Origin of the Human Soul: Making Sense of Emotional Fossils (trans. by Andrey Korchevskiy)

Abstract

That humans evolved to be hyper-cooperative has always been problematic for the Darwinian view of evolution: a struggle among individuals for scarce resources. The most fundamental fossil findings are consistent with the proposal that the appearance of humans 6 million years ago represents a rare major biological transition. For the first time, individual mammals (humans) began dividing and coordinating their functional activities while assembling into organism-like groups. The refinement of this collective capacity for teamwork is the decisive human adaptation and constitutes our core human instincts evolved over millions of years, referred to as the “old mind.” Our own Homo sapiens species appeared 300,000 years ago. Because the evolutionary mechanisms of sexual selection and group selection became predominant, 1) cultural evolution, 2) the rise of economic behavior, 3) chronic war, and 4) mental illness resulted. The major mental illnesses are viewed as “emotional fossils” that provide insight into the evolutionary development of our emotions and motivations. The symptoms of bipolar disorder reflect the breakdown of instincts evolved by sexual selection for the benefits of cohesion among groups. The symptoms of schizophrenia reflect the breakdown of instincts evolved by group selection for the benefits of groups prevailing in competition with each other. These often-disruptive instincts constitute our “new mind” that seeks equilibrium with our old mind, which persists as the humanizing legacy of collective functioning refined through the ages by our hominin ancestors and now experienced as our innermost soul.