With all the reports of violence, incessantly hyped by the media, yet disturbingly regular and consistent, I thought some discussion of how ingrained violence is in our humanity, is in order.
Perhaps the biggest question in all of evolutionary biology is, “How did our species get to our rational thinking civilization (here) from our primate ancestors’ swinging-in-the-trees, animal past (there)?”
What propelled the Homo sapiens primates to become so significantly different from the other species of apes (chimps, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos) and produce our complex reasoning ability, self-reflective intelligence and civilization?
What process sent our species catapulting down the path to civilization in such a relatively short amount of evolutionary time? Was this primary cause biological? Was it psychological, sociological and/or spiritual or a combination of all of the above?
We are all familiar with many of the differences and landmarks on our journey to rationality and civilization: we have large, complex brains, walk upright, have opposable thumbs, cook our food, have an intricate language, can think about the past, ask questions and strategize about future possibilities among other unique abilities. However, these well known differences are landmarks along our journey. What was the initial cause that started our incredible journey?
Why did we, (“The Third Chimpanzee”, from Jared Diamond’s book – Chimps, Bonobos and Humans) have such a different developmental path? With the great passage of time during the development of the hominin group (when we differentiated from chimps about 6.3 to 5.4 million years ago according to Patterson et al. (2006), there are many attributes which we developed over time but what was the initial first cause that set our species on the path to Homo sapiens sapiens intelligence and technology? What caused our species to become so unique in the animal kingdom and was that first cause biological?
Could there be one, minor yet significant, biological event that precipitated all the other biological, psychological and social developmental changes in our species?
This is a tempting proposition due to our preference for simple, all encompassing answers (Einstein’s E = MC2 is perfect in its simplicity and profound in its effects as are Darwin’s three words which changed biology forever: “Descent With Modification”). So far this biological “First Cause” has eluded us.
The two main and competing theories about the development of our intelligence and civilization are the Cooperation Theory and the Deep Roots Theory of War. Actually, the Deep Roots theory war just suggests that war is not a recent phenomenon which developed along with our civilization about 10,000 years ago. The Deep Roots Theory says that war developed early in our evolution as a primate species.
In this Violence Hypothesis, I am suggesting that not only did we develop war and violence as a tool early in the development of our species but that our species proclivity toward violence was the primary factor that actually caused the development of our intelligence and civilization!
We are tempted to pick the better sounding and more noble idea (cooperation). We are also tempted to say that our humanness is an emotional, psychological and/or sociological change. Something unique and wonderful: the hand of God, the quest for peace, faith, hope and charity, self-sacrifice, love and all the other most noble attributes of the human species. Scientific American’s cover story (“How We Conquered the Planet”, 8/2015) is about how our species wielded the ultimate weapon: cooperation. The idea that cooperation is the driver of our distinct humanity is a bit too idealistic and self-congratulatory given the elephant in the room: our species predilection for incredible, self-culling violence as manifest in our history and which continues in the headlines that assault us every day.
“ISIS Beheads 21 Egyptian Christians” and “ISIS Child Beheading Syrian Soldier”, complete with video. Where is the cooperation part of Boko Haram kidnapping, raping and assimilating 300 young girls? This euphemistic, “Cooperation Fad” attempting to explain our development fails to take into account our penchant for regularly and consistently killing our own species in such vast numbers over such long periods of time.
It is certainly more accurate to say that if our ancestors did not kill you, your family, clan or tribe outright, then they eventually cooperated with your group. Eventual and usually reluctant cooperation and other positive attributes of our species are more of the results of our evolutionary pathway but not the first cause.
Historian Yuval Noah Harari in his TED talk also promotes the idea that our ability to create networks of flexible cooperation with large numbers of individuals (governments, corporations, schools, etc) is the causal factor in our evolution. https://www.ted.com/talks/yuval_noah_harari_what_explains_the_rise_of_humans?language=en
Harari gives an example of a chimp and a human on a small island and asks, “Who would have the better chance of survival?” Harari bets on the chimp as the better survivor. His is the often repeated rationale that a Sapiens, removed from civilization, technology and the ability to form “networks of cooperation” would be a poor survivor. Such a rationale is biologically inept.
Any biologist would tell Dr. Harari that the chimp would never even consider killing the Sapiens as a survival strategy. However, the Sapiens, armed with a brain that can plan long term strategy, take advantage of immediate tactics and the high testosterone levels to use violence as a survival tool, would quickly see the advantages to killing the Pan Troglodyte who was competing for survival resources. Harari fails to consider the most human and successful survival strategy throughout our violent history: kill the competition and immediately double the survival resources. The authors of a Scientific American article (3/17/00), note, “In light of the Neanderthals’ rapid disappearance and of the appalling subsequent record of H. sapiens, we can reasonably surmise that such interactions were rarely happy for the former.”
I suggest that the process which caused our unique abilities is not something lost in our evolutionary history of two million years ago when the Homo genus differentiated from our Australopithecine ancestors. Just like our ability to walk upright, whatever processes changed our species to be unique among living things did not disappear. It has to be something that is still with us today and something that we were better at than all the other Hominines.
What simple, singular, biological, uniquely human difference can explain our evolutionary path?
I propose that one branch of our Australopithecine ancestors experienced a mutation that resulted in a small, yet significant increase in our sexual hormones. These Australopithecines became the first of the genus Homo (The Australopithecine line eventually became the Homo genus: Homo habilus overlaps with the Australopithecines about two million years ago).
This simple hormonal increase resulted in a proclivity toward violence in males and a proclivity toward increased sexuality in females. This simple biological change resulted in a unique difference which continues to define us as a species and which initially catapulted us down the road to intelligence and civilization.
Looking at the most significant biological differences between chimpanzees and humans, then working our way backward through our evolutionary history, can provide insight into this long process. Present day chimp females have sex during their ovulation period with any passing male. Chimp males do not typically use violence to solve problems (although there is sometimes typical “dominance violence” and very occasional territorial killings). Other predators (e.g. lions and hawks) don’t use violence as a tool to self cull their own species by the thousands and increase their resources. Only humans.
In Homo Habilus males, this increased level of testosterone resulted in a new tool never seen before in the animal kingdom. It was an unprecedented ability to use violence against our own species to solve survival problems. We became the first and remain the only self-culling species. In Homo Habilus females, the increase in testosterone and estrogen resulted in a permanent display of secondary sexual characteristics, the ability to have sexual intercourse at any time (regardless of ovulation cycle) and resulted in complete control of their sexual availability. This ability continues to this day and gives females biological parity with males: while males can use violence as a tool, females can use sexuality as a tool. Increased female sexual availability also resulted in an unprecedented population bloom.
This new Homo genus spread like wildfire. With their females’ increased birthrate and their males’ testosterone inspired proclivity toward violence, they quickly took over neighboring groups and then rapidly expanded their territory. Population pressure then contributed to the males solving scarcity problems by killing other clans and tribes. The question of where did our “cousins” go (the Australopithecines and later Homo groups) is easily solved with this hypothesis: we killed them all.
For all the heights of civilization that we enjoy and all the depths of war and destruction that we cause, it all comes down to this: a small biological mutation increasing our sexual hormones, testosterone and estrogen. As incompatible as it may sound, I would like to suggest that the use of violence and sexuality as survival tools explains how we developed intelligence and civilization, in the following manner:
While we self-culled our competition using our new found “violence tool” and increased sexual availability/birthrate tool, it was not the direct application of violence that produced our intelligence. Hunting does not take a lot of brain power, as much as some would like to think that this primordial skill is responsible for the development of our intelligence and rationality. All predatory species hunt and did not develop our type of intelligence. Hunting requires an animal type of intelligence: tracking and using hyper alert senses to chase, stalk and wait for prey.
If lions and polar bears are apex predators because they are at the top of their food chains in their particular environments, then Sapiens are something completely different: predators of apex predators and survivors of self-culling, apex predation. This survivability is the crux of the development of our Homo sapiens sapiens intelligence and civilization.
Not hunting but being hunted by groups of intelligent apex predators and somehow anticipating, projecting the possibilities, weighing the probabilities of different courses of action and surviving, is what catapulted our ancestors to a new level of future planning intelligence.
We, and our unique intelligence and multi-generational civilization, are the descendents of those survivors of apex predation.
And, while this portrait of humanity is manifestedly horrible, if we look at everyday headlines or, more importantly, in the mirror, it is, most certainly, us.
Victor Dominocielo
Santa Barbara