Tracing the origins of our social minds: Insights from great apes and young children across cultures.

As a highly social primate, humans have evolved a sophisticated set of socio-cognitive, affective and communicative abilities that enable us to navigate our social worlds. Given that such traits do not fossilise, studying our closest living relatives –the great apes – can offer us a unique window through which we can explore their evolutionary origins. In parallel, examining a system in its earlier stages of development, before its components are mature and fully functional, allows us to reconstruct its foundations, understand how it is organised and how it may have evolved.  Throughout my career, I have had the enormous privilege of studying the behaviour, emotions and minds of chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest ape relatives, while immersing myself in their social lives. More recently, I have extended this lens to young human children and their caregivers, including across cultures. In this inaugural lecture, I will reflect on my research journey, exploring the evolutionary and developmental origins of language, empathy and culture, and how these threads intertwine to illuminate what it means to be human.