultural innovations in the form of fire, cooking, and lethal weapons, created a niche for hominins in which there was a significant advantage to individuals with the ability to communicate and persuade in a moral context. These forces added a unique political dimension to human social life which, through gene-culture coevolution, became Homo ludens-Man, the game player-with the power to conserve and transform the social order. Homo sapiens became, in the words of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, a zoon politikon.
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Oldowan stone manuports were possibly lethal throwing weapons in the Lower Pleistocene.
“Oldowan stone manuports were possibly lethal throwing weapons in the Lower Pleistocene (Gintis et al., 2015).”
From Hypotheses for the Evolution of Reduced Reactive Aggression in the Context of Human Self-Domestication (2019) · cites this paper as Gintis et al., 2015
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References 257 · Cited by 53
- Authors
- Gintis, H., van Schaik, C., & Boehm, C.
- Affiliations
- Santa Fe Institute (US)
- Corresponding author
- Gintis, Herbert
- Venue
- Behavioural Processes
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2019-04
- Volume
- 161
- Pages
- 17-30
- ISSN
- 0376-6357 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2585055534
- Cited by
- 53
- References
- 257
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 6 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 2
- FWCI
- 5.89
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.zora.uzh.ch
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-nd
- www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
- Locations
- Behavioural Processes (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
- Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Language and cultural evolution
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
- Keywords
- zoon politikon, bipedalism, cooperative breeding, hominin evolution, meat diet, lethal weapons, moral communication, persuasion, gene-culture coevolution, human, social order, Aristotle
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Authoritarianism, Cognition, Cultural Evolution, Biological Evolution, Humans, Language, Leadership, Political Systems, Social Behavior, Social Dominance, Warfare, Hominidae, Weapons, Genetic Fitness
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