 A working hypothesis of cognitive-evolutionary approaches is that the psychological mechanisms underlying norm cognition are evolved adaptations to important selection pressures in human evolutionary history (Richerson &amp; Boyd 2005; Sripada &amp; Stich 2007, Tomasello 2009; Chudek &amp; Henrich 2011; Kelly &amp; Davis 2018, cf. Cosmides &amp; Tooby 1992). Even if a detailed proximate account were already available, other questions could be asked about the provenance of the norm system: how—that is, due to which evolutionary factors—did human minds come to be equipped with these psychological mechanisms? To what adaptive problem or problems was normative cognition a solution? What selection pressures were primarily responsible for the evolution of a norm system, and what phylogenetic trajectory did that evolution take? A brief summary of the types of answers currently on offer to these questions provides useful context for the discussion of proximate explanations that follows.