"Chimpanzee Warfare" Topic

In _Constant Battles_, Steven A. LeBlanc spends a dozen pages discussing warfare among chimpanzees. Chimps often kill members of neighboring bands, which LeBlanc analyzes as an extension of their natural hunting behavior. Chimps team up to hunt and eat monkeys, when they can catch them; chimps also team up to stalk and kill their chimp neighbors, though they don't eat them.

Chimps in a band naturally dominate one another and often resolve personal conflicts by violence, but the behavior of small groups proactively hunting stranger chimps does not stem from immediate personal conflict. It seems to me very similar to the kind of war carried on by modern hunter-gatherer people.

Jared Diamond has gone so far as to call modern humans _The Third Chimpanzee_. LeBlanc proposes chimpanzee warfare as a model for human warfare in the Paleolithic. Sounds reasonable to me. Can anyone give me a reason not to trust this analogy?

The 'second chimpanzee' is our cousin the bonobo. Unlike chimps, bonobos do not dominate band mates, do not hunt, and do not commit pongicide, within the band or without it. Bonobos resolve conflict by sex-play. They have as much personal confict within the band as chimps, or humans. Instead of waling on each other, they do a lot of diddling. The little guys just can't stay mad for long ;-{)

Were early humans more like chimps or more like bonobos? Raises the possibility of some interesting and unusual Paleolithic wargame strategies, don't it?

Good book, huh? Again, the paradigm changes as new work emerges. Nobody believed our primate cousins engaged in warfare until Jane Goodall reported it.

As much as we might prefer the life of the bonobo (well, I would, for one!), we are hard-wired the other way. We inherit that from our forebears, who were survivors. There may have been early human diddlers, but they probably didn't survive a knock on the head from their non-diddling, ticked-off neighbors.

In other words, Abel was a nicer young fellow, but Cain lived.

Allen

I don't know about the life of the bonobo, sometimes you are the didler, and sometimes you are the diddlee

Of course to see Chimp warfare one only has to travel to Bakersfield.

No hard core research necessary just a trip up 99.

Having worked with Monkeys in the past I can tell you that you don't want any part of the fighting or the diddling. Monkeys are smelly, foul tempered beasties. I don't know what that Goodall chick did to get in with them but from what Larson said, it doesn't sound pretty.

I was going to make wry comments on bonobo's. The world would of been a very different place if we evolved from them. Serious conflicts resolved by hanging upside down from a tree and belting the other bloke with your willy. I can see it now. Down the pub and some drunk fool is getting in your face…"Oi! you, me, tree branch NOW!"

Allen, _Constant Battles_ is a very good book, thanks for putting me onto it. Lawrence H. Keeley _War Before Civilization_ is also fascinating, and now a friend has me reading Michael Shermer _The Science of Good & Evil_. I'm starting to think I've found a new ideology. Must…resist…the urge…to explain…everything…resist…

Oh heck, how much harm can I do if I commit to evolutionary ethics?

Oh and Allen, Scurvy, I think our human species has the full potential of both chimp and bonobo, and much more besides. If we're more violent than bonobos, we're also a lot sexier than chimps.

That's not hard. There is a reason that strippers don't throw poop at you.

Ape shall not kill ape.

Get your hands of me you stinking ape ,this to a Chimpanzee
Get your bleep bleep of me you stinking ape, this to a Bonobo

[ I can see it now. Down the pub and some drunk fool is getting in your face…"Oi! you, me, tree branch NOW!"]

LOL!

"Can anyone give me a reason not to trust this analogy?"

Truthfully, I think we are better at killing than the chimps. I think we have always been better at getting rid of competition, from the very start.

That is what I choose to believe. Otherwise, I risk having some very boring prehistoric and ancient wargames!!!

CC

I have often wondered what PETA and vegans have been reading when they insist that meat is not in our natural diet. Goodall's work has been around for years.

Scurvy. Indeed. The parking lot is getting too crowded.

Scott, there was a joint up the alley from the Rathskellar back in the 70's where the dancers … Never mind. I shouldn't have brought that up. Sorry.

"I have often wondered what PETA and vegans have been reading when they insist that meat is not in our natural diet."

Simple. Their own literature and propaganda. That's the problem with having blinders in anything you do in life.

CC

the arguement is not we were not designed to eat meat but we now DONT have to eat meat. Big difference.

That being said if ol god didnt want me to eat meat he never would of made bacon possible. If it hasnt suffered to get on my plate it just aint worth eating.

Aaah, bacon (drooling)!

CC

It took us a long time to get to the top of the food chain, I say we should enjoy it.
On a more serious note everything I have seen recently, states we never could have could have supported a big brain on a vegetarian diet.
Chimpanzees are nasty little brutes.

Or as a friend of mine stated upon viewing a salad bar at a steak house. "This is not food, this is what food eats!"

Could Chuck Norris take a chimp?

Could Walker take Philo Beddoe? I think the chimp and the orangutan would probably be off in a corner diddling.

Oh, Zippy: to chimps, we are not a lot sexier than chimps.

Allen

I'm a vegetarian with a distributed digestive system.

Chuck Norris has always put me in mind of a chimp, Allen. Something about those dim eyes peering out of that forest of facial hair. But I doubt an orangutan would respond to Chuck's romantic overtures. More likely the orang would kick Chuck's tail for getting fresh. Orangutans have the least sex drive of any of the great apes – one reason their species teeters on the brink of extinction, while ours lustily multiplies.

Cacique, I agree that people are more deadly killers than chimps. We're super-apes, who excell our cousins in every way. We're also hornier than the bonobos. Bonobos may diddle all day, but they never invented lingerie, gentlemen's clubs or 1-900-Dial-a-Porn.

There's plenty of scope to include the human sex drive in wargame scenarios, if we want to. Consider the scene in (my favorite movie) "Black Robe" where Annuka, um, distracts the attention of her Iroquois guard until she can get her hands on his warclub (no, really) and beat his brains out.

Or consider this passage from the Irish epic, the Tain Bo Cuailnge:

"'A man in a chariot advancing upon us,' cried the watcher in Emain Macha.

'He'll spill the blood of the whole court unless you see to him and send naked women to meet him.'

"Cuchulainn turned the left chariot-board toward Emain in insult, and he said:

"'I swear by the oath of Ulster's people that if a man isn't found to fight me, I'll spill the blood of everyone in the court.'

"'Naked women to him!' Conchobor said.

"The women of Emain went forth, with Mugain the wife of Conchobor mac Nesa at their head, and they stripped their breasts at him.

"'These are the warriors you must struggle with today,' Mugain said.

"He hid his countenance. Immediately the warriors of Emain seized him and plunged him in a vat of cold water. The vat burst asunder about him. Then he was thrust in another vat and it boiled with bubbles the size of fists. He was placed at last in a third vat and warmed it till its heat and cold were equal. Then he got out and Mugain the queen gave him a blue cloak to go around him with a silver brooch in it, and a hooded tunic. And he sat on Conchobor's knee, and that was his seat ever after."

Do you think these would make boring wargame scenarios, CC? Well, y'all play with your favorite toys, and I'll play with mine.

At least now we know we know where conservatives and liberals came from.