One approach to deciding whether humans are basically good or evil is to infer what extremely early human behavior was like. What was the behavior and social structure of the earliest common ancestors of modern humans, about 150,000 years ago? What about our earlier social primate ancestors? People are particularly interested in whether these ancestors were violent or peaceful, and whether everyone had equal power within the social group.

Of course, no one knows what the behavior of prehistoric humans and proto-humans was. Since behavior doesn't fossilize, it is hard to see how we ever could know for sure. What people have done is study our closest non-human relatives, the Chimpanzee and Bonobo, and also living humans whose way of life is similar to our best guess of how early humans lived.

Why is early human behavior better evidence for human nature than how people behave now? Perhaps by looking at behavior of ancestors we are getting more directly at the essence of human nature. In particular, culture has a huge role in shaping our behavior and social structure. It is very difficult to say, looking at human life today, what things are human nature and what are arbitrary cultural conventions.

When we look at our social primate cousins we can see an aspect of our natures without being confused by culture. While there is evidence that non-human primates can adopt useful behaviors and socialize others into these patterns, culture clearly plays a far smaller role that it does for humans. We argue that being The Cultural Animal is the most important defining characteristic of humanity, so any animal that lacks complex culture is not exactly human, but their behavior is the best evidence we have of proto-human behavior. Since evolution works by tinkering with that went before, a great deal of our common ancestor is still in us.

Especially fascinating is evidence that other social primates have moral emotional responses, such as to unfairness:

Yet humans are not either chimpanzees or bonobos; we see ourselves in them, but they can't tell us who we are. Our social primate nature has been augmented and overlaid by new mental structures.

Anthropology gives fascinating evidence about the vast diversity of human behavior and about the vast diversity of ways in which cultures our behavior into functioning social patterns. Any way that humans actually live today is clearly a possible way of living (at least under the right conditions). But how did our earliest ancestors live?

There is convincing archeological evidence that farming and agriculture don't date back more than about 10,000 years, so early humans weren't farmers or herders. They must have gotten their food by some combination of gathering plant foods, scavenging the carcasses of dead animals, and by hunting. People that live this way are called hunter-gatherers.

Among hunter-gatherer peoples that have been described by anthropologists, these groups tend to be:

Egalitarian

There is no chief and, group decisions are made by consensus. Although men and women have different roles (see Sex Differences), they have roughly equal power. Some groups do have competition for status as a “big man”.

Freely sharing

There is a strong cultural value on everyone being satisfied with the sharing of scarce resources (especially meat). There is little personal property, and children are socialized to share.

Nomadic

They are prepared to pick up and move whenever it is useful. As well as allowing them to exploit different seasonal food sources, it is also important as a way to resolve conflict.

Relatively non-violent (within group)

The preferred solution to conflict is group discussion. If they can't agree, then the group may split up. In some areas between-group raiding is common; other groups avoid raids by moving away.

Although there is no entirely convincing theory for why hunter-gatherer cultures should have these things in common, we can see how these behaviors and values are consistent with their lifeways. They form a synergistic whole, where each reinforces the other. Nomadism works well with hunter-gathering because it allows them to move on when food is exhausted. A nomad can't have many possessions because they have to carry them. Sharing works well with hunting, because kills are unpredictable, and meat must be eaten before it goes bad. Minimizing in-group conflict benefits any group. Sharing, egalitarianism, and lack of possessions reduce serious within-group conflict, and nomadism makes it easier for groups to split when there is conflict.

Why are hunter-gatherers egalitarian? You might think the answer is obvious: we humans would just as soon not have any big man lording it over us. But why do we feel that way? Evolutionary Psychology is largely about explaining why we have the emotions and motivations that we do. Since being anything other than a hunter-gatherer is relatively recent (on the time scale of genetic evolution), our innate emotions and motivations should be well adapted to that way of life.

The simplest answer is that hunter-gatherers don't need a leader (to resolve internal conflicts or lead war parties). In the hunter-gatherer life, everyone has to work to get enough to eat, and often has to work independently and take initiative. Egalitarianism is one way that a culture can manage Social Conflict, especially individual/group conflict. While evolutionary psychology predicts that individuals will be motivated to get more than an equal share of food or of sexual partners. An egalitarian social system forbids this self-serving behavior because it risks a total breakdown of cooperation. The hunter-gatherer life (like all human lifeways) requires high levels of cooperation.

Although people vary in how strongly they feel this way, generally we'd rather make our own decisions than be bossed around.

and they'd

may also just not create enough surplus food in order to allow anyone to

Egalitarian values work well with hunting and gathering because work is done in small

Is this really a sound way to answer the question? If we did know early human behavior, would that solve the problem of human moral nature?

Perhaps there is some much better way to live that nobody has thought of yet.

(If we even admit the question is sound, see Good Or Evil?.)

Depraved is a strong word, and whether the commentor knew it or not, this references an old dispute about the moral character of human nature (see Total Depravity).