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Where have I seen this before.. Think.. Think..
This doesn't surprise me. We've known for decades that chimpanzees groups make war on other chimpanzee groups. Eight years is a long time, though.
edit: I'm rate-limited, so here's my answer to your comment of:
> I remember watching a nature documentary many years ago with exactly that scenario. The original group killed all the splitters.
Yeah, you're right. You probably remember this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War
It does seem like a very similar scenario, so now I'm confused.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems obvious to me - it's the combination of two ideas: 1. When competing for resources, killing your neighbour frees up resources, which you can take. Most species of animal and even plants do this to some extent. 2. By collaborating in a group, you can achieve more than individuals acting alone. This is the idea behind teams, companies, countries, etc. Combine the two ideas, and you get war.
> When competing for resources, killing your neighbour frees up resources, which you can take I don't think it's that straightforward. War is usually extremely wasteful for all involved, even the victor. Plus it puts the whole group at risk, if it spirals out of control.
We could hardly eat a fraction of what we eat today if we hadn't teamed up with microbes.
Here is the paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adz4944 - it's interesting. I noticed there was a respiratory epidemic that killed 25 chimps naturally quickly, one would imagine that would have quite a societal destabilizing impact?
My initial instinct is that they were just reestablishing social order among the group after such a dramatic event. Edit : I just read the paper and the discussion does a good job at laying out the entire landscape that contributed to the disruption. Pretty fascinating but also totally explainable due to the circumstances explained, which in and of itself is wildly fascinating!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would caution against the use of "murder" so loosely. Lions don't murder their prey. They kill their prey. Murder occurs when one entity with personhood intentional kills another entity with personhood, where personhood is rooted in the ability to comprehend reality (intellect) and the ability to make free choices among comprehended alternatives (free choice). "Murder" thus has a moral dimension that mere killing d…
Murder is a crime, homicide is the act. A lion doesn’t murder because it isn’t capable of breaking human law, but it can sure commit a homicide.
> If chimpanzees - one of the species closest to humans genetically - could do so without human constructs of religion, ethnicity and political beliefs, then "relational dynamics may play a larger causal role in human conflict than often assumed", they added. That's a weird thing to say. Studies of primitive tribes showed decades ago that they only seem to fight each other for a handful of reasons. Religion, ethnicit…
Why is it weird? Religion, ethnicity and political beliefs are argued all the time, even here on HN, as the reason for why shit happens.
Also, what is a "blood feud" in the primates? Chimps seeking revenge for the murder of another Chimp? Why was the first Chimp killed then? I think "blood feud" is a good start, but why? The paper sort of explores possible reasons.
> Supposedly academic anthropology had difficulties accepting these findings, especially the Yamomamö studies by Chagnon where he documented them going to war to steal each other's women, as it contradicted the popular idea of the noble savage.
I don't know what you mean, the "noble savage" is a discredited racist trope. Chagnon is worth considering but surely you're aware of the academic criticism of his work and methods? It wasn't because of the "noble savage", that would be a lazy dismissal of the criticism. He didn't have the final word on the topic.
The primatologist Richard Wrangam once advanced the theory that tribe vs. tribe conspecific homicides - what he called coalitionary killing - are an evolved trait that was selected for in primates by some kind of pro-homicide selection pressures in the ancestral environment (where homicide reliably grants an advantage to the expected relative gene frequency of the perpetrator's genes). I haven't kept up with biology…
It seems obvious to me - it's the combination of two ideas: 1. When competing for resources, killing your neighbour frees up resources, which you can take. Most species of animal and even plants do this to some extent. 2. By collaborating in a group, you can achieve more than individuals acting alone. This is the idea behind teams, companies, countries, etc. Combine the two ideas, and you get war.
If anything, I'd say plants do it more. Everything in the garden is trying to kill everything else.
This doesn't surprise me. We've known for decades that chimpanzees groups make war on other chimpanzee groups. Eight years is a long time, though.
I think the novelty here is that this was the same group which underwent a schism of sorts, and over the course of relatively few years became two completely separate groups antagonistic to each other. edit: I'm rate-limited, so here's my answer to your comment of: > I remember watching a nature documentary many years ago with exactly that scenario. The original group killed all the splitters. Yeah, you're right. You…
The primatologist Richard Wrangam once advanced the theory that tribe vs. tribe conspecific homicides - what he called coalitionary killing - are an evolved trait that was selected for in primates by some kind of pro-homicide selection pressures in the ancestral environment (where homicide reliably grants an advantage to the expected relative gene frequency of the perpetrator's genes). I haven't kept up with biology…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems obvious to me - it's the combination of two ideas: 1. When competing for resources, killing your neighbour frees up resources, which you can take. Most species of animal and even plants do this to some extent. 2. By collaborating in a group, you can achieve more than individuals acting alone. This is the idea behind teams, companies, countries, etc. Combine the two ideas, and you get war.
Yes, but war is worse for all parties generally. Lions murdering prey to eat is a stable equilibrium. Primates fighting each other is not. Murdering for acquisition of a resource is short term advantage. We are strongly, strongly evolutionary oriented away from 'murder' - it's the original sin. It's not something we even argue over. Murder = Bad. No disagreement across cultures. Murder = social cheating. No disagreem…
Personal murder is tightly controlled now. But this is a fairly recent development. In many periods it was tolerated under various forms, including slavery, blood feud, honour killings, and state-sanctioned murder as punishment, or political process.
It's only in the last few centuries that it's been prohibited, and the prohibition in practice is still partial in many countries. (See also, gun control.)
Tribal murder has been the norm for most of recorded history. There are very, very few periods in very, very few cultures where there was no tribal/factional murder in living memory, and far more where it was an expected occurrence.
And technology has always been close by. Throughout history, most tech has either been invented for military ends or significantly developed and refined for them.