another way to look at us is as pack animals. african dogs aren't much individually, but when you have 20 of them taking down a wildebeest, or 5 wolves on a moose, or a zillion ants on anything at all, you see the cooperative predator.
humans are like that too. interestingly, humans have little sexual dimorphism, which is usually associated with rank hierarchies, and breeding rights. humans presumably were more egalitarian or perhaps more monogamous respecting pair-bonding, during the course of our evolution. this trend seemed to express strongly in homo, less so in earlier australopithecines.
Equality for the sexes in human evolution? Early hominid sexual dimorphism and implications for mating systems and social behavior
https://www.pnas.org/content/100/16/9103
we are conditioned, by our later history, to focus upon the warlike natures of larger cultures, and even the head-hunting proclivities of relict human populations in the wild - but in the context of our conditions in the paleocene, during our formation, human communities must have had far more room to co-exist, and the benefits of cooperation & trade, within & among clans, would presumably have far out-weighed the perceived advantages of conflict.
my interpretation of all this is that, beyond our basic tuning for hunting prowess on the savannah during the formation of homo erectus (where we grew tall, agile, relatively fast & long-enduring on the pursuit of prey), humans have been bred for cooperation & ingenuity & adaptability & attractiveness, far more so than brute strength. because the former are far more useful, in aggregate, than the latter.
reply
share