What is a Human Universal? Human Behavioral Ecology and Human Nature

In 1991 the cultural anthropologist Don Brown bucked anthropology’s tabula rasa tradition by identifying over 300 “human universals”—individual and sociocultural traits that are found in every known human society (Brown 1991; universals enumerated in Pinker 2003). The items he identified include both psychological traits (e.g., wariness around snakes, sweets preferred, sexual jealousy) and sociocultural ones (e.g., territoriality, females do more direct childcare, food sharing). Because they are universal, it is plausible that these traits have a biological basis and that they are evolved features of a universal human nature.