Evolutionary Psychology, Adaptation, and the Evoltion of Lanaguage: Is there a Need for Comparsion?
Abstract
A general assumption held by evolutionary psychologists is that a reference point for examining the origins and evolution of human psychological adaptations exists within a time range beginning roughly two million years ago. Scenarios for explaining the evolution of human psychological processes often allude to possible election pressures encountered by hominids during this time. unfortunately, comparative psychology and ethology are relatively absent from much current evolutionary psychological thought. Selective pressures that existed during the putative environment of evolutionary adaptedness may have predated the origin of hominids. Based on examples of the evolution of communication, this paper offers another approach to discovering the origins and evolution of psychological traits, with the aim of modifying a potentially misleading assumption of evolutionary psychology.