ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the relationship between continuities and transformations in the evolution of human sociality through discussion of the social cooperation and commitment intrinsic to both human and nonhuman primate communication. It focuses on understanding and use of symbols and how this both presupposes and intensifies capacities for social cooperation in nonhuman primates. The chapter argues that use of symbols evolved in relation to problems of fostering long-term social commitments between otherwise willful individuals, and it perhaps only incidentally and incrementally resulted in the eventual emergence of language as a transformed, transformative, mode of communication. It also focuses on the more general social substrate of multilateral cooperation and competition found in nonhuman primate societies out of which could have evolved any number of adaptive behaviors and social capacities. The chapter suggests that ever intensifying selection for the capacity to convey commitments and served as a driving force in the evolution of human sociality, especially language.
