In his landmark book, Peacemaking Among Primates (1989), primatologist Frans de Waal describes a behaviour he first documented among the chimpanzees of Arnhem Zoo in the Netherlands a decade earlier. After a fight, former opponents would seek each other out and re-establish contact by grooming, embracing, kissing, and holding hands. Reconciliation seemed to occur most reliably between individuals whose relationship is more highly valued — such as kin, allies, high-ranking partners, and frequent grooming partners — and measurably lowered the probability of aggression in the future. But, what makes this more than a social nicety is that this process of reconciliation is likely both external and physiological.

Filippo Aureli’s work with macaques shows that their self-directed scratching, a dependable index of anxiety in primates, rises sharply after conflict and remains elevated until they are able to reconcile with their adversary. The same goes for their heart rate. That suggests that inner and outer balance may be connected. An animal that is too agitated to approach a recent opponent cannot reconcile, and a group in which reconciliation fails cannot hold together. Internal balance is critical to social cohesion. This perhaps suggests how consciousness came to be. Over the long arc of the development of consciousness as part of living things, it appears unlikely that it arose in individual minds in isolation.

Consciousness likely emerged as life became increasingly cooperative and required organisms not only to sense the state of the world but also to cooperate and read one another. As nervous systems grew more sophisticated, they went........

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