The article seems to miss the point many times.
I think a useful definition of empathy describes it as the ability to feel what another person is feeling.
It for example says: "With social relations expanding beyond the circle of close kin, kinship obligations were no longer enough to ensure mutual assistance and stop free riding. There was thus selection for pro-social behavior, i.e., a spontaneous willingness to help not only kin but also non-kin."
Group selection is not a well accepted phenomena. Especially for a short timeframe of 10,000 years....
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