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At the end of the SII origins workshop this past saturday, we departed with a question still hanging. We were talking about Darwinian natural selection, and in particular how it could change the behavior or personality of a species. For example, imagine two clans of early homonids (which might evolve into modern humans). If one clan were more violent and the other more peaceful, perhaps the more violent clan would fight with each other or with other clans, and many of them would die before they had a chance to pass their violent genes along. The peaceful clan would reproduce more, by that logic, and subsequent generations would be predominantly peaceful. (This type of behavioral genetics has been documented in other species.)

Along those lines, do you think it is possible to identify hypothetical evolutionary origins for modern human behavior? for your own behavior or that of people you know? in particular, I had some categories in mind:
1. laws and morals. for example, should evolution tend to weed out terrorists from the human population?
2. emotions. for example, is there a survival advantage for those who care about others? (could emotions be merely chemical in nature? consider prozac!)
3. sense of purpose. for example, the work week is 40+ hours, but we could feed and clothe everyone with much less work than that. Where does our work ethic come from?

Any ideas about any part of this question?

CT