Abstract
The first part of the chapter provides a definition of prosocial emotions based on an enactivist understanding of cognition and behavior and underlines the importance of mimesis for evolutionary social bonding. Then, relying upon Jordan Zlatev’s synthesis of the evolution of language and the framework of bio-cultural evolution, I trace the evolution of intersubjectivity and social norms among hominins during the Pleistocene Epoch. With the emergence of Homo sapiens about 200,000 years ago, symbolic languages gradually took the place of the proto-languages of our hominin ancestors. Language allowed early humans to imagine and communicate non-present worlds. A brief discussion of the mimetically based ritual culture of the BaYaka Pygmy tribes of Africa demonstrates how the proto-language modes of the Pleistocene Epoch continue to serve the socio-psychological needs of modern people.
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McConachie, B. (2017). The Bio-Cultural Evolution of Language and Prosocial Emotions. In: Wehrs, D., Blake, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Affect Studies and Textual Criticism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63303-9_4
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