Abstract

What might constitute early evidence for the evolution of ethics? The report of chimpanzee stone accumulation behavior at four sites in West Africa is a strong candidate for such evidence. The authors hypothesized the behavior qualified as a form of ritualized behavioral display. They suggested several explanatory hypotheses, but found them inadequate and the behavior puzzling and enigmatic. I develop a hypothesis to explain and interpret the behavioral pattern based on positing its behavioral contexts and re-analyzing its relation to the everyday aggression display and other communicative behaviors. It is explained as an ethological ritualization that down-regulates aggression toward the alpha or indirectly toward a scapegoat, and enacts a ritual performance of non-violent resistance to high-ranking male abuse via a set of creative moral behaviors. This has implications for homologous behaviors descending from the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, ca. 7–12 million years ago, and for hypothesizing stages in the evolution of morality and ethics in human and other species.