DEMONIC MALES: APES AND THE ORIGINS OF HUMAN VIOLENCE PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Richard Wrangham,Dale Peterson | 350 pages | 14 Nov 1997 | HOUGHTON MIFFLIN | 9780395877432 | English | Boston, United States Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence PDF Book Wrangham and Peterson say that after 40 years of gorilla and chimpanzee watching, it is hard not to conclude that human males are but evolutionary heirs of male Small, isolated party-groups of chimpanzees are vulnerable to gang raids by demonic males. Get free access to newly published articles. The reason I gave the book a 2 and not a 1 is because it did have some interesting anecdotes about the great apes, including descriptions of raiding behavior in chimps and rape in orangatans. But that also bring me to another thought, we can defy nature. About Richard W. Return to Book Page. Original Title. Regal also considers the book to be "a broadside against the old utopian dreams of Atlantis, Eden, Elysium, a Golden Age, Romantic paintings, and the late Margaret Mead", which imagined human beings as naturally peaceful. Why is the Bonobo a relatively peaceful animal, while its close relatives Homo Sapiens and Chimpanzees so violent? And it lies, according to the author, in the way bonobo society is organized around female bonding, a response to females defending against male violence, that proved effective. They anthropomorphize behaviors of our great ape brothers and in doing so put human culture onto another species. Patricarchy, he writes, is usually seen as the product of nurture. This is how we survived the loss of the forest and the recurring dry seasons. Views Read Edit View history. One of the most profound impacts a book ever had on me. We and the chimps broke off from a common ancestor about five or six million years ago. In contrast the bonobos are so frequently and openly sexual that genital rubbing is a way of greeting while the father of the little ones could be any one of the males. When it came to gender, the book made me uncomfortable. From imposed sexual aggression to war-like characteristics found in chimpanzees, Wrangham explores the aggressive tendencies found in our distant human relatives to piece together a puzzle of where we come from. Institutional sign in: OpenAthens Shibboleth. Mar 09, Nuno R. Years later, in the Toronto Zoo, I watched an orangutan mother play with her newborn in a way that looked very much like child abuse. Female sexual bonding is so strong that females form a united front against male aggression. Which was something like: the origins of human violence go way deeper than we think, developing even before humans split from our common ancestor with chimps 7MA. Nov 26, Kim Zinkowski rated it liked it. A victim of random violence. The authors present chimp society as extremely patriarchal, in that no adult male chimpanzee is subordinate to any female of any rank. In a brutal, effective, xenophobic way. Sign in to download free article PDFs Sign in to access your subscriptions Sign in to your personal account. Twitter Facebook Email. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Shelves: books-that-talk-to-each-other. Where did this come from and how could this be different? I thought this would be where the authors explained what factors lead to patriarchy versus matriarchy, but this discussion never takes place. Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence Writer This Issue. Apr 16, Mario Alberto rated it really liked it. It will keep you interested even if you do not agree with the author's ideas. Forget Rousseau. She confirmed the notion that "nurture far more than nature wrote the human script". The topic of violence, gender, evolution is complex to oversimplify with generalizations. However, these descriptions don't contribute to a very strong thesis. After reading 'Next of Kin' and stumbling upon this book in my recommendations, I was sure that I would love this book, I was wrong. Average rating 4. Its basic question is why humans use violence against each other, and are pretty unique in the animal kingdom in doing so. Download as PDF Printable version. How we are similar, how different. Purchase access Subscribe to the journal. To ask other readers questions about Demonic Males , please sign up. Sign in to customize your interests Sign in to your personal account. Dramatic, vivid, and firmly grounded in meticulous research, this book will change the way you see the world. Only our being ethologists gave us entry into the forbidden world of chimp aggressiveness because the film had been censored to keep public ecological enthusiasm up and running. Where do we come f Richard W. Only with a clear understanding of this characteristic might we perhaps balance our most brutal world and create a harmony which has eluded our species in our idealistic quest for peace in a history which has been steeped in war. They present evidence that most dominant human civilizations have always been likewise behaviorally patriarchal, and that male humans share male chimpanzees' innate propensity for dominance, gratuitous violence, war, rape, and murder. As the San Francisco Chronicle said, it "dares to dig for the roots of a contentious and complicated subject that makes up much of our daily news. They claim that the brain's prefrontal cortex is also a factor, as humans have been shown experimentally to make decisions based both on logic and prefrontal cortex-mediated emotion. He is best known for his work on the evolution of human warfare, described in the book Demonic Males, and on the role of c Richard Wrangham born , PhD, Cambridge University, is Ruth B. The problem is this explanation seems inadequate when dealing with human cultures. Friend Reviews. Read more More Details Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence Reviews The assumption although never stated explicitly is that humans and chimps engage in the same kinds of internecine violence because we share the same evolutionary developmental path. I always like The book is great, but it doesn't hold itself together coherently. Quarterly Review of Biology Preview — Demonic Males by Richard W. Jul 30, Rosey rated it really liked it. Open Preview See a Problem? It calls some ideas 'oversimplification' and sometimes it's true, but the book also seems to slip into oversimplifications a lot. Get A Copy. Also, a line like women are looking for "a man to provide for them" is absurd and I hated seeing it. The BBC crew assured us that adult chimps normally kill their prey before eating it and that these were young chimps training in the art of hunting. We can assume that we have hints of chimpanzee but also some of bonobos. Biology, anthropology, feminism, and the great apes all in one book. The type of violence we see perpetrated by humans against humans started before humans. Where did this come from and how could this be different? Where are we going? He died shortly thereafter. Sign in to save your search Sign in to your personal account. Views Read Edit View history. Why do men kill, rape, and wage war, and what can we do about it? More is not made of the ways human males themselves have used to defuse the concentration of power in "big men" or chieftains, or how two hostile tribes have managed to ritualize the violence between them in order to limit casualties and cause the destruction of both, or even how symbolic activity has produced nearly complete non-violent societies, whether primitive cultures or religiously motivated subgroups with modern society. This book does a decent job arguing that human males are more violent than females and that we share this trait with chimps and bonobos; however these aren't very big claims. It is amazing how similar we are to chimpanzee at our most basic level. In Biology of Reproduction , 55, Nov 30, Romel Mora rated it it was amazing. They make interesting evolutionary arguments for why we became violent at all and the effects of this, but they aren't convincing enough regarding when this transition occurred. Other primates also kill and rape and brutalize. Mar 09, Nuno R. In fact, this book is something of a blatant attempt to make evolutionary psychology palpable to women. Download as PDF Printable version. And this is the greatest shortcoming of an otherwise interesting book. In so doing the authors focus a great deal on other apes, especially chimpanzees. From imposed sexual aggression to war-like characteristics found in chimpanzees, Wrangham explores the aggressive tendencies found in our distant human relatives to piece together a puzzle of where we come from. Create a free personal account to access your subscriptions, sign up for alerts, and more. Only our being ethologists gave us entry into the forbidden world of chimp aggressiveness because the film had been censored to keep public ecological enthusiasm up and running. Aggression is part of our evolutionary journey, and the killing of outsiders is part of that heritage. Dramatic, vivid, and firmly grounded in meticulous research, this book will change the way you see the world. Details if other :. I also remember watching from a shore. Convergent evolution of behavior is so common, you could just as easily imagine that 7MA our ancestors were peaceful and conflict-free like bonobos are today, and then became violent only after our split. If you have no background in anthropology or primatologist the arguments can seem compelling. This is all to the good of course because a thorough going understanding of human nature will lead us all to the inescapable conclusion that blaming one sex for the human problem of violence really misses the profound truth of sexual equality.