The Prehistory of Compassion
P. A. Spikins, H. E. Rutherford, A. P. Needham
http://www.scienceshumaines.com/les-natures-sont-dans-la-culture_fr_11816.html
Foreword
Compassion is key to what we feel makes us ‘human’. Compassion binds us together, and
acts of unselfish compassion inspire us and in troubled times give us hope for the world. Yet
compassion is also remarkably fragile and elusive. As soon as we feel stressed or under
pressure we can easily lose our sense of compassion for others (or indeed for ourselves), and
as soon as we seek to understand or analyse our own sense of compassion we lose our
feeling of this emotion. This apparent fragility of compassion makes addressing the
evidence for its development in our most ancient ancestors a unique challenge, yet the
archaeological record nonetheless has an important story to tell about the prehistory of
compassion. In this volume we review the archaeological evidence for what can be seen as
compassionate behaviour from our earliest ancestors to later archaic humans including the
Neanderthals to modern humans like ourselves. Through discussing the evidence for a deep
seated capacity to care in our ancient past we hope to begin to tell the story of the
prehistory of compassion and perhaps to inspire further research.