A system cannot be expected to operate effectively except in its environment of adaptedness (Bowlby, 1969). It is critical to consider the environment in which humans are adapted to operate. In recent millennia humans have extended the environments in which they are capable of living and created new environments. The previous environment of adaptedness in which humans evolved was likely relatively stable. For most species the environment changes slowly with limited variation. Therefore, most animals are living today in an environment very similar to the one in which its behavioural equipment evolved and which it is adapted to operate. For humans this is not the case. The speed at which human environments have changed outstrips the pace at which natural selection can work. For 2 million years humans lived in a similar environment until the last few thousand years that environment has changed dramatically. The former primeval environment is the environment of evolutionary adaptedness.
In recent times technological innovation means that most cultural traditions are changing rapidly (Bowlby, 1969). The relationship between humans and their environment has become ‘increasingly unstable’. If human behavioural equipment adapted to the primeval environment, it is only by reference to that environment that its structure can be understood. Human primeval way of living can be compared with other large ground-living species of higher primate. In the EEA individuals spend their lives in close proximity to familiar people as the group was essential to gain protection from predators. When threat arises, members of the group combine to drive it off; only those found alone were likely to fall victim to prey. The social group protect its immature members while they learned skills needed for adult life. The EEA is similar to Hatmann’s ‘ordinary expectable environment’. Nothing about a species can be understood without reference to its EEA.
Allan Schore writes that the “co-created environment of evolutionary adaptedness is isomorphic to a growth-facilitating environment for the experience-dependant maturation of a regulatory systems in the orbitofrontal cortex” (in Narvaez et al, 2013, p.42). The adaptive functions of “an efficient lateralised right brain only evolve in an optimal early relational environment of evolutionary adaptedness” (p.44). Severe alterations in the EEA lead to “enduring inefficient capacities for coping with interpersonal stressors and a predisposition to later psychiatric disorders” (p44-45). Deficits in maternal and paternal care are significantly linked with right brain impairments. Altered morphological and functional development of the orbitofrontal cortex is linked with a wide range of neurdevelopmental disorders from schizophrenia and bipolar, to violence, autism, addiction and depression. Early emotional right brain development allows entry into the culture and in turn shapes the culture itself. Bowlby’s concept of the EEA describes the ‘psychological space’ that a culture creates to scaffold the mother-infant emotional bond through the evolutionary mechanism of attachment. This space is either ‘expansive and facilitating’ or ‘constrictive and inhibiting’. A decrement in the EEA would be seen in increased rates of insecure attachment, which in turn reflects altered right brain development and reduced efficiency in ‘implicit stress and affect regulation’.
For more than 180 million years the female has played the central role in mammalian evolution The child’s first relationship with the mother acts as a template that permanently shapes the person’s capacity to enter into later emotional relationships (Schore, in Naravaez, 2013). Schore highlights a growing trend in American culture that is a ‘serious departure’ from an optimal EEA. Others describe the increased risk of insecure attachment if day-care begins in the first year and is extensive in duration as a ‘worrisome’ trend.