Synchromimesis: a post-Darwinian model of human thought and action

Now that sociobiology has foundered on its own misinterpretation of the gene, it is time for the social sciences to reclaim human evolution. Human behavior has much in common with nonhuman primates, but there are also strong discontinuities that are obscured by Darwinian premises. I argue that humans differ from other primates by forming societies based on shared memories of past events, whether or not the events have been experienced by anyone now living. Thus, a human level of social life presupposes both language and art to convey invisible events. These capabilities in turn are based on a socially-mediated form of  expression that I term synchromimesis (“imitation at the same time”). This hypothesis makes art and language  essential to the human story instead of evolutionary afterthoughts.