Niche construction, social cognition, and language: hypothesizing the human as the production of place.
Culture and brain January 1, 2016 Oliver Davies 7 citations
Human hyper-cooperation (HC) evolved through a combination of advanced linguistic consciousness (ALC), which emerged relatively late, and a more ancient, pre-thematic 'in-between' cognitive system rooted in face-to-face social cognition and tool use. The tension between these two systems creates an 'internal' niche construction, where complex social reasoning in ALC mirrors the structure of the pre-thematic 'in-between', amplifying social cognition to produce 'social place' as humanized space. Language acquisition, as a training in co-location, develops shared consciousness. The production of hyper-place, as solidarity beyond face-to-face interaction, arises when internal niche construction converges with external religious cosmologies, enabling world religions.