The Neanderthals (homo neanderthalensis) and other early hominids must have had moral systems or they couldn’t have organized into tribes, then into settlements, towns, cities and nations.
Australopithecus Robustus, Australopithecus Afarensis, Homo Habilis, etc. must all have had some inherent, genetic code of behavior which allowed for the survival and ordering of family and clan life; to provide safety and well-being for the group, otherwise such groups could not have existed or grown into tribal groups.
Moreover, the great apes that came before hominids must also have had moral systems or there could never have been organized pre-human or proto-human communities. Once more, it's not a 'god' of any stripe but science (biology, anthropology, psychology, neurology, etc.) – the careful and deliberate study of the world - which will open the pathway to tracing our moral system. Evolutionary science must be a place at which our investigation can continue, as all organisms share genetic material.
It can be rightly asserted that altruism and empathy are the basis of our sense of right and wrong; our sense of morality. Further, this sense of morality is not limited at its core in human beings but is part of our genetic code and is a vital requirement for the survival of mammals, in particular. Springboks warn of danger to protect the others in the herd which share their genetic code. The Arabian babbler, a small brown bird, lives in social groups, gives off warning cries and donates food to individuals in need. The same mode of behavior holds for other mammals; apes, humans, birds, wolves, etc. The shared genetic code includes this sense of societal responsibility which might be reasoned as a primal form of ‘altruism’ or ‘empathy’.
Symbiosis – or reciprocal altruism - is doing what is mutually beneficial to all parties. Many animals have this sense; sharing in times of plenty and expecting others to share when an individual is in need. Vampire bats do this and retain memory of which individuals renege on the de facto social contract. Even when parties don’t share a common genetic code or a common need, reciprocal altruism or symbiosis is observable. Reciprocation of symbiotic service has been observed in the fish which rely on various cleaner wrasse; if a cleaner fish does a less than satisfactory job cleaning, then the fish seeking to be cleaned will avoid the less dutiful cleaner. This indicates that the sense of ‘right action’ is endemic to certain fish and to many chordates and is not limited to mammals.
It should be pointed out that altruism and reciprocal altruism are quite complex mechanisms. Firstly, the actions toward the receiving party must be assessed intelligently for its benefits; ‘was the action satisfactory’. That assessment will simultaneously assign agency to the action; ‘who or what did the action received’. That assessed behavior and its agency must be stored appropriately in long-term memory. The assessment is coupled with its agent to be called up again when a similar action is exhibited. That, in turns, requires the assessor to discern the differences between agents and store that information in memory, as well. When the new action by a different agent is experienced, a new assessment of the behavior must be done and compared to the memory or memories of the other actions and to the identity of other applicable agents.
This, then, suggests that a sense of reputation regarding actions is assigned, recorded and remembered. A reputation is afforded to the agent along with the assessment of the agent’s action and stored in memory. This process of observed symbiosis is quite obviously a thorny, multi-stepped process further complicated by the addition of each agent and each associated action.
For example, if the fish in need of cleaning is dissatisfied with the task done by a specific cleaning wrasse, the larger fish will remember its assessment of that particular cleaning wrasse. If the larger fish was dissatisfied with the actions of that particular under-performing wrasse, the larger fish would recall its previous assessment and choose a different wrasse to do the required cleaning. Likewise, if a hungry vampire bat is dissatisfied with the amount of blood given it by a second bat, the hungry bat will remember this assessment, the agent and the assigned reputation to the second bat and subsequently apply the assessment to all other similar encounters.
Comparable behavior (altruism, reciprocal symbiosis and reputation) can be observed in bands of baboons and can be imagined in groups of pre-humans such as Austrolopithicus and proto-humans such as Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus, Homo Neanderthalensis, Homo Heidelbergensis and Homo Floresiensis, all of whom were social creatures which undoubtedly shared the socially beneficial traits of altruism, reciprocal altruism, symbiosis and sense of reputation exhibited by baboons, vampire bats, Arabian babblers, springboks and the aforementioned fish. For the traits of altruism and symbiosis are vital to the survival and must then be part of a shared genetic code.
It must be remembered that it is the genetic code which is at the source of all of life from bacterium to algae, to plants, to animals, humans. If all existent life derives from a common ancestor, then it follows that part of the human genome is evident not only in the genetic code of other apes but in the genetic code of lizards, birds, fish and bats. That is well-established as fact and is the foundation of evolutionary theory and all biological sciences.
It is the tiny percentage of difference between bonobo chimpanzees and modern humans, for example, which makes for a most distinctive difference, but the similarities are evident. The genetic difference between humans and vampire bats is obviously larger and has greater consequence, however, there is still a shared genetic code among all life forms. All of these mammalian forms have similar anatomical features; a head housing a brain, a spinal column, two eyes, two ears, a nose, an alimentary canal, four limbs each with five digits, etc. This is the basis for mammalian evolution and biology.
Another mammal, wolves (canis lupus) have evolved with special demands on their way of life and have one of the most highly complicated social structures of any carnivore. Like humans (and proto-hominids and pre-humans, it is to be assumed), wolves live in extended family groups. These groups – termed ‘packs’, in the case of wolves – ensure the care of feeding of the young and provide protection of the group. Wolf society is the result of evolution and is a survival trait based in its genome.
Let us assert that human society – far more complex than that of canis lupus - is also the result of evolution. It must be further asserted that our primitive human societies were the inheritors of the social organization of proto-hominids such as Australopithecus Afarensis. Much more archeological and biological research must be done to more fully address these assertions, of course, but it far more than probable given our shared genome and makes for the start of a working hypothesis.
