Human killer instinct? Maybe not
source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574449012560741086.html
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- hpseaton
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The behavior of our ape relatives, known as peaceful vegetarians, once bolstered the view that our actions could not be traced to an impulse to dominate. But in the late 1970s, when chimpanzees were discovered to hunt monkeys and kill each other, they became the poster boys for our violent origins and aggressive instinct.
I use the term "boys" on purpose because the theory was all about males without much attention to the females of the species, who just tagged along evolutionarily. It was hard to escape the notion that we are essentially "killer apes" destined to wage war forever.
Doubts about this macho origin myth have been on the rise, however, culminating in the announcement this past week of the discovery of a fossil of a 4.4 million year old ancestor that may have been gentler than previously thought. Considered close to the last common ancestor of apes and humans, this ancestral type, named Ardipithecus ramidus (or "Ardi"), had a less protruding mouth equipped with considerably smaller, blunter canine teeth than the chimpanzee's impressive fangs. This ape's canines serve as deadly knives, capable of slashing open an enemy's face and skin, causing either a quick death through blood loss or a slow one through festering infections. Wild chimps have been observed to use this weaponry to lethal effect in territorial combat. But the aggressiveness of chimpanzees obviously loses some of its significance if our ancestors were built quite differently. What if chimps are outliers in an otherwise relatively peaceful lineage?
Consider our other close relatives: gorillas and bonobos. Gorillas are known as gentle giants with a close-knit family life: they rarely kill. Even more striking is the bonobo, which is just as genetically close to us as the chimp. No bonobo has ever been observed to eliminate its own kind, neither in the wild nor in captivity. This slightly built, elegant ape seems to enjoy love and peace to a degree that would put any Woodstock veteran to shame. Bonobos have sometimes been presented as a delightful yet irrelevant side branch of our family tree, but what if they are more representative of our primate background than the blustering chimpanzee?
The assumption that we are born killers has been challenged from an entirely different angle by paleontologists asserting that the evidence for warfare does not go back much further than the agricultural revolution, about 15,000 years ago. No evidence for large-scale conflict, such as mass graves with embedded weapons, have been found from before this time. Even the walls of Jericho—considered one of the first signs of warfare and famous for having come tumbling down in the Old Testament—may have served mainly as protection against mudflows. There are even suggestions that before this time, about 70,000 years ago, our lineage was at the edge of extinction, living in scattered small bands with a global population of just a couple of thousand. These are hardly the sort of conditions that promote continuous warfare.
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- groups:
- Community, Anthropology
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- tags:
- History, Humanity, Stupidity, Anthropology, 2 more
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bullpcp
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eta
There seems to have been a bottleneck 70,000 or so years ago where Homo sapiens almost went extinct this would explain our lack of genetic diversity among humans today. There where some 2,000 or so of us at the time.We share a common male and female ancestors Mitochondrial Eve, believed to have lived between 150,000 to 250,000, and Y-chromosomal Adam, from a single man who lived in Africa around 60,000 years ago.
There are two main theories that explain human evolution the "Out of Africa" theory, it hypothesizes we migrated from East Africa at a time that approximately coincides with our mass extinction, and the Multiregional theory, that human species evolved separately and interbred with eachother, neither postulates interbreeding with non homo primates species. By the way evolution doesn't suggest we evolved from apes or monkeys. It suggests we share some common ancestry with them or in other words we evolved from the same primate species millions of years ago but evolved differently.
There is some speculation that protohumans could have successfully interbred with other primates but this probably wouldn't have been genetically possible once humans diverged sufficiently.
So we are very closely related both by the fact that we came from the same 2,000 or so humans 70,000 years ago and by the fact that we share the same genetic mother and father. Homo sapiens probably didn't breed with nonhuman primates but our protohuman ancestors might have. The coalescing you wrote about might be supported by Multiregional theory but it has much less supporting evidence than "Out of Africa" theory. I hope all that helps.
- 2 years ago
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bullpcp
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eta
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Is their scientific evidence or any kind of postulation that states that at some point humans coalesced into one species? I mean, loosely speaking, I'm asking (maybe ignorantly) that all humans are related, but we still might be derivative of different branches of ancestors... variations and combos of gorilla, bonobo, chimps... someone who knows what I'm saying please clarify and expound.
- 2 years ago
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eta
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boywhocould
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eta:
mitochondrial DNA has been shown to have limited sequences which would suggest that of the many off shoots of sapien hominids there was a bottle neck several thousand years ago, if that's a coalescing then perhaps, but one could assume that it was a "cut throat" situation
- 2 years ago
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boywhocould
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bullpcp
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmuOW6qGbx4
Most people, 98%, are very cooperative it's only the 2% of people that are jerks and ruin it for the rest of us. - 2 years ago
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bullpcp
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ras_menelik
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Bonobo conflict resolution
take notes lesser primates :)
- 2 years ago
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ras_menelik
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Allorno1
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Book: "The Fall" by Steve Taylor
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/dec/03/featuresreviews.guardianreview18
- 2 years ago
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Allorno1
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hpseaton
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Allorno1:
Looks like an interesting premise. I might have to read this one.
- 2 years ago
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hpseaton
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artemis6
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We survive through cooperation . Violence could have evolved as a defensive strategy . To be violent we must first be afraid . It is the fear trigger . That is what is manipulated . Implanted at an early age to see threats all 'round , by local myths and hysterics of the day . Without this stimuli , it would be a much more peaceful world .
- 2 years ago
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artemis6
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wolfinsheepsclothing
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artemis6:
i gotta call bs. it all comes down to numbers. you're viewing the subject anthropomorphically. the emotional aspect is irrelevant. at times cooperation is beneficial, at times intraspecies conflict is beneficial. there are countless examples in nature. we need to step away from polarizing everything and making it a black and white decision. nature shows us otherwise every day.
- 2 years ago
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wolfinsheepsclothing
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Betico
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yet more scientific evidence that capitalism goes against nature.
- 2 years ago
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Betico
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neosophia
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Betico:
Yes, if your idea of nature are these apes... Oh how wonderful it would be to live in a society that doesn't advance, is incapable of adapting, where their people generally die of starvation, there is a lack of ingenuity, and held together by a leader who got the position by being the biggest brute!
Notice that these are the same traits found in communist countries?
Capitalism has done more for the human race in 100 years than these monkey have done for themselves in millions of years. I'll keep my sense of ownership, farming techniques, technology, and property.
Most of these apes will soon be wiped out, by their inability to change: evolution at work. - 2 years ago
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neosophia
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kosche_
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Betico:
neosophia,
Unfortunately yes greed and capitalism will keep us alive. Only, for how long? If you notice, all our sense of property and technology and whatnot is what will eventually wipe US out by destroying the earth for capital gains. More evolution at work for you. - 2 years ago
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kosche_
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boywhocould
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in an organism as large as we, there is need for regulation of population, for example the large reptiles often have low birth success, predation and decease claim many (not so with us)
for us large mammals we are a fluke of development, able to breed monthly (though not birth monthly) would have served us well in a near extinction event.
our need of a long childhood could lead to conflict serving well those who assured their survival by forsaking another, this could have created a divergent trend for aggression in our hominid line as oppose to others (thus making this article useless)
infighting and decimation has become our only major population reduction as we have no natural competitors providing that the defense of our culture and civilization persists.
The old saying of "Philanthropy is not a survival trait" could in some ways explain mankind. the key to evolution i.e the double edged sword, is that what ever survives is supreme, thus the drive to kill another that is unwilling to kill is a fantastical acceleration of this tenement. basically what ever has remained of time (that being the ruthless) is what we likely are.
we can choose another way of course as we are no longer silent partners to our developing evolution but could "breed" ourselves, but in the interest of freedom and liberty (which often serve us quiet poorly) this would never be alowed due to one major stance of logic. . .who are we to decide?
- 2 years ago
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boywhocould
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ampersand
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We are wired for co-operation as well as designed to make the nearly instantaneous choice between fight or flight when threatened. The core problem with our endemic history of violence is what so easily triggers violence in a variety of humans, in a wide variety of situations.
Some humans tense and automatically enter a "combat ready" mode when approached within 100 feet. A lot of those folks are found in prison. Some human societies value and strongly reinforce non-threatening and co-operative behavior. Ones that comes most easily to mind are the Buddhist countries of East and Southeast Asia, but of course, individuals and groups in any of those societies can be, and do, respond violently with the same common triggers observed throughout human society.
Projection of violent intent and demonizaton of the alien "other" is the standard step to induce the war mode in humans. It works brilliantly in modern media from WWI tales of the "raping and pillaging Huns" to fanciful tales of "weapons of mass destruction" hidden in poor countries half-way around the world.
Some humans perceive almost any difference as threatening. They are the most dangerous group in any society and the most easily sparked to violent response. It's no secret among psychologists that the paranoid personality is attracted to politics. Surprisingly, given their easily observable severe personality problems, paranoid personalities often do remarkable well in politics. Two examples often cited of paranoid personalities in politics are Josef Stalin and Richard Nixon.
One would think that classes in recognizing, and resisting being manipulated by, individual and group triggers to violence would be far more valuable to modern society than driver's education.
The only thread touching on this used to found in high school speech communication classes when they briefly identified the common methods of persuasion by sweeping false arguments. I don't think that is commonly taught anymore. Too bad. That course could use an update, and worldwide daily distribution. - 2 years ago
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ampersand
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boywhocould
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ampersand:
one could say that some of us are the "solders" some are the "nurturers" and some are the "thinkers"
sadly our cultural standards of deciding who is what is lacking
- 2 years ago
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boywhocould
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scion
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ampersand:
I agree with your sentiments on how wars are induced. It is much easier to kill (or vote to kill) someone who is nameless, faceless, and present as sub/in- human.
- 2 years ago
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scion
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PeteSchmidt
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ampersand:
actually its pretty easy too kill when youre facing it head on as well such as staring down the barrel of an AK or when your buddy next to you gets his face blown to bits in a desert thousands of miles from home you tend to be "combat ready". As for people being manipulated into doing things such as engaging in violence in war zones the better part of the friends I had in the military were there for political reasons and because they believed why we were there not because of "manipulation" .
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance -- it is the illusion of knowledge. Daniel Boorstin
- 2 years ago
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PeteSchmidt
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boywhocould
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ampersand:
you cant tell the difference between psy-op public manipulations and actual belief . . . obviously because there is no test for it and if there were we wouldn't be privy to it either because most of us are under educated or possible purposeful limitations
I believe we might have developed at vengeance stance aka "war response"
Imagine 2 primitive clans. clan 1 comes and steals from clan 2. as a survival response clan 1 goes to take back and punish clan 2 with violence, thus assuring the traits continuance
- 2 years ago
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boywhocould
