Groups and Gossip Drove the Evolution of Human Nature - Slate Magazine

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolution/2012/10/groups_and_gossip_drove_the_evolution_of_human_nature.single.html

"There are two ways of trying to create a good life," Boehm states.
"One is by punishing evil, and the other is by actively promoting
virtue." Boehm's theory of social selection does both. The term
altruism can be defined as extra-familial generosity (as opposed to
nepotism among relatives). Boehm thinks the evolution of human
altruism can be understood by studying the moral rules of
hunter-gatherer societies. He and a research assistant have recently
gone through thousands of pages of anthropological field reports on
the 150 hunter-gatherer societies around the world that he calls
"Late-Pleistocene Appropriate" (LPA), or those societies that continue
to live as our ancestors once did. By coding the reports for
categories of social behavior such as aid to nonrelatives, group
shaming, or the execution of social deviants, Boehm is able to
determine how common those behaviors are.
What he has found is in direct opposition to Ayn Rand's selfish ideal.
For example, in 100 percent of LPA societies—ranging from the Andaman
Islanders of the Indian Ocean archipelago to the Inuit of Northern
Alaska—generosity or altruism is always favored toward relatives and
nonrelatives alike, with sharing and cooperation being the most cited
moral values. Of course, this does not mean that everyone in these
societies always follow these values. In 100 percent of LPA societies
there was at least one incidence of theft or murder, 80 percent had a
case in which someone refused to share, and in 30 percent of societies
someone tried to cheat the group (as in the case of Cephu).
---SPSmith