Short answers, pulled from the story.
The first moral act in human history occurred perhaps 50,000 years ago on the African savanna. This moment marked the transition from pure survival instinct to a system of mutual obligation between early humans. Anthropologists studying 60 societies have identified seven universal moral rules that persist to this day.
Immanuel Kant was born on the 12th of February 1724 in Königsberg. He introduced the categorical imperative, a principle that demanded individuals act only according to that maxim whereby they could, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. This was a radical departure from the tribal morality that had governed human behavior for millennia.
The capacity to feel empathy involves a complex network including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction. When these areas are stimulated or damaged, the ability to take into account intent when forming a moral judgment is inhibited. Individuals with a lesion of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex judge an action purely on its outcome.
No, the belief that morality is declining is an illusion easily produced by distorted exposure to information and distorted memory of information. A study by Adam M. Mastroianni and Daniel T. Gilbert demonstrates that people's evaluations of the morality of their peers have not decreased over time. The perception of moral decline is a psychological mechanism rather than a historical reality.
Americans who identified as liberals tended to value care and fairness higher than loyalty, respect, and purity. Self-identified conservative Americans valued care and fairness less and the remaining three values more. Both groups gave care the highest overall weighting, but conservatives valued fairness the lowest, whereas liberals valued purity the lowest.
Denmark and Sweden, which are probably the least religious countries in the world, enjoy among the lowest violent crime rates in the world and the lowest levels of corruption in the world. A 2005 study by Gregory S. Paul published in the Journal of Religion and Society stated that higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide in prosperous democracies. This suggests that morality can exist independently of religious belief.