[Marxism] A natural history of peace

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

A Natural History of Peace
By Robert M. Sapolsky, Foreign Affairs
Posted on March 2, 2006, Printed on March 3, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/32755/

The evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky once said, "All species
are unique, but humans are uniquest." Humans have long taken pride in their
specialness. But the study of other primates is rendering the concept of
such human exceptionalism increasingly suspect.

Some of the retrenchment has been relatively palatable, such as with the
workings of our bodies. Thus we now know that a baboon heart can be
transplanted into a human body and work for a few weeks, and human blood
types are coded in Rh factors named after the rhesus monkeys that possess
similar blood variability.

More discomfiting is the continuum that has been demonstrated in the realm
of cognition. We now know, for example, that other species invent tools and
use them with dexterity and local cultural variation. Other primates
display "semanticity" (the use of symbols to refer to objects and actions)
in their communication in ways that would impress any linguist. And
experiments have shown other primates to possess a "theory of mind," that
is, the ability to recognize that different individuals can have different
thoughts and knowledge.

Our purported uniqueness has been challenged most, however, with regard to
our social life. Like the occasional human hermit, there are a few primates
that are typically asocial (such as the orangutan). Apart from those,
however, it turns out that one cannot understand a primate in isolation
from its social group. Across the 150 or so species of primates, the larger
the average social group, the larger the cortex relative to the rest of the
brain. The fanciest part of the primate brain, in other words, seems to
have been sculpted by evolution to enable us to gossip and groom, cooperate
and cheat, and obsess about who is mating with whom. Humans, in short, are
yet another primate with an intense and rich social life -- a fact that
raises the question of whether primatology can teach us something about a
rather important part of human sociality, war and peace.

It used to be thought that humans were the only savagely violent primate.
"We are the only species that kills its own," one might have heard intoned
portentously at the end of nature films several decades ago. That view fell
by the wayside in the 1960s as it became clear that some other primates
kill their fellows aplenty. Males kill; females kill. Some kill one
another's infants with cold-blooded stratagems worthy of Richard III. Some
use their toolmaking skills to fashion bigger and better cudgels. Some
other primates even engage in what can only be called warfare -- organized,
proactive group violence directed at other populations.

As field studies of primates expanded, what became most striking was the
variation in social practices across species. Yes, some primate species
have lives filled with violence, frequent and varied. But life among others
is filled with communitarianism, egalitarianism, and cooperative child
rearing. Patterns emerged. In less aggressive species, such as gibbons or
marmosets, groups tend to live in lush rain forests where food is plentiful
and life is easy. Females and males tend to be the same size, and the males
lack secondary sexual markers such as long, sharp canines or garish
coloring. Couples mate for life, and males help substantially with child
care. In violent species, on the other hand, such as baboons and rhesus
monkeys, the opposite conditions prevail.

The most disquieting fact about the violent species was the apparent
inevitability of their behavior. Certain species seemed simply to be the
way they were, fixed products of the interplay of evolution and ecology,
and that was that. And although human males might not be inflexibly
polygamous or come with bright red butts and six-inch canines designed for
tooth-to-tooth combat, it was clear that our species had at least as much
in common with the violent primates as with the gentle ones. "In their
nature" thus became "in our nature." This was the humans-as-killer-apes
theory popularized by the writer Robert Ardrey, according to which humans
have as much chance of becoming intrinsically peaceful as they have of
growing prehensile tails. That view always had little more scientific rigor
than a Planet of the Apes movie, but it took a great deal of field research
to figure out just what should supplant it. After decades' more work, the
picture has become quite interesting. Some primate species, it turns out,
are indeed simply violent or peaceful, with their behavior driven by their
social structures and ecological settings. More important, however, some
primate species can make peace despite violent traits that seem built into
their natures. The challenge now is to figure out under what conditions
that can happen, and whether humans can manage the trick themselves.

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