Reddit reviews Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence

I don't know that you're likely to find answer. We just don't have it. I would say you're more likely to be convinced one answer is truer than the other based upon what you read and your knowledge of behavior, evolution, culture and biology.

The most common claim you will hear is yes. This is most widely publicized by Richard Wrangham. Now, I love me some Wrangham and when he speaks people listen. He originally published work on ecology of primates that still holds true today. His Book Demonic Males really examines the evolutionary basis in which violence is grounded. Like you said many people thought chimps were delightful peaceful creatures. Well it is far from the truth. They do engage in raids in other nearby groups, infanticide and male takeovers. The trouble is none of those things are outside the primate "norm" if you will. By that I mean they're not behaviors we only see in chimps. One of his main comparisons is about the Yanomamo tribe which links our behavior to aggression. His thesis is that war has an evolutionary heritage that we can see evidenced in apes. You should read the book, it is interesting.

That being said I don't think he has this one in the bag. We have found new evidence that contradicts long held beliefs and people are quick to reject it. I don't like the idea of limiting ideas because when we as scientists have done that we've often been proved wrong by someone else. Instead of sticking to our beliefs we should always be challenging them.

I do not think "War is evolutionarily bound". I think it's a cyclical argument. I do not think human males are genetically predisposed to war and aggressive behavior. I definitely think that comparisons to other great apes and other cultures is not accurate in creating an entire picture of this concept.

1. We cannot accurately compare a few "tribal cultures" to early humans and chimps because we're dealing with 3 different populations. Chimpanzees now are not chimpanzees 4 million years ago. Resources are completely different. "Well what does resources have to do with anything?" Well, primates are about ecology (and sex). Most times when we talk about war like responses we have to talk about resource acquisition (I'm including access to females as a resource here) because that's the underlying basis for many of these chimp conflicts you see talked about. For Bonobos who live a river away from some chimp groups we see stark differences and it all goes back to ecology. You see two entirely different ways of handling conflict and post conflict resolution. Now widen the scope for all great apes. Each species has an entirely unique way that they handle conflict and they exhibit differences in behavioral patterns. Orangutans, the most ancestral extant ape engages in almost none of this war like behavior. Yet, they're 96% similar to us. So what gives? Behavior doesn't fossilize and we can make predictions based upon what we know existed, but I think it is difficult to take a handful of remote populations and use them as the baseline for an entire theory. A recent study tried to again compare several cultures and came up with the opposite, that war is not evolutionary in origin. Here is a nice write up of the article too
   
   It is also important to note than in these discussions of chimp raids they live in a fission fusion society. This means groups break up and regroup often so maybe raids are a part of a process of group structure. If a dominant male raids an area he can build up a larger group thus increasing his mating opportunities.
   
   
2. War in itself could be an entirely human cultural creation. Thus, we're looking at a hero story. We know the outcome and we look through history for its origins and say "Ah ha! Chimps engage in this raiding type behavior, its similar to war." I think that approach is also wrong. Referential modeling in apes is a slippery slope for the reason I mentioned before. Apes now are not apes then. What we can gleam from them is the level at which a behavior is not present. For example we do not see complex tool use in apes. Therefore, we could propose a grade in which apes use tools and humans use tools. So we can fit complex behaviors into the same category. We can say is this can ape grade or a human grade behavior? Most ape grade behaviors end around 2 mya. For war one thing is important, cognition. I need to be able to plan and predict my opponents move, otherwise I may get killed. Well if war is evolutionary bound we have to look and see if we see this behavior in chimps? Well we do. Though it turns out we see it in macaques too. So is it limited to cognition in apes, resources or are we missing something.
   
   So you see we could go around and around all day. We have good evidence that yes, patterns of war like behavior is exhibited in our primate ancestors. But what is war? How do you define war? Is war defined differently for primates than humans because of the cognitive differences? I think we have too many unanswered questions to move towards a definite no or yes. I think it is definitely worth exploring. I talked to an amazing researcher who works for Craig Stanford just last month and she is currently looking at post conflict resolution in chimps. We know very little. Almost nothing in other apes. So how can we make a holistic theory when we only have bits and pieces of data? I can see both sides of the argument and I think if you want a REAL answer you're going to have to read the research, or create some of your own.
   

>I sometimes wonder if the patriarchy was indeed created to make self-sacrifice more attractive for men. Men were always expected to do the most dangerous jobs like hunting, fighting and protecting the tribe and I think it makes sense, however they also had to be rewarded for it.

Patriarchy wasn't really "created." It was simply a natural outgrowth of biological conditions that existed even before the evolution of modern homo sapiens. If you look at our closest evolutionary cousins, the chimpanzees, they too have a quasi-patriarchal system of social organization with dominant males leading bands of chimps. Most of the fundamental driving forces of human history, including the tendency towards organized violence (war), comes from our evolutionary history. For a very insightful book that talks about this, see Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence by Dale Peterson and Richard Wrangham. Also see Warriors and Worriers: The Survival of the Sexes for a discussion of how male and female genders evolved in human beings.

I don't know of anywhere else it's available. It's more aimed towards researchers and serious academics than for everyday readers though.

For more accessible and cheaper reads I recommend these books:
http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Brain-Biological-Differences-Between/dp/0140263489

http://www.amazon.com/Demonic-Males-Origins-Human-Violence/dp/0395877431/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427266852&sr=1-1&keywords=demonic+males

and the chapters on violence and gender in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427266870&sr=1-1&keywords=the+blank+slate

All of those should be available at any library.

Read Demonic Males

this is a good short book that goes into exactly what your talking about in great depth. Bonobos and chimps are very different but Bonobos aren't immune to violence.

I'm pretty sure, as an anthropology major, I studied this for four years. Boys in almost all societies across time and space play with weapons from a young age - if this were cultural, cultures tens of thousands of years and thousands of miles removed from each other would show variation in this, and they do not. The fact that this can be chemically disrupted shows that it is at least partially biologically based, as there is no way to influence pure culture chemically.

Don't call something 'ignorance' when you yourself are ignorant. For further reading, if you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/Demonic-Males-Origins-Human-Violence/dp/0395877431/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318790139&sr=8-1

Edit: Also, the 'they choose to be gay' argument is the same radical christians use. There is clearly a genetic or chemical component to this - even if we don't know what it is.

There's a book called Demonic Males I think the people in this thread might enjoy. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0395877431

you should read Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence by Dale Peterson. He talks about how gorillas form platoons to hunt monkeys.

I haven't read it yet, but I think the book Demonic Males would fit the bill. https://www.amazon.com/Demonic-Males-Origins-Human-Violence/dp/0395877431/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=demonic+males&qid=1575146978&s=books&sr=1-1

Christopher Ryan was wrong. Chimpanzee warfare, including raiding parties with lethal force, chimpanzee cannibalism, and the systematic extermination of rival groups has been observed multiple times even in places that have never seen human-placed food stores.

Source: Demonic Males

In Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, they describe that chimps (IIRC, could be bonobos) once in a while will pick up a monkey and treat it as a pet or a doll.

The monkeys do not last long though. Think, and I'll love him and I'll pet him and I'll squeeze him and I'll name him George... George? George?

Sex

The Way of Men – Jack Donovan***
Sperm Wars – Robin Baker
Sex at Dawn – Christopher Ryan
Why Men Rule – Steven Goldberg
The Manipulated Man – Esther Vilar
Is There Anything Good About Men? – Roy Baumeister
Demonic Males – Dale Peterson
The Essential Difference – Simon Baron-Cohen
The Mating Mind – Geoffrey Miller
The Red Queen – Matt Ridley

****

Government

Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers – Tom Wolfe
Public Choice: An Introduction – Iain McLean
On Government Employment – Foseti (blog post)
Yes, Minister – TV Show

****

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You might want to check out this book. Sadly, the notion of the noble savage seems to contradict reality.