Comparative Cognitive Science and Convergent Evolution: Humans and Elephants

Comparative cognitive science of humans has tended to overwhelmingly emphasize similarities and differences between humans and other living hominids, particularly chimpanzees and bonobos. In thus under-emphasizing convergent evolution, this skew systematically misidentifies several crucial explanatory targets, particularly where cultural evolution is concerned. While concentration within the hominid and wider primate lines can tell us much about genetic constraints on human culture and cognition, at least as much attention should be paid to species in which patterns of evolved social cognition respond to problems faced by ancestral hominins. Elephants furnish a first and closest example.