It began with meat, according to evolutionary anthropologist Christopher Boehm:
[M]y theory is that you cannot have alpha males if you are going to have a hunting team that shares the meat fairly evenhandedly, so that the entire team stays nourished. In order to get meat
divided within a band of people who are by nature pretty hierarchical, you have to basically stomp on hierarchy and get it out of the way. … My hypothesis is that when they started large game hunting, they had to start really punishing alpha males and holding them down. That set up a selection pressure in the sense that, if you couldn’t control your alpha tendencies, you were going to get killed or run out of the group, which was about the same as getting killed. Therefore, self-control became an important feature for individuals who were reproductively successful. And self-control translates into conscience.
(Photo: Zhang Huan, Homeland, 2001. Hat tip: Brain Pickings)
The Dish 