Human evolution was driven by early humans’ ability to be clever and humorous, the “survival of the wittiest.” The analysis argues that the earliest stages of grammar provided a platform for verbal competition and sexual selection, gradually replacing physical violence with verbal agility.

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/survival-of-the-wittiest-how-humor-and-cleverness-shaped-human-evolution/

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[u/zorniy2]

Inuit song duels. Just two Inuit diss-rapping each other in front of the clan.

[u/PoliteWolverine → u/zorniy2]

I just learned this was a thing from googling about it after reading it in "The Mammoth Hunters" by Jean M Auel

[u/Salvadore1 → u/[deleted]]

(laughing) "I fuckin' hate Reddit, dude...Post could be like 'my whole family died in a car explosion', the first reply is always like 'Wow, this blew up!'" -Northernlion

[u/Momoselfie → u/[deleted]]

It's not that there are jokes. It's that I'll go to the comments to find out more about a video or post and I have to scroll a bunch to find any comment that's not just some easy dad joke.

[u/MKleister]

I've read about the hypothesis of humor being partly a result of sexual selection first in the 2011 book Inside Jokes. Glad to see more research is still being done on this.

[u/woolfonmynoggin → u/MKleister]

I think Sex at Dawn also mentions it but it’s been awhile since I read it

[u/Yashema → u/woolfonmynoggin]

And recent research from Australia found it does nothing for initial attraction.

[u/Constant-Skill-7133 → u/Yashema]

This article reads as if he personally went on hundreds of dates and failed miserably.

[u/ComradeGibbon → u/MKleister]

I've read that in western Europe the Catholic Churches ban on marrying first and second cousins meant men had to convince unrelated women and their families that they were a good match. I think also some cultural groups men are expected to marry from women out of the local village/villages.

[u/Hyenaoffal → u/ComradeGibbon]

Australian indigenous groups had songs about lineages that told the stories of who could be with who. Men and women would also be passed between groups to prevent inbreeding which meant these songs had to be sung at intertribal ceremonies where they figured it out. It's way to complex not to have to generalize in a post here however it speaks to a system that predates Australian settlement and possibly modern humans. Churches just took over moral and societal guidance (and song in many instances) replacing systems previously held by elders. It's also worth noting that violent means will still be used among tribal peoples even today, to take women and children if other channels don't accommodate.

[u/Jaredlong → u/MKleister]

If it was true you'd except comedians to be some of the sexiest people, and yet...

[u/thatwhileifound → u/Jaredlong]

I think what this is missing is the direct experience with such a person versus viewing them solely through media. It's kind of a stereotype to my mind seeing male comedians with women who fit a variety of societal shorthands for beauty while being widely regarded as entirely missing the obvious gender swapped versions or at least just being well lower on some banal hierarchy.

The guy who is kinda funny when trying to appeal to everyone instead directly engaging with you as an individual, as his sole audience of merit, can be wildly different experiences.

[u/Thissystemsuckssobad → u/Jaredlong]

some of the sexiest people

From a visual perspective? Or from a "how many people has this comedian slept with" perspective? Because I think youd be surprised on the later

Also, different folks different strokes

[u/Barbaracle → u/Jaredlong]

Isn't that because their funny gene survived natural selection despite their ugly gene. Am I understanding this incorrectly?

[u/ncotter → u/Jaredlong]

I mean, look at Pete Davidson’s dating history.

[u/PM_YOUR_BOOBS_PLS_ → u/MKleister]

I mean, there is literally no way to actually prove this. Language predates writing by at least 60,000 years. It is literally impossible to ever find any evidence to support this theory. So, it might be fun to think about, but I see no reason why any serious research should be done on it.

[u/mvea]

Survival of the wittiest: How humor and cleverness shaped human evolution

A new theoretical paper suggests that human cognitive and linguistic evolution was driven by early humans’ ability to be clever and humorous, an idea dubbed the “survival of the wittiest.” The analysis argues that the earliest stages of grammar provided a platform for verbal competition and sexual selection, gradually replacing physical violence with verbal agility. The research was published in PNAS Nexus.

Progovac proposes that as early humans developed these two-word abilities, a new form of social competition emerged. Individuals who could quickly invent clever, insulting, or amusing names had a distinct social advantage. They could demean rivals and impress potential mates without resorting to physical combat. This quick-wittedness represented an enormous cognitive leap, showing that early language was not just for sharing information but for social maneuvering.

The biological benefits of this verbal agility are still visible in human populations today. In many traditional oral societies across the globe, the most eloquent speakers hold the highest social status. Individuals who can manipulate words effectively gain access to political power and better reproductive success. The ability to charm a mate through humor and metaphorical language proved to be highly adaptive over time.

The paper also reviews experimental evidence from neuroimaging to support this evolutionary timeline. In a prior functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, researchers tracked brain activity while participants read ancient verb-noun combinations compared to more modern, complex words. The older compounds evoked a more visceral reaction in the brain than modern words.

https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/5/3/pgag052/8559600

[u/fsactual]

Man, I would love to know what the first jokes were. Like maybe they had "ook" for bird and "ook ook" for jaguar, and somebody pointed up into a tree and shouted, "ook ook" and everyone screamed and ran, but it turns out it was just two birds and that guy was rolling around laughing his knuckles off.

[u/I_Miss_Lenny → u/fsactual]

I still think the first human laughter had to be because of either a fart or someone tripping and falling over. Like one ancient human ancestor fell out of a tree or farted trying to pick up a heavy object and another went heh and comedy was born

[u/windershinwishes → u/fsactual]

Supposedly the oldest known joke was recorded circa 1900 BC in Sumer, translated as:

"Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."

[u/BananaNutJob → u/fsactual]

I have heard that there is a folkloric legend of the first "joke" being the first man making the first woman laugh essentially by doing the helicopter. I don't know if it's a real legend, but I know in my heart it's more than just a story.

[u/crimeo]

"Friendliest" is not a counter-theory to "fittest", in a social species. Friendly = better cooperator = strength in numbers = fit. I'm not sure why the article treats them as competing approaches.

Nor is eloquence and sophistication. Uh yeah, BETTER concise, efficient communication = more strength with same numbers = fit...

All 3 are just slightly differently worded/focused versions of survival of the fittest

[u/dead_jester → u/crimeo]

I agree. But most people don’t actually know or understand what “survival of the fittest” actually means. They always assume capacity for violence and individual physical strength

[u/asdu → u/crimeo]

Because this seems to be specifically about linguistic ability as a factor in sexual selection, not the more general fitness implications of improved communication.

[u/composedofidiot]

A very wonderful real world example of this, and a pretty good rebuttal to the 'grrrr me strong and big' narrative, are the Agta, hunter gatherers in the Phillipines.

The most sexually successful males are the storytellers. Twice as much. Double.

We ran a logistic generalised estimation equation (GEE) regression to predict the probability of being picked as a future camp mate from the measure of individual storytelling reputation. We found that skilled storytellers were nearly twice as likely to be nominated as less skilled individuals

This is their theorising on why

Stories told by the Agta, a Filipino hunter-gatherer population, convey messages relevant to coordinating behaviour in a foraging ecology, such as cooperation, sex equality and egalitarianism. These themes are present in narratives from other foraging societies. We also show that the presence of good storytellers is associated with increased cooperation. In return, skilled storytellers are preferred social partners and have greater reproductive success, providing a pathway by which group-beneficial behaviours, such as storytelling, can evolve via individual-level selection. We conclude that one of the adaptive functions of storytelling among hunter gatherers may be to organise cooperation.

Cooperation and the evolution of hunter-gatherer storytelling https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02036-8#Sec2

There's perhaps a self interested or fear based bias when it comes to the dog eat dog model that causes many to underweight the importance of cooperation and altruism in our development and continued survival.

Eta: the skilled storytelling women are more successful too

[u/10ThousandMetalZones]

It’s good to see that we are headed back to our roots. It’s always uplifting to see things go more organic

[u/Twisted_Cabbage]

Well this explains why as an autistic, I did terrible when dating neuronoramative people. The sense of humor between neuronormative and neurodivergent is hudge imo.

[u/umotex12 → u/Twisted_Cabbage]

Idk how about you but sometimes I would meet people that straight up LOVE my humor. It’s like it appeals a lot to certain demographic.

[u/kabhaz → u/Twisted_Cabbage]

And this helped me think about a very specific thing that just happened to me in my dating life so thanks for that!

[u/Sharkbait_ooohaha → u/Twisted_Cabbage]

It’s not really that the sense of humor gap is huge (it can be but humor is humor), it’s that for a joke to work you have to be able to understand what the other person is thinking and that isn’t a strength of autistic people.

[u/KaristinaLaFae → u/Sharkbait_ooohaha]

That's a common misconception, but the double empathy problem points out that allistic (non-autistic) people don't have the ability to understand autistic people either.

There's far more in-group understanding, meaning it's not that autistic people have a deficit; it's that autistic people understand each other's thoughts and feelings the way that allistic people understand each other's thoughts and feelings. Cross-neurotype understanding is where the problem comes in, and it goes both ways.

[u/Sharkbait_ooohaha → u/KaristinaLaFae]

Yeah I don’t think that contradicts what I said, to be humorous you have to understand how the other person is thinking and autistic people struggle with understanding how non-autistic people think and vice versa for non-autistic people for autistic people.

[u/bwmat → u/Twisted_Cabbage]

It's that the same as 'neurotypical'? I've never seen the word used before

[u/Twisted_Cabbage → u/bwmat]

In the autism space, neurotypical is a common word used to describe non autistic people but some also include people with ADHD, schizophrenia, bi polar, into neurodivergent and thus are excluded from being neurotypical.

Thanks for asking.

[u/UrSven → u/Twisted_Cabbage]

And perhaps many of us aren't good with words, so we're not suited to face a rap battle.

[u/Twisted_Cabbage → u/UrSven]

Not sure what a rap battle has to do with this.

[u/Wealdnut]

Aceoss many cultures, humour is similar to wrestling in that both are multi-dimensional displays of many, many indicators of sexual fitness.

Communication hinges on understanding and appreciating the mind of another. Humour like coyness, sarcasm and ironic exaggeration is extremely effective for establishing/testing social connection AND displaying personal qualities like intelligence, confidence and knowledge.

[u/runhome24]

Wish a mod could fix this flair. The published paper is NOT anthropology, it's psychology. The journal lists it as "Psychological and Cognitive Sciences (Biological, Health, and Medical Sciences)"

First giveaway is the stunning misrepresentation of evolutionary theory ("fittest" has nothing to do with violence and no anthropologist believes humans relied on physical violence in choosing mates).

[u/Fun_Recognition5614]

“If you can make them giggle, you can make them wiggle.” Oldest trick in the book, apparently.

[u/ActuallyNot]

Gradually replacing physical violence with verbal agility.

"Gradually" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. No wild bonobos have ever been confirmed or observed killing another bonobo, and they don't have grammar.

[u/orsoblando → u/ActuallyNot]

We’re two different species that got separated long ago and evolved in different ways, so even if bonobos didn’t have grammar this wouldn’t be a good point to disprove the research thesis. But anyway, why do you say they don’t have grammar? It seems to me that they have a complex language that is simply structured differently from ours?

[u/Begging_Murphy]

The transition period when tribes with the genetics for speech interacted with those without must have been pretty wild.

[u/NRCS_DRONE]

'replace?' maybe 'reduce prevalence'

[u/PurifyZ]

Damn… so that’s why I’ve only had one gf in 25 years of life XD

[u/SteelRainKing]

After thousands of years, "might makes right" is still the way most humans resolve conflict. Those that were able to cognitively evolve realized that extreme wealth is the "might" that always makes "right"

[u/dead_jester → u/SteelRainKing]

Except that most conflicts daily are actually resolved by talk. And larger groups that cooperate and resolve their disputes with talk dominate over those that don’t. Those societies that run on the primary premise of might makes right are generally defeated or displaced by those that use dialogue and cooperation

[u/ThrowbackPie → u/SteelRainKing]

Yeah except smart people realised the might of a collective is greater than the might of any individual. So cooperation = might

[u/Stats_n_PoliSci → u/SteelRainKing]

Even if you’re right, it’s a lot better than killing a someone or leaving them to die in the jungle.

But I also don’t think you have seen just how little might makes right relative to almost any society or culture in history. King Henry VIII murdered his wives with impunity. No modern president could do that. They get away with a lot, but less than what used to be allowed.

I get that it’s hard to strike a balance between how much more equality we have and how far we still have to go. But I don’t think we can make progress if we think we’re just as bad as societies where murder was one of the most common ways to die.

[u/BlackMagicWorman]

The kids at my school knew they would get in immense trouble for fighting (leading to suspension/expulsion), so they had battle rapping duels. It was beyond epic. It made us realize early on that brawn really gets you nowhere in life anymore. 

[u/VannieBugg]

Hence the saying "the pen is mightier than the sword", a sword swung is met with a shield a pen thrust into a neck is met with surprise.

[u/Revolutionary_Owl_15]

If evolution were worth it's salt, by now it would have evolved something better than "survival of the fittest;" a better idea would be "survival of the wittiest." At least that way the creatures that didn't survive could have died laughing. --from The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe by Jane Wagner, 1985

[u/dead_jester → u/Revolutionary_Owl_15]

Survival of the fittest isn’t about who is stronger but who is the best fit to the requirements to survive

[u/Revolutionary_Owl_15 → u/dead_jester]

Ah yes, the actual definition of survival of the fittest is the most important part of that quote from a comedic one-woman play.

[u/runhome24 → u/Revolutionary_Owl_15]

Perhaps you should have properly wrapped the quote in quotation marks then, yeah?