Some scientists are being hailed as geniuses by ABC News because they “discovered” two things: 1) that violence is not a recent phenomenon because humans may have been at war with each other for a long long time and 2) that war and evolution fit quite nicely together.
Uh, Christians were drawing a link between evolutionary theory and violence while Darwin was still rowing back from the Galapagos. And us religious ignoramuses have been chatting up man’s innate sinful and warring nature since Cain asked Abel “Did you tell anyone you were meeting me here?”
But that doesn’t stop ABC from reporting it breathlessly as news:
It’s a question at the heart of what it is to be human: why do we go to war? The cost to human society is enormous, yet for all our intellectual development, we continue to wage war well into the 21st century.
Now a new theory is emerging that challenges the prevailing view that warfare is a product of human culture and thus a relatively recent phenomenon. For the first time, anthropologists, archaeologists, primatologists, psychologists and political scientists are approaching a consensus. Not only is war as ancient as humankind, they say, but it has played an integral role in our evolution.
The theory helps explain the evolution of familiar aspects of warlike behaviour such as gang warfare. And even suggests the cooperative skills we’ve had to develop to be effective warriors have turned into the modern ability to work towards a common goal.
These ideas emerged at a conference last month on the evolutionary origins of war at the University of Oregon in Eugene. “The picture that was painted was quite consistent,” says Mark Van Vugt, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Kent, UK. “Warfare has been with us for at least several tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years.” He thinks it was already there in the common ancestor we share with chimps. “It has been a significant selection pressure on the human species,” he says. In fact several fossils of early humans have wounds consistent with warfare.
Other than “Duh!” my first reaction is that this theory is better than the other prevailing scientific theory which posits that all war is George W. Bush’s fault.
But you have to admit it’s cute when these modern types stumble upon ancient truths and call it a discovery. Honestly, only someone with a PhD could call a discovery what us bitter folks clinging to our religion were taught as children.
November 13, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Nah, still W’s fault – it’s why they call him “Chimpy,” donchaknow. He brought his violence with him to the future!
November 13, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Didn’t any of them read my book, Leviathan?
November 13, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Sorry, Tommy Boy! I’m just more popular.
The women’s fault. It’s all the women’s fault that we have oppressive things like war… and marriage…. and glass cathethers!
November 13, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Is this like the recent study that found that teens are now unrealisticly overconfident, thanks to the “self-esteem movement” gone overboard?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,451222,00.html
(…and this is why this Girl Scout leader is NOT using the new GS materials…all about self-esteem and dealing with bullies…)
November 13, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Present.
November 13, 2008 at 8:28 pm
It explains why we remember more of the generals throughout history than the appeasers. Generals kill appeasers, thus preventing appeasers from reproducing.
Not only that, think of all the WWII movies that have been made, and ‘Call of Duty’ video games. Has anyone ever seen a ‘Treaty of Yalta’ video game, ever?
November 13, 2008 at 9:36 pm
I wasn’t aware that anybody was ever under the impression that war has NOT been around since forever.
Gee wiz, Darwin. What did you think “red in tooth and claw” entailed? A tea party with kool-aid?
November 13, 2008 at 9:45 pm
larryD,
that is one funny comment.
November 13, 2008 at 11:13 pm
I am not abel to find any evidence that there’s always been war.
November 13, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Clever but you obviously didn’t get the memo that puns are no longer allowed. Have we really fallen this low to resort to puns this quickly?
November 14, 2008 at 12:01 am
Matthew — Haven’t you read your scifi? Puns are the only TRULY human jokes! All the rest were imposed on us by evil Alien Experimental Psychologists….
November 14, 2008 at 12:34 am
Sounds like Scientology to me but I’ll take your word for it;)
November 14, 2008 at 5:19 am
This reminds me of a comment I overheard at lunch a few weeks ago – some guy says,
“Mankind invented wars when they made guns. Monkeys don’t fight each other or have wars because they don’t have guns.”
Thankfully the woman sitting next to me turned to him and replied,
“Actually, primates fight and kill each other all the time. And have you ever heard of ants?”
Since we’re at the point where public discourse states something, anything, and then treats it as absolute fact, so each “new discovery” isn’t compared to the actual record, I worry about people more and more. (And of course anything religious is blatantly ignored or discounted as “unscientific”.)