Robin Hanson has an interesting argument here.
To flesh out his statistical argument as it applied to this case: there are certain general trends (what you call universals) across most animals, and most human societies; while there exist species (and cultures) that are exceptions to many of them, there's are reason they are exceptions.
To take one of your examples, while it may be short term beneficial for a species to reproduce completely without genetic recombination, it greatly limits potential future evolution since it's no longer possible for beneficial mutations from different individuals to combine.
Edit: See also Eliezer's post evolving to extinction.
One of the most important points raised by the sequences is that not all minds are like humans. In quite a few places, people have discussed minds with slight changes from human minds, which seem altogether different. However, a lot of this discussion has been related to AI, as opposed to minds created by evolution. I'm trying to think of ways that minds which evolved, and are effective enough to start a civilization, could differ from humans'.
Three Worlds Collide would seem like an excellent starting point, but isn't actually very useful. As far as I recall, the Babyeaters might have learned their baby eating habits as a result of societal pressure. The main difference in their society seemed to be the assumption that people who disagreed with you were simply mistaken: this contrasts to humans' tendency to form rival groups, and assume everyone in the rival groups is evil. The Super-Happies had self modified, and so don't provide an example of an evolved mind.
So here are my ideas so far.