Publication Date:
2009-06-06
Description:
Since Darwin, intergroup hostilities have figured prominently in explanations of the evolution of human social behavior. Yet whether ancestral humans were largely "peaceful" or "warlike" remains controversial. I ask a more precise question: If more cooperative groups were more likely to prevail in conflicts with other groups, was the level of intergroup violence sufficient to influence the evolution of human social behavior? Using a model of the evolutionary impact of between-group competition and a new data set that combines archaeological evidence on causes of death during the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene with ethnographic and historical reports on hunter-gatherer populations, I find that the estimated level of mortality in intergroup conflicts would have had substantial effects, allowing the proliferation of group-beneficial behaviors that were quite costly to the individual altruist.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Bowles, Samuel -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2009 Jun 5;324(5932):1293-8. doi: 10.1126/science.1168112.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA. samuel.bowles@gmail.com〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19498163" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
*Altruism
;
Anthropology, Cultural
;
Archaeology
;
*Biological Evolution
;
Cooperative Behavior
;
*Cultural Evolution
;
Female
;
Genetic Variation
;
Humans
;
Male
;
Microsatellite Repeats
;
Models, Theoretical
;
*Social Behavior
;
*Warfare
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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