War and violence among chimpanzees

[mir]

Chimpanzees is regularly going on hunt on- and express violence against foreign chimpanzees, seemlessly without any motivation. After what I can understand - this is one great way to keep the huntingparty and the group together. Could we dare to draw similarities to humans and war? (Is war a way to keep a tribe together?) If this is true, so am this human instincts? I am just wondering - If this is instinct, and nature have made war to become a "great" uniter among social beings - Then is there a hope for peace-keepers at all?

[Mohit Pandey]

Originally Posted by mir

Chimpanzees is regularly going on hunt on- and express violence against foreign chimpanzees, seemlessly without any motivation. After what I can understand - this is one great way to keep the huntingparty and the group together. Could we dare to draw similarities to humans and war? (Is war a way to keep a tribe together?) If this is true, so am this human instincts? I am just wondering - If this is instinct, and nature have made war to become a "great" uniter among social beings - Then is there a hope for peace-keepers at all?

That was the time when we were in stone age. Now we are quite intelligent.
So, I think we should not wage war on the ground of increasing influence or empire. But we should always be ready for our defence. If all the people can unite against war, then there is some chance for peace on Earth. We all know about the consequences of the war and its effect on the people. But some people(often politicians) wage war because of their greed.

[InfiniteNow]

Not all lifeforms have been successful through sybiotic interaction. Some have prospered through imperialist and competetive demeanor. Even molecules eat other molecules... or group together to increase their likelihood of success.

The choice of hope or how to deal with these tendencies resides in each individual. Once enough of them make the same choice, those who are nonviolent outnumber those who are violent and change occurs.

Chimps, humans, molecules... the concept above applies across contexts.

[mir]

Originally Posted by Mohit Pandey

That was the time when we were in stone age. Now we are quite intelligent.

Are we really so intelligent as you want to believe? Gerilja-warfare, terrorgroups and deathsquadrons - has become increasingly common (at least from the picture of media, which is biased towards popularity). But my great concern is that poverty makes the life hard for an increasing number of people in the world: A great motivation for drastic actions - Like war. You must concider that the culture in the the Western countries (europe and north-america) is no way comparable to culture in the south and east - Its the west who have all the influence, but the people in the west is merely a minority if you look at the world population. So the west is not a picture of the modern human being. The common human being in the world is poor and he or she believe in God or Allah.

Intelligence depends upon two things: A good diet and education. If you use all your life to raise kids and get enough money for food and shelter, your brain is not focused on the latest CNN-news. Not on the latest findings in chemistry either. The brain is not well-trained for logically thinking. Old religion is the guidance of poor people (the way the ancestors lived 200 years ago). Not the human rights or the Red Cross'es seven principles.

[mir]

Originally Posted by InfiniteNow

The choice of hope or how to deal with these tendencies resides in each individual. Once enough of them make the same choice, those who are nonviolent outnumber those who are violent and change occurs.

This depends on culture, or more exact: the Western culture (the human rights). But so few people (the majority and the ordinary modern human) in the world have the freedom (which depends on the country they live in) to take actions beyond the common religious or moral belief.

Morale might be a good keyword in considering chimpanzee versus human behaviour. Have monkeys morale? Why shouldnt them? Do we need intelligence to have morale (or religion)? Might violence be good morale?

[mir]

Just to add to my thread:
There is another behaviour that keeps a group together. It happens frquently among bonobo-chimpanzees: Namely sex :-)

So I might have wrong - Humans aint violent by nature. We might be more related to Bonobo-chimpanzees?

[HydrogenBond]

Most preditor type animals are territorial. They sort of own and guard a track of land, which is used and needed for their survival. They will try to scare away or eat invaders to assure survival. Animals, like chimps and humans are social animals that work well in teams. The tracks of land they defend, are against both solitary preditor animals, as well as against other teams of similar animals. As the teams get bigger due to breeding and plentiful food, they need increasing amounts of territory for the team to survive. The result is territory expansion that begins to overlap territories held by other teams. Eventually, shear numbers on one team begins to overwelm the instinctive defensive strength of the home team. The home team responds with innovations such as clubs and other simple weapons of war. The rest is history.

With the invention of higher culture about 6000-10,000 years ago, the needs of the human teams increased beyond food, to all those things needed to support culture and prestige. This required more land as well as specific lands for resource needs. The result was increasing appetites, needs and sophisication leading to increasing scale warfare.

Unlike social preditors like wolves, chimps and lions which seem to peak out in small groups, thereby only requiring moderate amounts of land, human are able to keep on expanding because of culture. Fortunarely for nature, many strong teams form, causing a forced restriction on unconstrained expansion. The necessary result was the need to develop strategies to support larger populations on less land, leading to higher levels of techincal and social sophistication.