Atran & Norenzayan (A&N) rightly criticize cognitive theories for failure to explain sacrifice and commitment. But their attempt to reconcile cognitivism with commitment theory is unconvincing. Why should imaginary entities be effective in punishing moral defectors? Heavy costs are entailed in enforcing community-wide social contracts, and behavioural ecology is needed to explain how and why evolving humans could afford these costs.

This ambitious volume is the sequel to an earlier work (Lawson & McCauley 1990) in which the authors 'launched the cognitive science of religion' (McCauley & Lawson 2002, ix). Adopting a linguistics-inspired 'competence' approach and assimilating ritual to the Agent-Action-Patient structure of propositional speech, they make a series of scientific predictions. Where it is the Agent who is 'Special' in the sense of 'closest to God', it is predicted that the Patient will participate just once in a vivid, memorable event. By contrast, where only the Action, Instrument or Patient is special - that is, where God himself is not responsible for what happens - we may expect performances to be impermanent in their effects and correspondingly repeatable.

Darwinism is setting a new research agenda across the related fields of palaeoanthropology, evolutionary psychology and theoretical linguistics (Dunbar 1993; Hurford 1989, 1992; Pinker & Bloom 1990; Steele & Shennan 1996). It is now widely accepted that no other theoretical framework has equivalent potential to solve the major outstanding problems in human origins research. Rival paradigms from the human and social sciences — Freudian, Piagetian, Chomskyan, Lévi-Straussian — cannot explain evolved human mentality because they already assume this as a basic premise. Tried and tested as a methodology applicable to the social behaviour of all living organisms (Dawkins 1976; Hamilton 1964; Trivers 1985), Darwinism makes no such assumptions, thereby avoiding circularity.

The neanderthals were probably displaced, according to Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1988: 6006), because they were “biologically provided with speech of more modest quality than modern humans.” Bickerton (1990; cf. Mellars 1991) extensively elaborates this theme, postulating “a single genetic event” which gave modern Homo sapiens the competitive edge, launching the human revolution by turning “protolanguage” into “syntacticized language”.

Absent-mindedness is a human speciality. Professors in particular are known to get lost in theoretical problem solving, unaware, perhaps, that they are crossing a busy road. Or think of a Siberian shaman, lost in trance, forgetting entirely to eat.

Symbolic culture is a realm of patently false signals. From a Darwinian standpoint, it is not easy to explain how strategies of reliance on such signals could have become evolutionarily stable. The archaeological record shows evolving modern humans investing heavily in cosmetics, with a particular emphasis on ochre pigments matching the colour of blood. This chapter discusses the Female Cosmetic Coalitions model of the origins of symbolic culture in the context of hypotheses sometimes considered to be alternative explanations. It is shown that these various hypotheses are not genuine alternatives. Many are not Darwinian, while others either fail to address the question of symbolism or address it but make no reference to details of the archaeological record. It is concluded that the Female Cosmetic Coalitions model offers the most testable and parsimonious way of integrating these different perspectives.

From a Darwinian standpoint, ‘symbolic culture’ is an unsettling notion. Modern science became established in opposition to the idea that culturally accepted fictions can be equated with facts. Yet the concept of symbolic culture requires us to grasp just that paradoxical possibility. Long before the late twentieth century invention of the Internet, evolution allowed humans to flit between two realms: reality on the one hand, virtual reality on the other. Symbolic culture is an environment of objective facts—whose existence depends entirely on collective belief. To use language is to navigate within that imagined world.

The chief value of the study of human origins is that it nails the myth that ‘no revolution can ever change human nature’. It shows, on the contrary, that everything distinctively human about our nature – our ability to speak, to see ourselves as others see us, to aspire to act on moral principle – has come to prevail in our species thanks precisely to the greatest revolution in history, ‘the revolution which worked’.

Darwinism is setting a new research agenda across the related fields of palaeoanthropology, evolutionary psychology and theoretical linguistics (Dunbar 1993; Hurford 1989, 1992; Pinker & Bloom 1990; Steele & Shennan 1996). It is now widely accepted that no other theoretical framework has equivalent potential to solve the major outstanding problems in human origins research. Rival paradigms from the human and social sciences — Freudian, Piagetian, Chomskyan, Lévi-Straussian — cannot explain evolved human mentality because they already assume this as a basic premise. Tried and tested as a methodology applicable to the social behaviour of all living organisms (Dawkins 1976; Hamilton 1964; Trivers 1985), Darwinism makes no such assumptions, thereby avoiding circularity.

Language can be studied independently, or as an aspect of human sociality. Theoretical linguistics could not exist as a discipline were it not for the relative autonomy of language as a system. Ultimately, however, this system functions within a wider domain of signals which include cosmetics, dress, art, ritual and much else whose study takes us beyond linguistics.

Let me begin with a self-evident point, perhaps too often taken for granted. When academics participate in conferences and debates, we find ourselves operating under the rule of law. Protocols exist. We must keep to agreed time limits, disclose our sources, accept criticism and renounce any temptation to use threats, material inducements or force. There is status competition, certainly. But status is determined on an intellectual basis by peer evaluation alone; we compete to demonstrate relevance (Sperber and Wilson 1995 [1986]; Dessalles 1998) in one anothers’ eyes.