American Psychologist March 1995
…In addition to emphasizing that natural selection works at the level of the individual, not the society, it is also important to note that the current human genotype is a result of past evolution. Furth (1995) states that we hold that the two ontogenetic developmental lines mentioned in our article have been selected for “the evolutionary advantage this dialectic attains in modern humans” (Furth, 1995, p. 176). If a trait or structure selected over the millions of years of hominid evolution is currently adaptive, that is indeed fortunate; however, “modern” humanity accounts for only a tiny fraction of the time humans and humanlike primates have been on the earth and subject to selection pressures. Thus, these two developmental lines must have been advantageous over a long period of premodern hominid evolution…