ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes that evolution has designed humanity to develop a Darwinian "moral sense"-early experience, in very deep neurobiological ways, influences the type of moral orientation one learns to favor. It discusses humanity's evolutionary story and baselines for human morality. Human morality emerges from characteristics shared with evolutionarily prior creatures, providing inheritances that were formed before humans appeared. Humans evolved the capacity for Charles Darwin's "moral sense" but do not necessarily develop in every culture. The chapter describes the evolved developmental niche (EDN) as a species-typical early environment for the development of the very malleable, immature human. The EDN represents a key inheritance that evolved to address young children's, animal, mammalian and human basic needs. The characteristic caregiving practices of the EDN shape children's psychobiosocial development and yield key relational outcomes. Humanity's inherited capacities that grow within the EDN, relational engagement and its abstracting counterpart, communal imagination, then look like Pollyanna visions far from reality.
