Social Development and Weapons Propelled Human Achievement - NYTimes.com - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...15humans.html
social development weapons human achievement evolution society learning innovation
![](/images/link.gif)
-
what was the prime mover, the dislodged stone that set this eventful cascade in motion? It was, perhaps, the invention of weapons — an event that let human ancestors escape the brutal tyranny of the alpha male that dominated ape societies.
-
The two principal traits that underlie the human evolutionary success, in Dr. Hill’s view, are the unusual ability of nonrelatives to cooperate — in almost all other species, only closely related individuals will help each other — and social learning, the ability to copy and learn from what others are doing. A large social network can generate knowledge and adopt innovations far more easily than a cluster of small, hostile groups constantly at war with each other, the default state of chimpanzee society.
-
the answer to how humans became unique lies in exploring how human societies first split away from those of apes.
- ...5 more annotations...
-
How did a chimplike society ever give rise to the egalitarian, largely monogamous structure of hunter-gatherer groups?
-
Dr. Chapais sees the transition as a series of accidents, each of which let natural selection exploit new opportunities. Early humans began to walk on two legs because it was a more efficient way of getting around than knuckle-walking, the chimps’ method. But that happened to leave the hands free. Now they could gesture, or make tools.
-
As soon as all males were armed, the cost of monopolizing a large number of females became a lot higher. In the incipient hominid society, females became allocated to males more equally. General polygyny became the rule, then general monogamy.
-
With only one mate, for the most part, a male had an incentive to guard her from other males to protect his paternity.