We hypothesize that Duchenne laughter became fully ritualized in early hominids between 4 and 2 mya as a medium for playful emotional contagion. We consider laughter to have been a preadaptation that was gradually elaborated and co‐opted through both biological and cultural evolution. Here we attempt to remedy these shortcomings through a synthesis of previous laughter and humor research followed by (i) a reevaluation of this research in light of theory and data from several relevant disciplines, and (ii) the proposal of a synthetic evolutionary framework that takes into account phylogeny and history as well as proximate mechanisms and adaptive significance. Most of these hypotheses have also been proposed in relative isolation of each other and remain disjointed from the relevant empirical literature. However, most of these have lacked breadth in their evolutionary frameworks while neglecting the empirical existence of two distinct types of laughter-Duchenne and non‐Duchenne-and the implications of this distinction for the evolution of laughter as a signal. A number of recent hypotheses have attempted to explain the ultimate evolutionary origins of laughter and humor.
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