Demonic Males reading notes
Ch 1 – Paradise Lost
 4 modern great ape species: orangutans, gorillas, chimps, bonobos – part of human genetic line
 Looking for patterns of behavior, clues to human history/behavior
 Group of 8 chimps in Gombe Nat’l Park – 7 males, 1 female; crossed border zone ‘74
 Ambushed 1 chimp (Godi) from neighboring group, mortally wounded
 1st time chimp raid observed/recorded by humans
 Scientists also noticed sexual violence by chimps
 Females not picky; they only avoid maternal brothers – sometimes raped when they refuse
 Chimps use stone hammers and anvils to break open nuts, fish for termites with sticks
 Use other tools, implements, ‘clothing’
 Local traditions passed on across generations in local group
 Bush with bitter pith used to treat upset stomachs
 Hunter apes kill 4 monkeys
 Big male doles out meat to friends/allies and female mates
 Goodall and Kasakela chimps
 Within larger community, 2 subgroups
 Tension between nor’n (Kasekela) and sou’n (Kahama) groups
 Parties would patrol their territory
 Not just defensive – engaged in raids, sometimes deep into neighboring lands, did so
without feeding
 7 weeks after Godi, another attack – lone Kahama male the victim, crippled by attack
 1-by-1 Kahama males disappeared, ’77 only 1 adolescent male remained, then killed – end ’77
Kahama was no more
 Attackers and victims had previously been close companions
 Kasekela expanded into Kahama territory, met strangers from Kalande group – Kalande raids were
lethal
 Elsewhere in Africa there are observed chimp raids from neighboring groups – not a result of
artificial provisioning
 Prior to Goodall, people believed intraspecies killing didn’t exist, contradicted Darwinian selection
 War seen as uniquely human
 New evol’nary theory – selfish-gene theory of natural selection aka inclusive fitness theory
 Ultimate explanation of individual’s behavior considers only passing individual’s genes on
 Humans and chimps closely related
 4.5M yrs ago bipedal human ancestor with head like chimp’s
 Chimps closer to us than to gorillas
 Studies provide clear parallels between chimp and human behavior
 Particularly nature of their society – patrilineal, male-bonded communities
 Even ‘matrilineal’ villages are subunits of larger patrilineal whole
 Bonobos evolved from same ancestor as humans and chimps, yet peaceful and unaggressive
Ch 2 – Time Machine
 Apes were one group of species; hominids another
 Separate for about 10-15M yrs
 Human fossil record goes back 4.5M yrs
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 ‘Australopithecus afarensis’, “Lucy”, 3-3.8M yrs
 Woodland apes, similar to chimps, though more adapted to upright walking
Gorillas discovered by west’n science 1847
 Thomas Huxley used them as comparison with humans
 Apes are big primates with no tails
 Problem of evol’nary convergence – similar environments lead different species to become
more similar
 Solved by George Nuttall 1904 through blood tests – anti-bodies to blood from other
species
 Protein tests showed humans more similar to African apes than orangutans
’84 DNA tests by Sibley and Ahlquist
 Fit genetic strands from different species to see how well they fit
 Found that humans more similar to chimps than gorillas
 Found chimps more similar to humans than gorillas
 Chimps and bonobos most similar, then humans, gorillas, finally orangutans
Genetic relationships echo evol’nary history
 Estimate time of common ancestor by comparing genetic similarity with species with more
established fossil record
 Common ancestor of chimps and humans lived 4.9M yrs ago
Humans evolved relatively fast
 Homo sapiens only 150-230K yrs old; at least 4 other prehumen species
 Chimps and gorillas look very similar apart from size
 Common ancestor probably chimp-sized
 Unique combo of social characteristics: male-bonded communities and male-driven lethal
intergroup behavior
 Behaviors likely have common origin – suggests 5M yrs ago there were killer apes
Ch 3 – Roots
 Bipedal travel considered hallmark of hominids
 Bipedal motion possible for chimps, but awkward
 Allows humans to travel twice as far/day as chimps
 Find food, escape predators
 Though rainforest apes can venture into woodland for food, they can’t survive there long-term –
they need rainforests
 Colonizing woodlands required new food habit
 Roots most probable fallback food; nuts and seeds another possibility
 Kakbas – occasional granite outcrops found in African rainforests; dry, sometimes windy – plants
have to store water and nutrients
 Pygmies go there to find yams – a root – for carbs
 Baboons eat roots exclusively
 Digging vegetables from ground common for early hominids
 Tongo forest – unusually dry, fight for water important
 Sponging more efficient than dipping hands into pools
 Chimps here excited to find roots, treat them the way other chimps treat meat
 Particular type of root, very wet – source of water?
 5M yrs ago our ancestors crossed tropical rainforest/woodland divide
 Perhaps root-carrying lead woodland apes to adopt bipedalism
 2M years ago began shaping tools and relying more on meat
 Brains expanded toward human size 1.8M yrs ago
 Tamed fire 1.5M yrs ago
 Human language 150K yrs ago
 Agr 10K yrs ago
 Gunpowder 1K yrs ago, motor vehicles 100 yrs ago
 Still raided/warred with male-bonded communities, like chimps
Ch 4 – Raiding
 Human and chimp intraspecies killing a startling exception to animal norm
 Yanomamo a good comparison regarding warfare
 Relatively untouched by modern world
 Famous for their intense warfare
 Neighboring villages regarded as hostile or potentially hostile
 Ordinary life peaceful; well-fed through farming and hunting
 Avg village 90 members, related by male descent
 When balloons to about 300, there’s a fight and then a rift; divides along male kinship lines
 Intervillage warfare not over resource – sometimes accusations of sorcery or trivial argument,
often over women
 Try to solve conflicts with formal fighting games; if these don’t work, they move on to
warfare
 2 combat styles: luring guests to feast, then killing them when off guard; raiding parties
 Men who’ve killed undergo purifying ritual—40% of men have undergone such ritual
(unokai), 30% of Yanomamo men die violently
 Unokais have more women on average
 Approx. 30% of adult male chimps die from aggression in Gombe
 Common features with ape warfare
 Appetite for engagement
 Excited assembly of war party
 Stealthy raid
 Discovery of enemy and quick estimation of odds
 Gang-kill
 Primitive war relies on surprise
 Style, frequency, intensity of primitive war different among different peoples
 Even ‘peaceful’ people occasionally engage in raids
 Modern life generally less violent than in primitive societies
 Punishment for crime can lead to blood feuds
 Waorani aboriginals in Andes
 Retaliatory raids and blood feuds
 Balance of terror only broken by intervention by missionaries
Ch 5 – Paradise Imagined
 Notion that human evil is culturally acquired
 Romantic visions of South Sea paradise – Gauguin, Melville
 Marquesans in Polynesia
 Small communities separated by geography and perpetual suspicion and warfare
 Cannibalism and uninhibited sexuality
 If Marquesans represented pre-civilized humanity, then is humankind naturally evil?
 Gauguin’s Tahitian paradise devoid of men
 Nature v nurture a false dichotomy, Galton’s Error
 Mead’s Samoan expedition
 Claimed nurture more important than nature
 Adolescence easier in Samoa because sex regarded as natural, pleasurable
 Many observations didn’t match data, especially regarding promiscuity – Samoan obsession with
virginity
 Pre-Christian Samoan wars frequent and bloody
Ch 6 – A Question of Temperament
 Temperament is individual’s emotional reactions to situations in the real world
 Notion of violent male
 Wide belief that gender is culturally determined
 Most extreme example of women warriors the Dahomey elite guard
 Fighting members of king’s harem
 Women restricted from participating in war in most societies
 Using primitive weapons – disadvantaged by physical size/strength
 8% of Soviet soldiers in WWII women, though postwar military overwhelmingly male
 Amer’n men 8x more likely to commit violent crime
 Feminist debate over the issue of difference
 Patriarchy theory – gender difference an artifact of historical events, institutionalized inequality
 Patriarchy exists throughout the world, not just in Judeo-Chr’n West
 No anthropologist has yet found matriarchal society
 !Kung people of southern Africa closest to egalitarian society
 Men still do most of fighting and talking/leading
 Most fights initiated by men
 Wife-beating common
 Much evidence contrary to notion of patriarchy as strictly cultural
 Patriarchy detectable in chimp societies
 Not inevitable, but patriarchy emerges out of particular strategies that men (and women) invent
for achieving their emotional goals
Ch 7 – Relationship Violence
 Arnhem Zoo chimps
 Top 3 males (of 4) vied for alpha status
 When one deposed, other 2 would gang up against 1
 Nikkie and Yeroen allied against Luit, mortally wounded him one night
 ‘full’ humanity achieved 130K yrs ago; art first appeared 35K yrs ago
 Many primates ferociously defend their territory, usually done by females
 Aggression different from lethal chimp raids
 Once opponent gives in, they’re let go
 Only humans and chimps deliberately seek to kill their victim
 Orangutan rape
 Rape is ordinary part of species’ behavior
 Mostly done by adult male frozen in adolescent’s body
 Orangutans least social of the apes
 Only mother-infant pairs stable social units
 Adolescent females sexually curious, but once they have a baby, they lose interest in sex
 Females prefer large males: loud, aggressive, male markings
 Such males entirely intolerant of each other
 Sex with such males appears consensual
 Small males the size of adult females, but stay small
 Not noisy, don’t show signs of fighting, but they rape females
 Females tried to escape, but pursued, beaten, bitten, screamed
 One such male raped the cook at a research camp
 Rape appears to be a fertilization tactic for males who otherwise can’t attract a mate
 Big males cumbersome, slowed down by size; small males are faster, can keep up with
fleeing females
 Sexual coercion hypothesis
 Evolved male mechanism for control, for ultimate purpose of fertilization in the future
 Reminds female of male’s physical and sexual control over her
 Female’s safest future is to bond with rapist
 Rapes are 1/3 to ½ of all copulations
 Females lack social alliances to protect them from rape
 Chimpanzee battering
 Safety in numbers
 When male chimps reach adolescence, they tease adult female with mock aggression
 As he grows to their size, he acts brutally to each female until he dominates all of them
 Eventually female meekly approaches him
 Sexual coercion maybe the underlying reason
 Male can force female into consortship
 Female will often leave center of community when cycling, with just her offspring and a single
male, travel at edge of community’s range
 Gombe infants especially likely to be conceived during these consortships
 Consortships beneficial to male b/c he has no rivals for fatherhood
 Battering is case of predominantly male on female violence
 Instances of relationship violence
 Triggered by number of superficial contexts, underlying issue is domination/control
 Gorilla infanticide
 Gorillas for the most part quiet, relaxed, affectionate
 Stable family troops of silverback and harem of 3-4 females + offspring
 Females totally subservient to silverback
 Extra males wander alone or in bachelor troops
 1 in 7 infants killed through infanticide (37% of infant deaths)
 Most dangerous when breeding silverback dies
 Killer removes competitor’s genes
 Females may join killer’s troop, have next baby with him
 Some males kill existing silverback’s child to show their strength superiority over her current
mate
 Adult male apes are potential brutes
 Social system of particular species helps determine whether aggression pays off
 Relationship violence works best when animals intelligent enough to know each other’s
personalities
Ch 8 – The Price of Freedom
 Spotted hyenas live in female-dominated clans ruling their hunting grounds, fighting with neighbors
both in defense and in raids
 Understanding of animals revolutionized in 60s with growing field observations
 Intraspecies violence found to be much more prevalent
 Infanticide typical of many species of many kinds
 Using infant as food, accelerating mother’s sexual availability
 In species where infanticide is common, mating patterns reflect need for protection of offspring
 Killing adults done so usually only when it’s safe for killers – victim outnumbered
 Balanced power – no sense risking life to kill defeated rival
 Numbers unbalance power
 Killing is possible in party-gang species because it’s cheap
 Chimps and hyenas xenophobic, small parties, fight with neighbors; socially mirror opposites
 Chimps patriarchal; hyenas matriarchal
 Dominant sex lives and dies by its territory, subordinate sex can survive by emigrating (chimps)
 Among hyenas, strange females or males in conquered land driven off or killed – greater food
resources for clan
 Killing weakens neighbors, who are armed and dangerous rivals
 Human males aggressive because of party-gang traits: coalitionary bonds among males, male
dominion over expandable territory, variable party size
 Male aggressive because they’re the ones defending the territory; hyenas show that human
male violence doesn’t stem merely from maleness
 Cost-of-grouping theory
 Primate groups might grow infinitely large except for ecological costs
 Party-gang species cannot afford to live in permanent troops year-round
 Lifestyles centered on nutritious, but hard to find foods
 Adult males walk faster, tire less quickly because they don’t carry the infants – pushes toward
male-bonded system
Ch 9 – Legacies
 Muriqi monkey is extremely pacifistic species
 Females can’t be bullied, chose mates at will, mate in view of other males
 No concern for hierarchy in any way
 Males’ bodies not designed for fighting, any more so than females
 Human bodies don’t appear as dangerous when compared to other apes—slender, light bones, no
apparent bodily weapons
 Men slightly larger/more muscular than women, but don’t have fighting canine teeth
 Apes can fight with fists rather than teeth, and have long arms
 Fists can grasp invented weapons
 Selection has favored male upper-body strength
 While humans reason more than other animals, emotion is also involved in decision-making
 Chimp aggression looks rational in sense that it’s guided by complex assessment of
immediate context
 Reason generates list of possibilities; emotion choose from that list
 Pride the emotion that stands out for aggression
 High-ranking male becomes angry when lower-ranking male refuses to acknowledge him
 Male chimps organize life around issues of rank
 Wars tend to be rooted in competition for status
 Michael Howard: men fight because they discern or believe they discern dangers before
they become immediate
 Groups command extraordinary devotion
 People quickly form groups, favor those in their own group, ready to be aggressive to outsiders
 Morality based on intragroup loyalty worked in evol’nary history because it made groups more
effectively aggressive
 Males are demonic at unconscious and irrational levels
Ch 10 – The Gentle Ape
 Bonobos look very similar to chimps, only slightly smaller
 Bonobo calls sound more like birds; chimps have loud hoots and barks
 Reduced level of violence in relations between sexes, among males, and between communities
 Treatment of females
 No forced copulation, battering, or infanticide
 Social life similar to chimps—male kin group
 Sexes are codominant—dominance based on rank, not sex
 Sons stay with mothers throughout their live—living mothers usually means higher rank
 Females band together to help out a son; males never cooperate with each other
 Females develop close relationships with each other, including female-female sex (‘hoka-hoka’)
 Male bonobos fight less often, lower intensity
 Not as concerned about who gets to mate—less competitive
 Sex used for non-reproductive reasons
 Intercommunity relations
 Friendliness between 2 groups always initiated by females
 Intercommunity hoka-hoka
 Sometimes fighting, but not severe
 Bonobos don’t hunt monkeys
 Sometimes catch them, treat them like pets (albeit roughly)
Ch 11 – Message from the Southern Forests
 Bonobos have larger, more stable parties than chimps—more cohesive
 Difference in diets
 Party stability produced female power
 Bonobos indicate that human behavior didn’t have to turn out the way it did; it could have become
more peaceful
Ch 12 – Taming the Demon
 Patriotism the male defense of the community
 Defense of motherland—matriotism—essential among many primates
 Fighting done by females
 Done strictly in defense
 Male coalitionary groups often go beyond defense to include unprovoked aggression
 Males seek extraordinary power because it leads to extraordinary reproduction
 Sexual selection has favored male temperaments reveling in high-risk/high-gain ventures
 Female power isn’t simply a direct or inverted image of male power, but something completely
different
 While men have evolved to become demonic males, women have evolved to prefer demonic males
 Demonic male tends to best protect female from violence by others
 Women have been unable to develop effective counter-strategies against their demonic male
partners
 Institutionalized power versus individual power
Ch 13 – Kakama’s Doll
 Intelligent minds are responsible for new forms of aggression irrelevant to animals w/o good
memories and long-term social relationships