Darwin's Legacy: A comparative approach to the evolution of human derived cognitive traits

ABSTRACT. There is a broad agreement that the most notorious traits that set our species apart from any other, those that define our humanity, include language as a means of communication and mental representation, a highly developed moral cognition, and appreciation of beauty, together with art and aesthetics. The greatest obstacle for research on the evolution of such cognitive traits is the absence of substantial direct physical evidence in the fossil and archaeological records that can ground testable hypotheses. However, we believe that the comparative method provides a powerful tool to overcome this limitation and that it can provide a rich starting point to characterize the evolution of human cognitive apomorphies. In this paper we review the most significant facts derived from the comparative literature relevant to human language, morality, and appreciation of beauty. We use these facts to assemble a tentative picture of their evolution and we discuss possible common under-lying processes and trends. Only an integrated perspective can fully account for the evolutionary history of human language, morality, and appreciation of beauty