Darwin and the Scottish economists: The first point of junction

The fundamental economic problem of human evolution

In view of the discussion thus far, the issue is no longer the mere existence of a human predisposition to exchange, but its evolutionary origin. Unsure of this origin, Adam Smith himself acknowledged (and deflected) in passing an intriguing question:

The inception of modern economics was thus accompanied (in 1776) by an evolutionary question preceding by nearly a century the Darwinian notion of evolution itself. Adam Smith probably agonized over this question, though as it seems, had the good sense to abort it in due course. Neither he nor his pre-Darwinian readers could fully comprehend the question, let alone conceive a sensible answer to it. With the advantage of hindsight, however, the question seems to present a challenge of the highest order to the modern study of human evolution: Was exchange an early agent of human evolution, or was it merely a late by-product of previously evolved “faculties of reason and speech”?

With the publication of The Descent of Man a century or so later, Darwin had at his disposal a fairly mature notion of evolution applicable to human affairs.