The emergence of modern societies organised according to legal constitutions is an evolutionary
puzzle. Homo sapiens are the only animal species capable of living in large-scale cooperative
societies whose members are genetically unrelated individuals. But neither sociological nor
biological models can adequately explain this unique feature of contemporary human societies.
Recently gene-culture co-evolutionary theory explained the emergence of human institutions
which takes into account the reciprocal influence between culture and innate psychology in the
course of human evolution. Relying on this account of contemporary evolutionary theory this
book advances the claim that constitutions are a complex adaptation grounded in both our innate
social psychology and specific social institutions. Constitutionalism evolved as a societal
adaptation necessary to provide a unified symbolic moral system expected by human psychology
in pluralistic moral societies. More than that constitutions also structured modern society to
deal with the evolutionary pressures coming from the fast-paced changes occurring among others
in legal and economic systems. This book develops a novel interdisciplinary perspective about
the evolution of law and the role played by constitutions in the emergence of complex
contemporary societies.
