Richard Wrangham, anthropologist: ‘Humans domesticated ourselves by defeating our alpha male ancestors’

Richard Wrangham was studying chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, Tanzania. He was part of primatologist Jane Goodall’s team in the 1980s. He watched these animals, whom he grew fond of, groom each other. He saw them play and even babysit each other’s infants. They were like a family. But one day, this group split in two. They divided the territory and began fiercely competing.

The primatology team recorded ambushes and traps; groups of apes would attack their enemies when they were alone. It was like a civil war, with guerrillas and commandos. It was thought that this type of aggressive behavior, this coldness and strategy, was essentially human.

This discovery changed everything. From then on, Wrangham became fascinated with violence. Not with the acts themselves, but rather with how they define us as a species. The evolution of violence in different primates. And, of course, in human beings as well.

His latest book, The Goodness Paradox focuses on this theme, reflecting on this dichotomy in humans. On the one hand, we are an empathetic species, the only one that uses a moral compass to guide its actions. But we are also capable of a degree of planned violence that is unparalleled in the animal kingdom.

Wrangham, a professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University since 1989 and of primate behavioral biology at the Peabody Museum, explains this duality through the self-domestication of our species, a fascinating process guided by speech, the death penalty, and the rebellion of beta males. By tracing the evolutionary progression of aggression, the anthropologist argues for the necessity of tolerance, democracy, and counterweights to control that savage impulse that still defines us.

Question. In your book, you analyze humans’ complex relationship with violence. What does it say about us as a species?

Answer. Humans don’t have alpha males who attain a leadership position based on their personal fighting ability. So, if we enter a group of hunter-gatherers, we see quite clearly that the men don’t compete with each other to be on top; they cooperate. This is an extraordinary difference from any other species, something that makes us more peaceful. We have a tremendous concern about suppressing violence. In every society, there are violent individuals, and the central problem for community leaders is how to control that violence and maintain peace within the community. It’s fascinating to compare humans to chimpanzees and other animals in how we solve this problem. I believe the central problem of human society is how to control male violence within society.

Q. Your theory debunks all this talk on the internet about being an alpha male and not a beta... In reality, we live in a society led by betas.

A. Exactly. The extraordinary situation in humans is that our societies are ruled by coalitions. Now, those coalitions have leaders. And sometimes the leaders are able to arrange the relationship with the coalition so that they have extraordinary individual power. But they still are dependent on the coalition.

Q. It’s hard not to interpret this politically...

A. Even the most powerful man in the world, currently President [Donald] Trump, is subject to the constraints of his coalition. For the moment, they are sticking with him. If they decide not to stick with him, he’s nothing. This is quite different from an alpha male in a primate group, where an alpha male depends solely on his own ability to fight and defeat everyone else.

Q. You begin your book by quoting Pol Pot, Stalin, and Hitler —charming people up close, yet capable of the greatest atrocities. Can we better understand the darkest chapters of our history by analyzing our relationship with violence, our animal nature?

A. Human beings are different from animals, but we have many of the same concerns. Broadly speaking, there are two types of views on human nature with regard to violence. One is that we are inherently nonviolent. There is something about us that is very different from any other animal, because we are peaceful by nature. This is something often associated with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The other type of view is that we are naturally given to being selfish and using violence towards our selfish goals. But we have systems to constrain that. And I think the evidence I’ve gathered largely supports the second view. This, on a historical and political level, tells us that we must always be on our guard, because if we destroy our institutions, if we treat all human beings as trustworthy individuals, we can be caught off guard, the powerful can take advantage. Limits must be set.

Q. Thomas Hobbes said that man is a wolf to man, but according to your studies, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that man is a dog to man. You argue that we are a domesticated species; how did this happen?

A. Humans domesticated ourselves by defeating our alpha male ancestors. Those who used their personal strength to dominate everyone else were unsuccessful. We created a context in which they couldn’t win. Men who tried to intimidate others, who fought to keep women or resources, were executed or imprisoned. This is something we can see in small-scale societies, in tribes all over the world. Alpha males are not the rulers of our society because the males who were subordinate to them killed them.

Q. Why isn’t there a beta male rebellion in other subjugated species?

A. Because of language. We are the only ones who have the capacity to conspire and forge alliances. This rebellion depends on your ability to develop a relationship of trust with your comrades in arms, to say: “Look, that guy is dangerous. He’s stronger than us. But if we unite, we can do something about it.” Chimpanzees can’t say that to each other.

Q. You say that this situation has made humans the only animals with a sense of right and wrong.

A. Exactly. Humans are the only species that acts according to a sense of right and wrong, the only ones guided by their conscience. As a group of males capable of defeating the alpha male formed, society came to be governed by an alpha alliance. And that alliance was in a position to compel all members of the group to obey it. So they began to create rules, like no stealing, no killing... And anyone who didn’t follow them was punished. Hence, a selective pressure arose on all members of society to choose to obey the alpha alliance. And that means they develop a sense of what the alpha alliance wants and doesn’t want. And that is internalized as a sense of right and wrong.

Q. Dogs are physically different from wolves. More cute and rounded, almost like wolf pups. It’s something that happens with all species when they are domesticated. Are we like Neanderthal children?

A. The differences between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals echo the differences between dogs and wolves. This is truly remarkable and was already pointed out by the archaeologist Helen Leach more than 25 years ago, without her having any thought whatsoever of the domestication and non-violence I discuss in the book. But the whole pattern fits together astonishingly well. Archaeologists sometimes find animals at sites and can’t be sure whether they were domesticated or wild. So they looked at a set of common characteristics in domesticated animals: shorter faces, slightly smaller teeth than their wild ancestors, smaller brains. In general, they are smaller, with a more youthful appearance, and less difference between males and females. Leach noted that humans have all these characteristics compared to Neanderthals. I understand that it’s not the ideal comparison because we didn’t descend directly from Neanderthals. But unfortunately, there’s very little fossil material from our direct ancestors, and Neanderthals were probably very similar to them. So it’s not a perfect comparison, but it’s fascinating.

Q. This process of self-domestication is extraordinary, but it is not unique.

A. Indeed, we have the case of bonobos. They have followed a path parallel to that of humans, but they haven’t gone as far; they still have alpha males. Bonobos evolved from a chimpanzee ancestor that crossed the Congo River approximately one million years ago. That’s why bonobos live only on the south side of the river and chimpanzees on the north side. By moving to this new forest, they became a self-domesticated version of chimpanzees. They have all these physical characteristics we mentioned. And what’s most fascinating is that they have also become less aggressive. So the real crux of self-domestication, the element that leads to all the other consequences, seems to be selection against aggression. In particular, against that form of aggression, we call reactive aggression.

Q. Reactive aggression?

A. There are two types of aggression. Reactive aggression is what you see when two men get into a fight in a bar and go out into the parking lot to fight, leading to the most common type of murder in the United States. It’s also called hot-blooded, impulsive, or defensive aggression. It’s not goal-oriented, except for trying to get rid of a threat. This is the type of aggression associated with alpha male behavior in primates. And in humans, it’s enormously reduced. While our proactive aggression is deliberate, goal-oriented, planned, and premeditated. Cold. It’s the type of aggression you usually see in war, where two sides clash, pursuing objectives, even without provocation. And in humans, it’s surprisingly high. There are equivalent levels of proactive aggression in very few species. It has been detected in chimpanzees, but not in bonobos.

Q. In fact, you detected it. You were part of Jane Goodall’s team that first observed chimpanzees attacking members of other groups, following patterns of aggression similar to those of war...

A. Yes, it was a war that developed between members of a single group that split into two and developed a lot of rivalry. The chimpanzees from the dominant group made deliberate incursions into the neighboring group’s territory, looking for solitary individuals, only attacking if they found someone alone. One of the things about proactive aggression is that, since it’s deliberate, you can choose to do it when it really makes sense. And that’s what we saw. The average number of males in the attacking group was eight to one. That’s why many of those attacks resulted in the death of the targeted chimpanzee, but there wasn’t a single serious injury to any of the aggressors. Basically, it all comes down to this: one chimpanzee can grab a leg, another can grab another leg, another arm, another arm... and then the victim is defenseless.

Q. You have studied patterns of male aggression towards women, gender-based violence, in different cultures and places. What conclusion have you drawn?

A. There is a lot of cultural variation; there are societies where men are routinely violent toward women, and there are societies where male violence against women is institutionally repressed. Human beings have violent tendencies that surface if they are not repressed, and in this case, it is male tendencies that pose a threat.

Q. Alpha males, male violence, war… All the conversation we’ve had about aggression has been about men, a topic you’ve explored in a book with the telling title: Demonic Males…

A. The fact is, the vast majority of violence is perpetrated by men. The title Demonic Men comes from conversations with colleagues, in which I argued that human men have been demonized in some way. They’ve gone through a period of evolutionary demonization because, compared to other species, we kill a lot of our fellow humans. We are incredibly peaceful, but it’s in the proactive aggression associated with war that we see this kind of demonization, which makes us a particularly unpleasant species.

Q. For the moment… Is the process of self-domestication still underway? Can we expect to be less violent in the future?

A. The optimistic perspective says that we are in a phase of evolution, where our propensity for reactive aggression is decreasing. And as evidence of this, while executions are, thank God, relatively rare in the world today, we still incarcerate and isolate violent men. And to the extent that prisons limit opportunities to have children, these individuals are being removed from the evolutionary equation. This is, of course, a perspective that spans tens of thousands of years. It has been about 300,000 years of selection against reactive aggression in our species, 300,000 years of self-domestication, in which we have worked to rid ourselves of the most violent men in society. So, well, perhaps it will take another 300,000 years for us to improve as a species.

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