Overview

The question of whether men are predisposed to war runs hot in contemporary scholarship and online discussion. Within this debate, chimpanzee behavior is often cited to explain humans' propensity for violence; the claim is that male chimpanzees kill outsiders because they are evolutionarily inclined, suggesting to some that people are too. The longstanding critique that killing is instead due to human disturbance has been pronounced dead and buried. In Chimpanzees, War, and History, R. Brian Ferguson challenges this consensus. By historically contextualizing every reported chimpanzee killing, Ferguson offers and empirically substantiates two hypotheses. Primarily, he provides detailed demonstration of the connection between human impact and intergroup killing of adult chimpanzees. Secondarily, he argues that killings within social groups reflect status conflicts, display violence against defenseless individuals, and payback killings of fallen status bullies. Ferguson also explains broad chimpanzee-bonobo differences in violence through constructed and transmitted social organizations consistent with new perspectives in evolutionary theory. He deconstructs efforts to illuminate human warfare via chimpanzee analogy, and provides an alternative anthropological theory grounded in Pan-human contrasts that is applicable to different types of warfare. Bringing readers on a journey through theoretical struggle and clashing ideas about chimpanzees, bonobos, and evolution, Ferguson opens new ground on the age-old question--are men born to kill?

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9780197506752

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Reviews

Many scholars view warfare as inevitable, with deep and ancient roots. But this is a myth, arising from cherry-picking data, confusing mobile and sedentary hunter-gatherers, and ignoring Westernized causes of war among indigenous peoples. Ferguson has led the debunking of this myth. In this superb, important book, he demolishes two of its building blocks-the supposed inevitability of chimpanzee proto-warfare, and our link to a supposed chimpanzee-like past. * Robert M. Sapolsky, John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Biology, Neurology, and Neurosurgery, Stanford University * Are men born to kill? Some have been quick to assume evolved killer tendencies exist in both humans and chimpanzees. Drawing upon a truly impressive body of evidence, R. Brian Ferguson reopens the case. He casts substantial doubt on the assertion that chimpanzees and humans have been selected to kill. Chimpanzees, War, and History is meticulously researched, convincingly argued, and fascinating to read as Ferguson unveils a very different explanation for why chimpanzees kill. * Douglas P. Fry, author of Beyond War and co-author of Nurturing Our Humanity * Debates about the evolutionary 'nature' of war and the innateness of male violence are ubiquitous. And our close cousins, the chimpanzees, are often at center stage. In a book sure to enrage some, and please others, R. Brian Ferguson offers a truly comprehensive presentation and analysis of the available data for chimpanzee warfare and violence and opines on its relation to humanity. Agree or disagree with the conclusions, there is no denying the value of this in-depth, historical, socio-ecological, and socio-cultural treatment of the chimpanzee wars. Ferguson furthers our understanding of war and violence in chimpanzees and beyond. * Agustin Fuentes, author of Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being * This is a magnificent work by the greatest living scholar of human warfare. Ferguson applies his intellect to chimpanzee warfare, and makes, in my consideration, an air-tight case AGAINST speaking of 'our chimp ancestors' when it comes to war. He has turned the standard view (given, for example, in Wrangham and Peterson's Demonic Males) upside down. He is convincing, and, moreover, he is entertaining. This is an important work not just for scholars of war and chimpanzee researchers, but for all people interested in human nature. A single word sums up my view: Magisterial! * Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of When Elephants Weep and The Assault on Truth * Are chimp intergroup killings the evolutionary precursors to human warfare? Has our evolution given us deadly proclivities? From R. Brian Ferguson, in this book, we get a firm and definitive no . Human killing and warfare cannot, he argues, be attributed to our primate heritage. A fine contribution to an ongoing debate. * Vernon Reynolds, Professor Emeritus, School of Anthropology, Oxford University * Men are not born to kill, but they can be cultivated to kill. Don't blame evolution.' The last line of Ferguson's incredible survey of studies of the higher primates, showing definitively that all the analogy-based talk of humans as the killer apes-those ferocious monsters at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey-is just that: talk. In an age when it seems that war will never end, understanding human nature and the distorting effects of culture is vital. There can be no better starting place than Chimpanzees, War, and History. * Michael Ruse, author of Why We Hate: Understanding the Roots of Human Conflict *

"Many scholars view warfare as inevitable, with deep and ancient roots. But this is a myth, arising from cherry-picking data, confusing mobile and sedentary hunter-gatherers, and ignoring Westernized causes of war among indigenous peoples. Ferguson has led the debunking of this myth. In this superb, important book, he demolishes two of its building blocksDLthe supposed inevitability of chimpanzee proto-warfare, and our link to a supposed chimpanzee-like past. * Robert M. Sapolsky, John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Biology, Neurology, and Neurosurgery, Stanford University * Are men born to kill? Some have been quick to assume evolved killer tendencies exist in both humans and chimpanzees. Drawing upon a truly impressive body of evidence, R. Brian Ferguson reopens the case. He casts substantial doubt on the assertion that chimpanzees and humans have been selected to kill. Chimpanzees, War, and History is meticulously researched, convincingly argued, and fascinating to read as Ferguson unveils a very different explanation for why chimpanzees kill. * Douglas P. Fry, author of Beyond War and co-author of Nurturing Our Humanity * Debates about the evolutionary 'nature' of war and the innateness of male violence are ubiquitous. And our close cousins, the chimpanzees, are often at center stage. In a book sure to enrage some, and please others, R. Brian Ferguson offers a truly comprehensive presentation and analysis of the available data for chimpanzee warfare and violence and opines on its relation to humanity. Agree or disagree with the conclusions, there is no denying the value of this in-depth, historical, socio-ecological, and socio-cultural treatment of the chimpanzee wars. Ferguson furthers our understanding of war and violence in chimpanzees and beyond. * Agust'in Fuentes, author of Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being * This is a magnificent work by the greatest living scholar of human warfare. Ferguson applies his intellect to chimpanzee warfare, and makes, in my consideration, an air-tight case AGAINST speaking of 'our chimp ancestors' when it comes to war. He has turned the standard view (given, for example, in Wrangham and Peterson's Demonic Males) upside down. He is convincing, and, moreover, he is entertaining. This is an important work not just for scholars of war and chimpanzee researchers, but for all people interested in human nature. A single word sums up my view: Magisterial! * Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of When Elephants Weep and The Assault on Truth * Are chimp intergroup killings the evolutionary precursors to human warfare? Has our evolution given us deadly proclivities? From R. Brian Ferguson, in this book, we get a firm and definitive ""no"". Human killing and warfare cannot, he argues, be attributed to our primate heritage. A fine contribution to an ongoing debate. * Vernon Reynolds, Professor Emeritus, School of Anthropology, Oxford University * Men are not born to kill, but they can be cultivated to kill. Don't blame evolution.' The last line of Ferguson's incredible survey of studies of the higher primates, showing definitively that all the analogy-based talk of humans as the killer apesDLthose ferocious monsters at the beginning of 2001: A Space OdysseyDLis just that: talk. In an age when it seems that war will never end, understanding human nature and the distorting effects of culture is vital. There can be no better starting place than Chimpanzees, War, and History. * Michael Ruse, author of Why We Hate: Understanding the Roots of Human Conflict *"

Author Information

R. Brian Ferguson is Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University-Newark. He has studied war since the 1970s and has developed a general theoretical perspective that encompasses ethnology, archaeology, biological anthropology, historical anthropology, and militarism in the world today. Ferguson engages both theoretical and contemporary issues of public concern and has published for specialist and public audiences.

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