Was Our Emotional Intelligence The Key Driver Of Human Evolution?

In a new study, archaeologists and anthropologists put forward the argument that the social and emotional cognition of humans allowed us to develop complex social and material systems. In other words, it’s our ability to empathize and relate to each other that allows our species to thrive, build incredible cultures, and dominate the world. 

All animals have their niche, a special quality that allows them to survive in a given habitat. The cheetah, built for explosive speed, occupies the niche of the daytime pursuit predator on the open savanna. The deep-sea anglerfish dangling its bioluminescent lure in near-total darkness fills a niche so extreme that few other creatures can compete.

For humans, our specialty may be something less tangible: our skill in managing complex social relations. Many primates are good at this, but it’s Homo sapiens that are “often heralded as the pinnacle of social cognition,” the new paper reads.

The researchers go on to argue that our “increasingly complex and multifarious social cognition” played a critical role in our species’ biocultural evolution. This allowed us to build complex relationships within our groups, enabling collaboration and the exchange of ideas. Crucially, we're socially smart enough to extend those bonds beyond our immediate kin, weaving together tribes, clans, trading networks, and civilizations.

For this to occur, the new paper argues, emotional self-awareness is a fundamental requirement. This capacity allowed early humans to make long-term commitments to one another's well-being, to tolerate frustration, to plan collectively, make sacrifices, and to trust others.

“In the context of human evolution, we argue that the progressive capacity to regulate emotions was a significant development that provides a core focal point for the examination of emotional cognition from the Pleistocene material and behavioral record,” the study authors write. 

Evidence of emotional cognition and empathy can be seen in the archaeological record, the researchers say. In many instances, archaeologists have unearthed remains of disabled and elderly humans who could not have possibly survived alone. A Neanderthal known as Shanidar I, for example, lived for decades despite suffering severe traumatic injuries that left him with a withered arm and likely partial blindness. For him to have survived into adulthood, others within his group must have empathized with his condition and cared for him consistently, over a period of years. 

Thousands of years of burial practices tell a similar story. The deliberate, ritualized placement of the dead – seen in sites ranging from Neanderthal graves to the remarkable deposits of Homo naledi deep within South African cave systems – suggests that even our ancient relatives held a sense of meaning, loss, and personhood that extended beyond simple survival.

In popular interpretations (and misinterpretations) of Darwinism, compassion and sensitivity are sometimes cast as weaknesses that need to be weeded out in an unforgiving, competitive world where only the strongest survive. But this paper is another reminder that one of humanity's greatest strengths was never just ego or ruthlessness, but profound emotions and our extraordinary ability to turn those feelings into cooperation.

The new study is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.