Though it is an extremely controversial line of argument for obvious (though nonetheless important) reasons, there is good evidence to indicate that human mental functions, and perhaps corresponding brain structures, have changed in the past 40,000 years, even the past 2,000 years (Smith 2007; see also Hawks et al. 2007). There is some wiggle room in the vagueness of the concept of “mental function”, for we know so little about the mental, particularly when it comes to describing the historical past. However, it is certainly safe to say that minds have changed throughout human history, even very recent history.

As noted briefly in Chapter 2, if one approaches history from the perspective of traditional evolutionary psychology, the fact that minds have changed presents somewhat of a problem. Scholars in this field usually insist that we essentially have a Pleistocene mind, and what has changed is not biology, but culture. Surprisingly, this static picture of the mental echoes arguments made by the so-called ‘standard social science’ paradigm that many evolutionary psychologists strongly resist. In that paradigm, all human discoveries, products and characteristics are social constructions, including the findings of biology.