Suchergebnisse

Abstract

Der Anthropologe, Affenforscher und Bestsellerautor beleuchtet menschliche Gewalt aus biologisch-evolutionärer Perspektive anders als "Gewalt und Mitgefühl" (naturwissenschaftlich, physiologisch, genetisch: R.M. Sapolsky, 2018), "Böse" (psychologisch, kriminalistisch: J. Shaw, 2018) oder "Gewalt" (historisch, politisch, psychologisch, statistisch: S. Pinker, 2011). Er belegt überzeugend, leicht lesbar, folgerichtig, gut strukturiert zwei Arten: Stark ausgeprägte aktive Gewalt, z.B. zur Jagd und reaktive, deren durch "Selbstdomestikation" nur noch schwache Ausprägung unser Sozialleben ermöglicht. So hätte weder Rousseau noch Hobbes "recht", der Mensch sei von Natur aus weder "gewalttätig" noch "friedlich", sondern stets beides. Interessante Erörterungen zu verändertem Körperbau bei Haustier und Mensch und historisch nützlicher Todesstrafe. Ausgezeichnete Erschliessung mit sprechendem Inhaltsverzeichnis, 40 Seiten Anmerkungen, 50 Seiten Literaturverzeichnis (ca. 600 Quellen), umfassendem Register. Der Preis für das gebundene Buch erscheint daher trotz bildlosem Text angemessen

▪ Abstract  In the 1970s, researchers provided the first detailed descriptions of intergroup conflict in chimpanzees. These observations stimulated numerous comparisons between chimpanzee violence and human warfare. Such comparisons have attracted three main objections: (a) The data supporting such comparisons are too few, (b) intergroup aggression is the result of artificial feeding by observers, and (c) chimpanzee data are irrelevant to understanding human warfare. Recent studies provide strong evidence against these criticisms. Data from the five long-term sites with neighboring groups show that intergroup aggression is a pervasive feature of chimpanzee societies, including sites where artificial feeding never took place. Recent studies have clarified questions about the functional goals and proximate mechanisms underlying intergroup aggression. Male chimpanzees compete with males in other groups over territory, food, and females, base their decisions to attack strangers on assessments of numerical strength, and strive for dominance over neighboring groups. Human males likewise compete over territory, food, and females and show a preference for low-risk attacks and intergroup dominance. Chimpanzee studies illustrate the promise of the behavioral biology approach for understanding and addressing the roots of violence in our own species.

Although chimpanzees and other primates are frequently used as models to reconstruct the behavior of extinct human ancestors, this is rarely done in a consistent or methodologically rigorous fashion. This volume brings together leading scholars to explore how knowledge about chimpanzees can be used to understand both what is unique about our own species, and how these traits evolved. The first part of the book makes the case that the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans was chimpanzee-like. This inference is based not on an assumption that chimpanzees are a model species, but on morphological, developmental, and genetic data, together with evidence from the hominin fossil record. The second part of the book provides the first detailed record of the similarities and differences between humans and chimpanzees, including those in social system, mating system, diet, social behavior, hunting, tool use, culture, cognition, and communication.--

Abstract
Punishments for norm violations are hypothesised to be a crucial component of the maintenance of cooperation in humans but are rarely studied from a comparative perspective. We investigated the degree to which punishment systems were correlated with socioecology and cultural history. We took data from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample database and coded ethnographic documents from a sample of 131 largely non-industrial societies. We recorded whether punishment for norm violations concerned adultery, religion, food, rape or war cowardice and whether sanctions were reputational, physical, material or execution. We used Bayesian phylogenetic regression modelling to test for culture-level covariation. We found little evidence of phylogenetic signals in evidence for punishment types, suggesting that punishment systems change relatively quickly over cultural evolutionary history. We found evidence that reputational punishment was associated with egalitarianism and the absence of food storage; material punishment was associated with the presence of food storage; physical punishment was moderately associated with greater dependence on hunting; and execution punishment was moderately associated with social stratification. Taken together, our results suggest that the role and kind of punishment vary both by the severity of the norm violation, but also by the specific socio-economic system of the society.