The research group Human Evolution and Cognition (EVOCOG) was founded in the year 2000 as an initiative of harmonization of the interdisciplinary study of the essentially human characteristics and their evolutionary adaptation. Contacts to leading organizations were established in order to broaden the workspace and to consolidate the institutional presence of the research group. Cooperation agreements were put in place with the following universities: University of Barcelona, Autonomous University of Madrid, Complutense University of Madrid, Metropolitan Autonomous University of Mexico and the Autonomous National University of Mexico.

From the start, the group has been working on projects founded both by private as well as by public institutions and organizations with the objective to enhance high quality research. Since 2002, the group carries the distinction of a Competitive Group, issued by the Balearic Government. In 2006 this distinction was renewed. In 2004 the Ministry of Education and Science issued the distinction Mention of Quality for the doctorate Primates and the Origen of Man which was, at that time, offered by the group. A new postgraduate programme was created in 2005: Human Cognition and Evolution at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of the Balearic Islands. It comprises a Master programme and a Doctoral programme.

With the postgraduate programme further professors of distinctive international universities have joined the work of the group in collaborative activity. These researchers come from: the University of Vienna (Austria), the University of Paris (France), the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig (Germany), the Autonomous University of Mexico, the Vicente Lombardo Toledano Centre (Mexico), the University of St. Andrew (UK) and the University of Bochum (Germany). Other Spanish researchers come from the University of Barcelona, the Autonomous University of Madrid, the Complutense University of Madrid, the University of Valencia, the University of La Coruña and the National University for Distance Learning (UNED).