From Action to Language: Comparative Perspectives on Primate Tool Use, Gesture and the Evolution of Human Language

Human beings exhibit enormous behavioural diversity within and between populations and have succeeded in populating most of the globe. People vary in their social, mating and parenting behaviour and have diverse and elaborate cultural traits, traditions, norms and institutions. This Theme Issue asks whether and how evolutionary theory can help us to understand this behavioural diversity. The introductory article examines how diversity has been viewed by the main sub-disciplines within the human evolutionary behavioural sciences, namely human behavioural ecology, evolutionary psychology and cultural evolution. In addition to differences in focus and methodology, these sub-disciplines have traditionally varied in the emphasis placed on human universals, ecological factors, and socially learned behaviour, and on how they have addressed the issue of genetic variation. The Issue contains articles by researchers who attempt to cross these traditional boundaries or who provide novel perspectives on human behaviour. Philosophers of science also evaluate the concept of innateness and examine how social institutions can be incorporated into the evolutionary analysis of human behaviour. An overarching theme is that the rigorous application of recent advances in evolutionary theory can help us to understand diversity in human behaviour, but that a satisfactory evolutionary framework requires greater integration between subdisciplines.