Some aspects of the evolution of legal norms in the lower Pleistocene: a quantitative approach to normativity.

In the Palaeolithic age some groups of homo habilis begun to share the prey in a quasi-egalitarian way, not directly coupled with the hierarchy in the group. The evolution of this behavior is difficult to explain in the theory of evolution. Sociobiology try to explain it through the action of selective forces at the group level, According to the multilevel selection theory “selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups”. But it is still not explained how the human species managed the level crossing. The sociobiological law, and the multilevel selection, imply that the group selection could take effect only if a stabilization mechanism has acted to prevent selfish individuals to get the upper hand over the more cooperative individuals. The hypothesis here presented supposes that such a mechanism operated with the introduction of representations of reality in the form of rock drawings and paintings. The mix-up between reality and representation allowed the hormone regulating trust, at the brain level, to increase cooperative behavior in the group, leading to a more efficient predation. The plentiful predation allowed the introduction of the new cultural rule in sharing the prey, proportional to the individual needs, thus stabilizing the cooperation in the group and allowing the selection forces to take effect at the group level. Mixing-up reality and representations allowed to keep trust in what “ought to be” even in the case of insufficient predation, deferring the final count of payoffs at another future and possible time, thus altering it. This point of time marks the origin of normative thought, while the new quasi-egalitarian rule, is a non-genetic-driven rule, and could be connected to the originating point for law.