So wait - after a respiratory virus, let's call it SARS-C, that killed > 10% (25/200 = 12.5%) of their population, they split into two major groups that are now at each other's throats, when before they had a generally-ok alliance / relationship?
The primatologist Richard Wrangam once advanced the theory that tribe vs. tribe conspecific homicides - what he called coalitionary killing - are an evolved trait that was selected for in primates by some kind of pro-homicide selection pressures in the ancestral environment (where homicide reliably grants an advantage to the expected relative gene frequency of the perpetrator's genes).
I haven't kept up with biology for years and don't know what the current consensus on the topic is but it's interesting to consider if some environments naturally promote the unlucky inhabitants to harm each other.
Back in the old days people were much more unabashed about such things. What's the purpose of your very small collection of city states? Obviously to expand, and smash any neighboring states. If you succeed, kill all the men and take their women as slaves. This was much of civilization for a long time.
It seems obvious to me - it's the combination of two ideas:
1. When competing for resources, killing your neighbour frees up resources, which you can take. Most species of animal and even plants do this to some extent.
2. By collaborating in a group, you can achieve more than individuals acting alone. This is the idea behind teams, companies, countries, etc.
It's definitely not obvious, given that many, many gregarious species may certainly have inter-group clashes and skirmishes at territory boundaries but no full-scale war. Animals in general avoid violence between conspecifics, for the obvious reason that it's rarely worth the risk of being hurt unless you're very sure you're going to win. Dying for your group is something you almost never see outside eusocial species. Never mind dying in your prime reproductive age!
Lions murdering prey to eat is a stable equilibrium.
Primates fighting each other is not.
Murdering for acquisition of a resource is short term advantage.
We are strongly, strongly evolutionary oriented away from 'murder' - it's the original sin. It's not something we even argue over. Murder = Bad. No disagreement across cultures. Murder = social cheating. No disagreement there either.
Or put another way - the 'self' can gain advantage with murder, but the group and species probably will pay for it long term.
I wonder if there are just things that species really have to learn over and over, particularly things like 'active deconfliction' etc..
> When competing for resources, killing your neighbour frees up resources, which you can take. Most species of animal and even plants do this to some extent.
If anything, I'd say plants do it more. Everything in the garden is trying to kill everything else.
> When competing for resources, killing your neighbour frees up resources, which you can take
I don't think it's that straightforward. War is usually extremely wasteful for all involved, even the victor. Plus it puts the whole group at risk, if it spirals out of control.
I’m trying to find the source, but I remember a primatologist claiming that humans and chimpanzees are the only two species that embark on genocide. Not being satisfied with simply defeating the enemy, but actively hunting them down to ensure they can’t harm you again. In other words, precluding retreat. (Which creates its own game-theoretical backlash: never retreat.)
Evidence is limited but orcas might also do that to great white sharks. The orcas seem to sometimes work together to exterminate sharks from an area in a way that goes beyond just hunting them for food.
I noticed there was a respiratory epidemic that killed 25 chimps naturally quickly, one would imagine that would have quite a societal destabilizing impact?
> a respiratory epidemic that killed 25 chimps naturally quickly, one would imagine that would have quite a societal destabilizing impact?
there were several seemingly destabilizing factors, sort of a perfect storm, each contributing to further disconnect and polarization.
the group grew too large (and displaced other groups), but then ended competing for the best food among themselves, and having trouble socializing and bonding in such a large group.
subgroups forming, first fluid but eventually creating a split
loss of older alpha males exacerbating competition between males
loss of the few individuals that still maintained some relationship with the other group (the last one doing so actually died in that epidemic while the split was already well underway)
it is indeed an amazing read. my take away is that the root cause was mainly the group becoming too large, this affected socialization and cohesion, and thus the group was unable to cope with everything that came after.
My initial instinct is that they were just reestablishing social order among the group after such a dramatic event.
Edit : I just read the paper and the discussion does a good job at laying out the entire landscape that contributed to the disruption. Pretty fascinating but also totally explainable due to the circumstances explained, which in and of itself is wildly fascinating!
Sudden power vacuums are often filled by the most opportunistic individuals in human culture. People who are frequently more concerned with personal gain over the collective well-being of the group. It's why assassinating heads of state usually just makes the situation worse.
Just like in human analyses of geopolitical situations, the explanations that rely on broad abstractions of human nature or resource competition and paint a teleological narrative always end up breaking down when you do a deep dive into the history and specific circumstances. When you get into the nitty gritty of every unique geopolitical situation it's actually much more difficult to pull out a generalizable lesson imo. At some point we have to accept that we can't cross the same river twice
I think some of the individuals who died were key in linking the two groups (they were "the glue" that prevented disruptive aggression), and after they were gone, the split cemented and later turned into aggression.
I wonder if chimps are sophisticated enough to believe in omens? Perhaps they saw the sudden deaths are some sort of sign that the established structure was weak or immoral.
I could imagine if you where friends with someone and a bunch of their friends suddenly and mysteriously died, personally, I wouldn't kill that friend, but I might call the cops.
I hope nobody decides to violate the prime directive and take sides in the chimp war.
To the extent that they have good memory, they live in a world of finite resources, and their behavior was shaped by the forces of game theory as applied to tribes, this is more or less inevitable. You can read that as defeatism or just math. We can't overcome the force of game theory, but we can make it work for us by making our transactions increasingly transparent and repeatable, so that cooperation is more successful than defection.
Game theory isn't a force. It's just one way of modeling behavior through one sense of rationality, and it rarely maps neatly onto actual human behavior.
It may be easier to think of evolution as the force, and game theory strongly influencing the fitness test. Those who play the games of mating and predator/prey more optimally reproduce more. We descend from billions of generations of the winners.
Prime directive doesn't apply because they are part of our home planet. Our actions or in-actions can improve or worsen their living conditions. Their natural world is gone anyway. We've changed it already.
> To the extent that they have good memory, they live in a world of finite resources, and their behavior was shaped by the forces of game theory as applied to tribes, this is more or less inevitable. You can read that as defeatism or just math. We can't overcome the force of game theory, but we can make it work for us by making our transactions increasingly transparent and repeatable, so that cooperation is more successful than defection.
Note that the conclusions of the paper, while acknowledging the problem of access to resources, are different. They also do not conclude that this is "more or less inevitable":
> The lethal aggression that followed the fission at Ngogo informs models of intergroup conflict. All observed attacks were initiated by the numerically smaller Western group, contradicting simple imbalance-of-power models that predict an advantage for larger groups. Persistent offensive success by Western males suggests that cohesion supported by enduring relationships can outweigh numeric disadvantage. Our observations are also relevant for predictions from parochial altruism. Because cohesion among the Western cluster preceded overt hostility, external threats may be unnecessary to foster cooperation. Cohesion among members of the wider Ngogo group, however, may have weakened when external threats from adjacent groups decreased after territorial expansion in 2009.
and
> This study encourages a reevaluation of current models of human collective violence. If chimpanzee groups can polarize, split, and engage in lethal aggression without human-type cultural markers, then relational dynamics may play a larger causal role in human conflict than often assumed. Cultural traits remain essential for large-scale cooperation, but many conflicts may originate in the breakdown of interpersonal relationships rather than in entrenched ethnic or ideological divisions. It is tempting to attribute polarization and war that occur in humans today to ethnic, religious, or political divisions. Focusing entirely on these cultural factors, however, overlooks social processes that shape human behavior—processes also present in one of our closest animal relatives. In some cases, it may be in the small, daily acts of reconciliation and reunion between individuals that we find opportunities for peace.
Which sounds kinda hopeful!
My own observations is that the preconditions for the split that led to open warfare between the two Chimp groups was:
1. The nonviolent (illness) death of a few key individuals that linked both groups, and...
2. The complete stop of interbreeding. Once the two groups stopped interbreeding, the split was finalized and they became truly hostile.
Stretching this a bit, it makes me think of those (usually white supremacists) who claim "multiculturalism" is to blame for all the world's problems, and if only every ethnic or religious group stayed in their lane and didn't mix with the other, we could all live in peace. But it seems to me the lesson from this paper is that this (isolating us in separate groups) would make the split complete enough that we would decisively start butchering each other.
If anyone is interested in going more in-depth on this, there's a four episode documentary series on Netflix called Chimp Empire [1]. I just saw it last week and it's fascinating stuff. You get to know the individual chimps in-depth (they all have names) and get to see conflicts in this "civil war" unfold. Plus I learned a lot about social and "political" dynamics among chimps.
There's also the 1,5h documentary Rise of the Warrior Apes which is sort of a "prequel" to Chimp Empire. It was filmed over a period of 20 years in the same location and documents how the researches originally came upon this unusual chimpanzee tribe. The production values are not nearly as polished as in Chimp Empire but in my opinion it was still an interesting watch if you find this kind of stuff fascinating. The researchers themselves talk a lot in this.
For those of us who are unlikely to make time to watch a 4-part documentary, are there any particular lessons about social/political dynamics that you learned that stuck out to you or felt particularly prescient?
> For those of us who are unlikely to make time to watch a 4-part documentary, are there any particular lessons about social/political dynamics that you learned that stuck out to you or felt particularly prescient?
I watched the entire 4-part documentary and loved it. In general the series gives you a raw look into the a-b-c's of primate politics. Chimps just like us and the rest of our ape cousins are preoccupied with hierarchy, status and accumulation of resources which guides every single action they take from birth until death.
What is different about Chimp Empire is that it is presented in a much more compelling way relative to the standard (dry) academic literature or popular science texts (i.e. Chimpanzee Politics by Frans De Waal).
Even after finishing the documentary I've found myself connecting events in the series with current geopolitcal issues. One event in the show that stuck out to me was a battle between two rival camps over a single fruit tree. Gaining control over that tree was a critical factor in determining the survival of the two rival groups. To us, post neolithic age and industrial revolution, it's an amusing watch. But to chimps, a single fruit tree in their territory is everything. It is life and death. While there's a difference in scale, the same underlying motivations - in my mind - currently explain what is going in the middle east and eastern europe.
Also, the documentary is great case study in how, loneliness and introversion can be absolutely lethal in the wild. The politics in each Chimp community can get quite toxic but participation isn't really optional. You either play the game or quite literally die.
If you really want a good intellectual exercise, I recommend watching Chimp Empire in its entirety and then The Expanse right after. Try to tell me they are not the same show :P
There's a post that says illness killed some important leaders (who were friends) on both sides of the camp. Once these leaders died, the two groups realized they didn't have anything in common with each other so they're fighting.
There are far too many documentaries that omit or slant information for documentaries as a category to be considered informational. Especially ones on Netflix.
I think the novelty here is that this was the same group which underwent a schism of sorts, and over the course of relatively few years became two completely separate groups antagonistic to each other.
edit: I'm rate-limited, so here's my answer to your comment of:
> I remember watching a nature documentary many years ago with exactly that scenario. The original group killed all the splitters.
Say that we, primates, have evolved some sort of social structure that values and depends on ‘us’, and antagonises ‘others’.
That would explain that sort of behaviour as well as our human shenanigans (country/religion/“race”/politics/football team/etc).
Perhaps some groups are biased towards ‘us’ (i.e. more accepting), and other groups are biased towards ‘other’ (i.e. more hostile).
The death of a few key individuals can absolutely remove all the commonality between two groups. Seems to have happened with those chimpanzees, and happens all the time in human groups.
It is sad though that this is happening, on top of all the shit that is going on.
The Western Ngogo are clearly trying to spread the values of democracy and equality to the backwards Central Ngogo society that also happens to also have resources important to the Western Ngogo
Central Ngogo has complained that every time it's tried to democratically elect a leader, that leader had been overthrown by Western Ngogo—creating an environment that is hostile to anyone other than WN having a so-called "democracy". CN has also criticized WN as ultimately just being "oligarchy with extra steps" and creating an empire that requires the subjugation of CN.
> If chimpanzees - one of the species closest to humans genetically - could do so without human constructs of religion, ethnicity and political beliefs, then "relational dynamics may play a larger causal role in human conflict than often assumed", they added.
That's a weird thing to say. Studies of primitive tribes showed decades ago that they only seem to fight each other for a handful of reasons. Religion, ethnicity and political beliefs aren't among them. Fighting over resources, women and blood feuds are.
Supposedly academic anthropology had difficulties accepting these findings, especially the Yamomamö studies by Chagnon where he documented them going to war to steal each other's women, as it contradicted the popular idea of the noble savage.
It makes sense. Convincing someone to go kill other people so they can take their stuff and rape their women isn't that hard. The personal benefit is front and center, it aligns easily with human nature.
Convincing someone to go kill other people so you can get their stuff is a lot harder. You have to get creative with the reasons, and even then you had better be giving those fighters their cut unless you've really managed to get them fully committed to whatever excuse to made up. It helps a lot if there is some kind of wedge issue you can exploit, which is where religion and ethnicity come in handy.
It's probably all about genes: my genes say I have to kill you now because you aren't spreading my genes. This might be a component of human ethnic violence, but not a strong one, since we can think thoughts, such as that would be a shitty thing to do.
> That's a weird thing to say. Studies of primitive tribes showed decades ago that they only seem to fight each other for a handful of reasons. Religion, ethnicity and political beliefs aren't among them. Fighting over resources, women and blood feuds are.
Why is it weird? Religion, ethnicity and political beliefs are argued all the time, even here on HN, as the reason for why shit happens.
Also, what is a "blood feud" in the primates? Chimps seeking revenge for the murder of another Chimp? Why was the first Chimp killed then? I think "blood feud" is a good start, but why? The paper sort of explores possible reasons.
> Supposedly academic anthropology had difficulties accepting these findings, especially the Yamomamö studies by Chagnon where he documented them going to war to steal each other's women, as it contradicted the popular idea of the noble savage.
I don't know what you mean, the "noble savage" is a discredited racist trope. Chagnon is worth considering but surely you're aware of the academic criticism of his work and methods? It wasn't because of the "noble savage", that would be a lazy dismissal of the criticism. He didn't have the final word on the topic.
No religion other than Christianity and Islam fought for a man made religion. They haven't slowed down after wiping out thousands of cultures and tribes
"The third factor was the deaths of 25 chimpanzees, including four adult males and 10 adult females, as a result of a respiratory epidemic, in 2017, a year before the final separation. One of the adult males who died was "among the last individuals to connect the groups", the research paper said."
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There's a theory that humans (and likely chimps as well) have a cognitive upper limit to the number of stable relationships they can maintain (i.e. Dunbar's number[1]). Also, there is the idea that most people have nowhere near that many relationships, but some people are super connectors. They know everyone in the community and tie it together, even if the average member of the community doesn't know most other people in it.
It almost sounds like, before the conflict, the tribe was at or a little beyond their "Dunbar's number"[1] and then several of their super-connectors died. Suddenly the community, despite its losses, was too big and not connected enough to remain stable. Minor conflicts arose, individuals started choosing sides, and there wasn't anyone with connections to both sides able to bridge the gap and calm things down.
I'm not a sociologist/anthropologist/etc., so I'm probably woefully misinformed and spewing nonsense here. I'd love to hear what someone up to date on this stuff thinks actually happened.
> If chimpanzees - one of the species closest to humans genetically
People seem to talk a lot about chimpanzees and their closeness to humans, and comparative behavior, but a lot less is said about the other closest species, the bonobo monkey.
Their society is very peaceful and things like infanticide, a popular pastime in chimpanzee society, is absent among bonobos.
The most notable trait of bonobos is that everyone has sex with every one else, constantly, (almost) regardless of relation, gender or age.
You'd think humans could learn much from such a peaceful species, but most people don't even know they exist.
fascinating. so if humans are more like chimpanzees than not, then we are a group based animal that distrusts/fears other groups unless some strong leaders are able to bridge the gap? its an over simplification but then you have to ask, what defines a group? language? location? appearance? religion? wrt politicians, their job should be (amongst other things), bridging gaps between groups, instead of what we see going on in the world now.
I always wondered when Planet of the Apes would begin. We can see it now:
a) Chimpanzees going to war.
b) Humans ending humans.
Both is presently in the making, if one looks at the geopolitical scale and looks at damage caused by drones; a) is probably not yet full scale. Chimpanzees may be better diplomats than humans.
8 million years is a drop on the geological time scale, but on a species scale that’s an eternity. We went from Neanderthals and Denisovans to sapiens in a fraction of that time.
Animals have inner lives as well. They have their own thoughts and feelings. And sometimes those feelings are anger and their thought is to kick the shit out of those assholes over there.
Fuck man, my cats occasionally scrap with each other. I know it's not anything they've learned from the people in my house because we don't go full Wrestlemania on each other.
So wait - after a respiratory virus, let's call it SARS-C, that killed > 10% (25/200 = 12.5%) of their population, they split into two major groups that are now at each other's throats, when before they had a generally-ok alliance / relationship?
Where have I seen this before.. Think.. Think..
I mean, it's understandable; having to endure a lockdown _with_ Doordash was really rough on our civilization.
Ya, imagine not being able to pay for the doordash because your job was nonessential. Real rough indeed being hungry.
The primatologist Richard Wrangam once advanced the theory that tribe vs. tribe conspecific homicides - what he called coalitionary killing - are an evolved trait that was selected for in primates by some kind of pro-homicide selection pressures in the ancestral environment (where homicide reliably grants an advantage to the expected relative gene frequency of the perpetrator's genes).
I haven't kept up with biology for years and don't know what the current consensus on the topic is but it's interesting to consider if some environments naturally promote the unlucky inhabitants to harm each other.
Back in the old days people were much more unabashed about such things. What's the purpose of your very small collection of city states? Obviously to expand, and smash any neighboring states. If you succeed, kill all the men and take their women as slaves. This was much of civilization for a long time.
It seems obvious to me - it's the combination of two ideas:
1. When competing for resources, killing your neighbour frees up resources, which you can take. Most species of animal and even plants do this to some extent.
2. By collaborating in a group, you can achieve more than individuals acting alone. This is the idea behind teams, companies, countries, etc.
Combine the two ideas, and you get war.
It's definitely not obvious, given that many, many gregarious species may certainly have inter-group clashes and skirmishes at territory boundaries but no full-scale war. Animals in general avoid violence between conspecifics, for the obvious reason that it's rarely worth the risk of being hurt unless you're very sure you're going to win. Dying for your group is something you almost never see outside eusocial species. Never mind dying in your prime reproductive age!
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Yes, but war is worse for all parties generally.
Lions murdering prey to eat is a stable equilibrium.
Primates fighting each other is not.
Murdering for acquisition of a resource is short term advantage.
We are strongly, strongly evolutionary oriented away from 'murder' - it's the original sin. It's not something we even argue over. Murder = Bad. No disagreement across cultures. Murder = social cheating. No disagreement there either.
Or put another way - the 'self' can gain advantage with murder, but the group and species probably will pay for it long term.
I wonder if there are just things that species really have to learn over and over, particularly things like 'active deconfliction' etc..
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> When competing for resources, killing your neighbour frees up resources, which you can take. Most species of animal and even plants do this to some extent.
If anything, I'd say plants do it more. Everything in the garden is trying to kill everything else.
> When competing for resources, killing your neighbour frees up resources, which you can take
I don't think it's that straightforward. War is usually extremely wasteful for all involved, even the victor. Plus it puts the whole group at risk, if it spirals out of control.
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I’m trying to find the source, but I remember a primatologist claiming that humans and chimpanzees are the only two species that embark on genocide. Not being satisfied with simply defeating the enemy, but actively hunting them down to ensure they can’t harm you again. In other words, precluding retreat. (Which creates its own game-theoretical backlash: never retreat.)
Evidence is limited but orcas might also do that to great white sharks. The orcas seem to sometimes work together to exterminate sharks from an area in a way that goes beyond just hunting them for food.
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Here is the paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adz4944 - it's interesting.
I noticed there was a respiratory epidemic that killed 25 chimps naturally quickly, one would imagine that would have quite a societal destabilizing impact?
> a respiratory epidemic that killed 25 chimps naturally quickly, one would imagine that would have quite a societal destabilizing impact?
there were several seemingly destabilizing factors, sort of a perfect storm, each contributing to further disconnect and polarization.
the group grew too large (and displaced other groups), but then ended competing for the best food among themselves, and having trouble socializing and bonding in such a large group.
subgroups forming, first fluid but eventually creating a split
loss of older alpha males exacerbating competition between males
loss of the few individuals that still maintained some relationship with the other group (the last one doing so actually died in that epidemic while the split was already well underway)
it is indeed an amazing read. my take away is that the root cause was mainly the group becoming too large, this affected socialization and cohesion, and thus the group was unable to cope with everything that came after.
My initial instinct is that they were just reestablishing social order among the group after such a dramatic event.
Edit : I just read the paper and the discussion does a good job at laying out the entire landscape that contributed to the disruption. Pretty fascinating but also totally explainable due to the circumstances explained, which in and of itself is wildly fascinating!
Sudden power vacuums are often filled by the most opportunistic individuals in human culture. People who are frequently more concerned with personal gain over the collective well-being of the group. It's why assassinating heads of state usually just makes the situation worse.
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Just like in human analyses of geopolitical situations, the explanations that rely on broad abstractions of human nature or resource competition and paint a teleological narrative always end up breaking down when you do a deep dive into the history and specific circumstances. When you get into the nitty gritty of every unique geopolitical situation it's actually much more difficult to pull out a generalizable lesson imo. At some point we have to accept that we can't cross the same river twice
I think some of the individuals who died were key in linking the two groups (they were "the glue" that prevented disruptive aggression), and after they were gone, the split cemented and later turned into aggression.
I wonder if chimps are sophisticated enough to believe in omens? Perhaps they saw the sudden deaths are some sort of sign that the established structure was weak or immoral.
I could imagine if you where friends with someone and a bunch of their friends suddenly and mysteriously died, personally, I wouldn't kill that friend, but I might call the cops.
I hope nobody decides to violate the prime directive and take sides in the chimp war.
To the extent that they have good memory, they live in a world of finite resources, and their behavior was shaped by the forces of game theory as applied to tribes, this is more or less inevitable. You can read that as defeatism or just math. We can't overcome the force of game theory, but we can make it work for us by making our transactions increasingly transparent and repeatable, so that cooperation is more successful than defection.
I'd suggest reading some David Graeber. Viewing everything through the lens of game theory, as if it was some physical law, is very much off the mark.
Great comment. Dawn of Everything changed a lot how I viewed early humanity.
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> We can't overcome the force of game theory
Game theory isn't a force. It's just one way of modeling behavior through one sense of rationality, and it rarely maps neatly onto actual human behavior.
It may be easier to think of evolution as the force, and game theory strongly influencing the fitness test. Those who play the games of mating and predator/prey more optimally reproduce more. We descend from billions of generations of the winners.
Prime directive doesn't apply because they are part of our home planet. Our actions or in-actions can improve or worsen their living conditions. Their natural world is gone anyway. We've changed it already.
That’s one way to look at it. It’s fairly common to view nature this way. I wonder where it comes from.
I remember the time, in some film I watched, researchers intervened to save penguins trapped in a crater. A holy moment that was.
> To the extent that they have good memory, they live in a world of finite resources, and their behavior was shaped by the forces of game theory as applied to tribes, this is more or less inevitable. You can read that as defeatism or just math. We can't overcome the force of game theory, but we can make it work for us by making our transactions increasingly transparent and repeatable, so that cooperation is more successful than defection.
Note that the conclusions of the paper, while acknowledging the problem of access to resources, are different. They also do not conclude that this is "more or less inevitable":
> The lethal aggression that followed the fission at Ngogo informs models of intergroup conflict. All observed attacks were initiated by the numerically smaller Western group, contradicting simple imbalance-of-power models that predict an advantage for larger groups. Persistent offensive success by Western males suggests that cohesion supported by enduring relationships can outweigh numeric disadvantage. Our observations are also relevant for predictions from parochial altruism. Because cohesion among the Western cluster preceded overt hostility, external threats may be unnecessary to foster cooperation. Cohesion among members of the wider Ngogo group, however, may have weakened when external threats from adjacent groups decreased after territorial expansion in 2009.
and
> This study encourages a reevaluation of current models of human collective violence. If chimpanzee groups can polarize, split, and engage in lethal aggression without human-type cultural markers, then relational dynamics may play a larger causal role in human conflict than often assumed. Cultural traits remain essential for large-scale cooperation, but many conflicts may originate in the breakdown of interpersonal relationships rather than in entrenched ethnic or ideological divisions. It is tempting to attribute polarization and war that occur in humans today to ethnic, religious, or political divisions. Focusing entirely on these cultural factors, however, overlooks social processes that shape human behavior—processes also present in one of our closest animal relatives. In some cases, it may be in the small, daily acts of reconciliation and reunion between individuals that we find opportunities for peace.
Which sounds kinda hopeful!
My own observations is that the preconditions for the split that led to open warfare between the two Chimp groups was:
1. The nonviolent (illness) death of a few key individuals that linked both groups, and...
2. The complete stop of interbreeding. Once the two groups stopped interbreeding, the split was finalized and they became truly hostile.
Stretching this a bit, it makes me think of those (usually white supremacists) who claim "multiculturalism" is to blame for all the world's problems, and if only every ethnic or religious group stayed in their lane and didn't mix with the other, we could all live in peace. But it seems to me the lesson from this paper is that this (isolating us in separate groups) would make the split complete enough that we would decisively start butchering each other.
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If anyone is interested in going more in-depth on this, there's a four episode documentary series on Netflix called Chimp Empire [1]. I just saw it last week and it's fascinating stuff. You get to know the individual chimps in-depth (they all have names) and get to see conflicts in this "civil war" unfold. Plus I learned a lot about social and "political" dynamics among chimps.
[1]: https://www.netflix.com/title/81311783
There's also the 1,5h documentary Rise of the Warrior Apes which is sort of a "prequel" to Chimp Empire. It was filmed over a period of 20 years in the same location and documents how the researches originally came upon this unusual chimpanzee tribe. The production values are not nearly as polished as in Chimp Empire but in my opinion it was still an interesting watch if you find this kind of stuff fascinating. The researchers themselves talk a lot in this.
For those of us who are unlikely to make time to watch a 4-part documentary, are there any particular lessons about social/political dynamics that you learned that stuck out to you or felt particularly prescient?
> For those of us who are unlikely to make time to watch a 4-part documentary, are there any particular lessons about social/political dynamics that you learned that stuck out to you or felt particularly prescient?
I watched the entire 4-part documentary and loved it. In general the series gives you a raw look into the a-b-c's of primate politics. Chimps just like us and the rest of our ape cousins are preoccupied with hierarchy, status and accumulation of resources which guides every single action they take from birth until death.
What is different about Chimp Empire is that it is presented in a much more compelling way relative to the standard (dry) academic literature or popular science texts (i.e. Chimpanzee Politics by Frans De Waal).
Even after finishing the documentary I've found myself connecting events in the series with current geopolitcal issues. One event in the show that stuck out to me was a battle between two rival camps over a single fruit tree. Gaining control over that tree was a critical factor in determining the survival of the two rival groups. To us, post neolithic age and industrial revolution, it's an amusing watch. But to chimps, a single fruit tree in their territory is everything. It is life and death. While there's a difference in scale, the same underlying motivations - in my mind - currently explain what is going in the middle east and eastern europe.
Also, the documentary is great case study in how, loneliness and introversion can be absolutely lethal in the wild. The politics in each Chimp community can get quite toxic but participation isn't really optional. You either play the game or quite literally die.
If you really want a good intellectual exercise, I recommend watching Chimp Empire in its entirety and then The Expanse right after. Try to tell me they are not the same show :P
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There's a post that says illness killed some important leaders (who were friends) on both sides of the camp. Once these leaders died, the two groups realized they didn't have anything in common with each other so they're fighting.
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I'm on the other end. Finally some content to watch before bed.
Love quiet documentary type things in that scenario.
Bonus if there's a lot of episodes.
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There are far too many documentaries that omit or slant information for documentaries as a category to be considered informational. Especially ones on Netflix.
Loved this series. It was tragic. The cycle of violence, trauma, isolation, male performance.
I haven't seen Chimp Empire, but it reminds me of the story of the Baboons where the alpha males died, and the entire society changed: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/teacher...
(It also features a very amusing photo at the top that makes it look like the subject is the biologist Robert Sapolsky.)
This is reality TV with animals. Like any reality TV show, the events and reactions are manipulated. I wouldn't put any credibility on this.
This doesn't surprise me. We've known for decades that chimpanzees groups make war on other chimpanzee groups. Eight years is a long time, though.
I think the novelty here is that this was the same group which underwent a schism of sorts, and over the course of relatively few years became two completely separate groups antagonistic to each other.
edit: I'm rate-limited, so here's my answer to your comment of:
> I remember watching a nature documentary many years ago with exactly that scenario. The original group killed all the splitters.
Yeah, you're right. You probably remember this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War
It does seem like a very similar scenario, so now I'm confused.
I remember watching a nature documentary many years ago with exactly that scenario. The original group killed all the splitters.
Damn, they've been polarized by social media too? Zuckerberg's greed knows no limits.
Sandel said he first noticed them polarising in June 2015.
i remember seeing the chimpanzee descend that escalator in 2015, back then everyone thought it was hilarious!
Say that we, primates, have evolved some sort of social structure that values and depends on ‘us’, and antagonises ‘others’.
That would explain that sort of behaviour as well as our human shenanigans (country/religion/“race”/politics/football team/etc).
Perhaps some groups are biased towards ‘us’ (i.e. more accepting), and other groups are biased towards ‘other’ (i.e. more hostile).
The death of a few key individuals can absolutely remove all the commonality between two groups. Seems to have happened with those chimpanzees, and happens all the time in human groups.
It is sad though that this is happening, on top of all the shit that is going on.
The book Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan is a revelation in how close human behaviour is to those of chimps.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61662.Shadows_of_Forgott...
So which side is fighting for our values?
I am siding with the group that opens bananas from the bottom.
Which side is the bottom?
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That depends on which side of "our values" you are talking about.
Are you orange team or green team?
negotiations on petrol rights still ongoing.
This got me thinking. Do chimpanzees try and mate with pre pubescent young or is that somehow nature gated?
The Western Ngogo are clearly trying to spread the values of democracy and equality to the backwards Central Ngogo society that also happens to also have resources important to the Western Ngogo
Central Ngogo has complained that every time it's tried to democratically elect a leader, that leader had been overthrown by Western Ngogo—creating an environment that is hostile to anyone other than WN having a so-called "democracy". CN has also criticized WN as ultimately just being "oligarchy with extra steps" and creating an empire that requires the subjugation of CN.
> If chimpanzees - one of the species closest to humans genetically - could do so without human constructs of religion, ethnicity and political beliefs, then "relational dynamics may play a larger causal role in human conflict than often assumed", they added.
That's a weird thing to say. Studies of primitive tribes showed decades ago that they only seem to fight each other for a handful of reasons. Religion, ethnicity and political beliefs aren't among them. Fighting over resources, women and blood feuds are.
Supposedly academic anthropology had difficulties accepting these findings, especially the Yamomamö studies by Chagnon where he documented them going to war to steal each other's women, as it contradicted the popular idea of the noble savage.
It makes sense. Convincing someone to go kill other people so they can take their stuff and rape their women isn't that hard. The personal benefit is front and center, it aligns easily with human nature.
Convincing someone to go kill other people so you can get their stuff is a lot harder. You have to get creative with the reasons, and even then you had better be giving those fighters their cut unless you've really managed to get them fully committed to whatever excuse to made up. It helps a lot if there is some kind of wedge issue you can exploit, which is where religion and ethnicity come in handy.
But... this isn't exactly news, is it?
We've known for decades that chimpanzees go to war, and during that war will happily slaughter each other.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War
It's probably all about genes: my genes say I have to kill you now because you aren't spreading my genes. This might be a component of human ethnic violence, but not a strong one, since we can think thoughts, such as that would be a shitty thing to do.
yeah but some people still think "imagine" is profound and real
> That's a weird thing to say. Studies of primitive tribes showed decades ago that they only seem to fight each other for a handful of reasons. Religion, ethnicity and political beliefs aren't among them. Fighting over resources, women and blood feuds are.
Why is it weird? Religion, ethnicity and political beliefs are argued all the time, even here on HN, as the reason for why shit happens.
Also, what is a "blood feud" in the primates? Chimps seeking revenge for the murder of another Chimp? Why was the first Chimp killed then? I think "blood feud" is a good start, but why? The paper sort of explores possible reasons.
> Supposedly academic anthropology had difficulties accepting these findings, especially the Yamomamö studies by Chagnon where he documented them going to war to steal each other's women, as it contradicted the popular idea of the noble savage.
I don't know what you mean, the "noble savage" is a discredited racist trope. Chagnon is worth considering but surely you're aware of the academic criticism of his work and methods? It wasn't because of the "noble savage", that would be a lazy dismissal of the criticism. He didn't have the final word on the topic.
No religion other than Christianity and Islam fought for a man made religion. They haven't slowed down after wiping out thousands of cultures and tribes
That's a pretty strong statement. You know the saying: strong statements require equally strong evidence.
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Any founders out there using AI to solve this? ;)
Google tried, but no apes were impressed with nano-scale bananas.
The apes were so angry about it they claude the researchers eyes out.
"The third factor was the deaths of 25 chimpanzees, including four adult males and 10 adult females, as a result of a respiratory epidemic, in 2017, a year before the final separation. One of the adult males who died was "among the last individuals to connect the groups", the research paper said."
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There's a theory that humans (and likely chimps as well) have a cognitive upper limit to the number of stable relationships they can maintain (i.e. Dunbar's number[1]). Also, there is the idea that most people have nowhere near that many relationships, but some people are super connectors. They know everyone in the community and tie it together, even if the average member of the community doesn't know most other people in it.
It almost sounds like, before the conflict, the tribe was at or a little beyond their "Dunbar's number"[1] and then several of their super-connectors died. Suddenly the community, despite its losses, was too big and not connected enough to remain stable. Minor conflicts arose, individuals started choosing sides, and there wasn't anyone with connections to both sides able to bridge the gap and calm things down.
I'm not a sociologist/anthropologist/etc., so I'm probably woefully misinformed and spewing nonsense here. I'd love to hear what someone up to date on this stuff thinks actually happened.
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[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number
I wonder if there is a spill over effect to other species/ ecosystems
we can send them some of that vim donation money
> ”Chimpanzees are “very territorial", and have "hostile interactions with those from other groups"”
So just like humans, then.
That's absolutely bananas!
> If chimpanzees - one of the species closest to humans genetically
People seem to talk a lot about chimpanzees and their closeness to humans, and comparative behavior, but a lot less is said about the other closest species, the bonobo monkey.
Their society is very peaceful and things like infanticide, a popular pastime in chimpanzee society, is absent among bonobos.
The most notable trait of bonobos is that everyone has sex with every one else, constantly, (almost) regardless of relation, gender or age.
You'd think humans could learn much from such a peaceful species, but most people don't even know they exist.
fascinating. so if humans are more like chimpanzees than not, then we are a group based animal that distrusts/fears other groups unless some strong leaders are able to bridge the gap? its an over simplification but then you have to ask, what defines a group? language? location? appearance? religion? wrt politicians, their job should be (amongst other things), bridging gaps between groups, instead of what we see going on in the world now.
I always wondered when Planet of the Apes would begin. We can see it now:
a) Chimpanzees going to war. b) Humans ending humans.
Both is presently in the making, if one looks at the geopolitical scale and looks at damage caused by drones; a) is probably not yet full scale. Chimpanzees may be better diplomats than humans.
They've been watching us and what we do to each other.
We both do it because chimps and humans shared a common ancestor only 8 million years ago.
No bonobo wars though
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8 million years is a drop on the geological time scale, but on a species scale that’s an eternity. We went from Neanderthals and Denisovans to sapiens in a fraction of that time.
That's a bit conceited.
Animals have inner lives as well. They have their own thoughts and feelings. And sometimes those feelings are anger and their thought is to kick the shit out of those assholes over there.
Fuck man, my cats occasionally scrap with each other. I know it's not anything they've learned from the people in my house because we don't go full Wrestlemania on each other.