ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the mental mechanisms and the evolutionary origins that contribute to the generation and transmission of tree symbolism in ancient and modern human cultures. It discusses the impact of human environmental aesthetics and landscape preference on cultural stability of tree symbolism. The chapter presents the trees are as often the object of cultural representation as of pragmatic interest. Salient landscape features like trees are thus cognitively optimal, because they are interpreted by humans as powerful signals that focus attention, elicit knowledge and increase emotional arousal. It also argues that tree symbolism is indeed a widespread and stable cultural representation through space and time. On the basis on Sperber's and Hirschfeld's ideas on the mechanisms constraining the stability of cultural representations, it has been explained that psychological factors like aesthetic evaluation and affective appraisal are essential for the spread and cultural stability of tree symbolism around the world.
