Laws about bodily damage originate from shared intuitions about the value of body parts

From the biblical lex talionis to the medieval wergild system and modern
workers’ compensation laws, laws about bodily damage may originate from
neurocognitive mechanisms that capitalize on an enduring regularity:
Different body parts vary in their incremental contributions to human
functionality. To evaluate this hypothesis, we conducted a preregistered
study with materials based on five legal codes from highly diverse
cultures and historical eras: the Law of Æthelberht (Kent, c. 600 CE), the
Guta lag (Gotland, c. 1220 CE), and workers’ compensation laws from the
United States, the Republic of Korea, and the United Arab Emirates; and
614 laypeople from the United States and India. The data indicate ordinal
agreement in the values attached to body parts by ancient and modern
lawmakers, as well as by laypeople in the United States and India. The
observed agreement across time, space, and levels of legal expertise
suggests that laws about bodily damage originate from shared intuitions
about the value of body parts.