Cultural Evolution of Cooperation
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Human babies are capable of synchronizing their movements with that of others at a very early age, indicating that the neural capacity for synchrony must have occurred during gestation: "tightly synchronized interaction with others constitutes part of the maturational environment for the cerebral cortex ." Our closest primate relatives can neither synchronize with others nor hold a steady beat. Ritual music and dance appear to trigger brain mechanisms that foster social bonding and so have been essential to creating the trust upon which all social interaction depends.
Beethoven's Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture | Cooperation Commons
Although Darwin's 19th century advocates stressed the role of competition in natural selection, Darwin established speculation about cultural evolution in regard to human cooperation: "It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over other men of the tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and t his would be natural selection."
