ABSTRACT
In all of human history, people have defined their socio-ecological standards of conduct according to their perceptions of their dependencies on the surrounding environment. Inevitably, cooperation always involves forms of communication in order to mutually adapt behaviour to the extent that cooperation becomes feasible. That dual aspect, communication and adaptation, is the essence of cooperation, because without it no cooperation is possible. The emergence of cooperation in history is therefore tightly linked to the emergence of both of these aspects. The emergence of guidelines for behaviour can be traced back all the way to the emergence of the dual process of communication and mutual adaptation, which springs forth from the dual processes of cooperation and competition. In the Old Testament, the Jewish Tanach, there is a great deal of emphasis on how to deal with surrounding nature, a result of the fact that at the time of its codification most people were herders and farmers.
