In mid-September of this year, Harvard professor Richard Wrangham stood before
an audience at the university and told of a "startling" new development in
weapons technology. But the talk Wrangham gave that day did not concern dirty
bombs or weapons-grade anthrax. There was no mention of Al Qaeda or Saddam
Hussein. Instead, to the ominous opening chords of Richard Strauss's Also
sprach Zarathustra, Wrangham faced his rapt audience and produced . . . a
stick.
As instruments of destruction go, tree limbs aren't generally held in such
esteem. But this wasn't just any old tree limb. This was the tree limb with
which Imoso, a male chimpanzee in Uganda's Kibale Forest, had beaten the tar
out of a female chimp named Outamba. In the space of a few minutes, this
thuggish, enterprising ape may have revolutionized chimpanzee society. He
certainly succeeded in turning the field of primatology on its head.
"This is the first time any animal other than humans has been seen to pick up
clubs as weapons and use them against others of their own species," explains
Wrangham, a 54-year-old professor of biological anthropology and world-renowned
authority on chimpanzees. "This is the first repeated hitting. This is picking
up a stick and wham-wham-wham-wham!"
Even more remarkable than the initial whamming, Wrangham adds, is the fact that
matters did not end there. In July 2000, a little over a year after Imoso's
initial attack, a younger chimp named Johnny was seen using a stick to beat
another ape senseless. To date, five separate incidents of weapons use have
been recorded by Wrangham and his fellow researchers. In this sense, Imoso's
makeshift club was the A-bomb of sticks, the space-based laser beam of
sticks.
Despite being a groundbreaking, even historic, development, the discovery of
weapon use among chimps garnered little in the way of press coverage -- which
is perhaps understandable. At the time of Wrangham's Harvard talk, the country
was consumed by the anniversary of the September 11 attacks -- not to mention
the looming prospect of war with Iraq. The fact that a few chimps had taken to
beating each other over the head with branches paled beside the terrible
violence that seemed about to engulf the world.
BUT THEN, when it comes to the study of warfare, primatology has never
commanded much respect. After all, it would seem that chimps, even those who
take up weapons against each other, have little bearing on the current world
crisis -- with its complex web of religious, territorial, and economic
determinants. As if to drive this point home, a number of Harvard professors
were recently invited to contribute to a paper on terrorism for the National
Academy of Sciences. The School of Public Health was represented in the report,
as were the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the chemistry and
economics departments. No one, though, thought of asking Dr. Wrangham what his
research might lend to the study.
Professor Richard Wrangham
 |
But Wrangham insists he's not losing any sleep over the snub. "I don't want to
foist myself upon the debate," he says. "I think it's important that
[primatologists] are not given a false air of authority to talk about the
specific political issues. I recognize that what I do is not like physics,
where you're suddenly going to be able to develop something -- here's your new
lump of energy or your new medical device. It's extremely unlikely that you can
use these studies in any immediate practical sense."
Yet Wrangham is brimming with theories about September 11 and its aftermath --
many of them founded on what he has seen in the forests of Kibale. "It seems to
me that the most important contribution I can make is to add to the sense of
danger, the sense of realism," he says. "What the chimpanzee studies are
telling us is how easily natural selection can favor these sorts of patterns of
violence and how ridiculous it is to think that if we can just persuade humans
to be nice to each other, then they will be. You have to take a very
hard-headed approach to it."
Wrangham, who has been studying chimpanzees in the wild for over 30 years,
certainly knows a thing or two about warfare -- at least as it pertains to
apes. In the early '70s, he was among the first primatologists to note the
tendency of chimpanzees to conduct so-called lethal raids against neighboring
groups -- a momentous discovery. In his 1996 book Demonic Males
(Houghton Mifflin), a study of chimpanzee aggression, he describes one such
attack:
The raiders rushed madly down the slope to their target. While Goliath
screamed and the patrol hooted and displayed, he was held and beaten and kicked
and lifted and dropped and bitten and jumped on. . . . His
aggressors showed their excitement in a continuous barrage of hooting and
drumming and charging and branch-waving and screaming.
While this scenario may sound nothing like modern human warfare, Wrangham
insists that the motives for the assault were the same as those that drive
conflicts among human societies: the acquisition of territory and resources,
the enhancement of status, and the sheer will to conquer. "One of the amazing
things is how there are these similarities between nation-states and
chimpanzees in a group," he says. "We are the only two species of mammals who
raid territories."
THAT HUMANS and chimpanzees display similar patterns of behavior shouldn't come
as too much of a surprise. Recent studies have shown that the two species' DNA
make-up is about 99 percent identical. Indeed, there are many primatologists
who believe that modern-day chimps are a fair representation of what our own
ancestors must have looked like, and acted like, six million years ago;
Wrangham has often described the
animals as "time machines." "The
underlying emotional systems that guide humans," he says, "are almost certainly
very similar to those that guide chimpanzees."
The implications of this statement are troubling. If aggressive chimpanzee
behavior corresponds to our own aggressive behavior six million years ago --
and also to our behavior today -- this implies that our violent tendencies have
persisted throughout our evolutionary history. In other words, humans are
hard-wired for violence. We're stuck with it. "There is that implication,
that's right," Wrangham says. "We're stuck with the propensity for violence, at
least. That is the slightly alarming thing about this. It is daunting."
Even more daunting is the fact that chimpanzees are not only capable of the
same kinds of group aggression that we are, they're also capable of the same
kind of wanton barbarity. In Wrangham's office there is a picture of a corpse
-- a chimpanzee who has been set upon by aggressors. The animal is lying face
down, frozen into a kind of crucifixion pose, as if he had died while being
pinned down. Strips of skin have been peeled from his body. He bears the marks
of countless puncture wounds and contusions. In another photograph, one of the
victim's blue-gray testicles lies nestled in the brush. The chimpanzee had been
tortured to death.
Conventional wisdom holds that man's propensity for sadistic violence is a
sickness, a horrible psychic quirk. Wrangham's theories, though, suggest that
the inclination to commit extravagant atrocities is a part of our biological
make-up -- a mechanism of natural selection. In the light of Kibale's marauding
apes, the mob of teenage Milwaukee boys who recently chased down and viciously
beat a man to death were not an aberration -- they were simply engaging in the
kind of territorial violence that young males have engaged in since the dawn of
our species.
Understandably, such theories do not enjoy widespread popularity.
In 1987 -- 15 years after Wrangham first reported on warfare among chimps -- a
group of scientists issued a document called the Seville Statement on Violence.
In the paper, the scientists declared that war "is a product of culture,"
implying that, given a bit of cultural tweaking, warfare can be eradicated.
"This seems to me to be foolish optimism," Wrangham says. "Even in the
scientific area, there's a tendency to allow hope to overcome reason. So you
have people writing that humans are basically good and cooperative, and where
we have aggression and war it's all an abnormal mistake that we can easily
overcome. I see that they would get a readier reception than someone like me,
and I understand that, because nobody wants bad news. But it's putting our
heads in the sand. Therefore, it's dangerous."
RICHARD WRANGHAM doesn't immediately strike you as the troglodytic type.
Originally from Hertfordshire, England, Wrangham speaks in the clipped,
confident tones of an Oxbridge don (he attended both Oxford and Cambridge).
Balding and slightly rumpled, he is the picture of tweedy intellectualism. His
tales of Africa, though, point to the ease with which men can slip back into
their ape-like ways. "When you see these [chimpanzee] battles, you feel
incredibly pumped," he says. "It goes right through your gut: these great balls
of black fur racing through the bush. It's scary, but there's also the thrill
of us-against-them, because, obviously, you want your side to win. It's amazing
how easily our Western-derived tendencies for sympathy get eroded in the face
of these sorts of excitements."
His enthusiasm for this violence, though, may be less ape-like than it is
guy-like.
According to Wrangham, blame for the high levels of violence in chimpanzee and
human societies can be placed squarely at the feet of males (hence Demonic
Males). In the course of our evolution, he says, aggressive males have
enjoyed greater reproductive success; therefore, the process of natural
selection has favored violent behavior. By extension, patriarchal societies
exhibit similar tendencies. "America, as the dominant power in the world, is
involved in more aggressive interactions than any other country," he says.
"It's the same with chimpanzees: the alpha male is always involved in putting
down threats they see about them; they're always breaking up alliances,
challenging rivals."
Furthermore, Wrangham says, the kind of low-risk warfare characterized by a
group of chimps launching a surprise attack on an individual -- a common tactic
among the animals -- is analogous to the low-risk warfare favored by America's
modern military culture. A stick and a Stealth bomber may be light-years apart
in terms of technology, but both shift the balance of power in favor of the
individual -- or nation -- who wields them.
In chimpanzee societies, Wrangham continues, conflict usually breaks out as a
result of power imbalances. Chimps, like the ones who ripped the testicles from
the unfortunate ape in Wrangham's photographs, generally will not attack in the
absence of overwhelming force. The same principle applies to men. When the US
and the USSR faced off during the Cold War, for instance, the balance of power
between the two nations prevented armed conflict. Today, the only thing
preventing all-out war against Iraq may be the fact that the US has so far
failed to muster adequate coalition support.
The fact that America is amassing forces in the Gulf region, then, may be
little more than an elaborate display -- the equivalent of a chimp's
chest-thumping and dirt-flinging. Or it may signal something more dire. "The
fascinating thing about the first Gulf War is this unresolved status
challenge," Wrangham says. "With chimps and humans, conflict seems to be driven
by more than simple strategic considerations. There is this added level of
concern over status. The people who are making the decisions -- Rumsfeld,
Cheney -- they are all part of this previous victory that nonetheless did not
lead to a resolve in status between the leaders of the two countries. In
chimpanzees, there is nothing that predicts aggression so well as when there
are unresolved status challenges. It's hard for me to say this is going to be
peacefully resolved unless Saddam Hussein makes some major concessions."
Even more ape-like, Wrangham says, is our ongoing conflict with Al Qaeda. When
the hijackers turned jets into missiles on September 11, they may have been
initiating a terrible new form of warfare, but they were also reverting back to
the kinds of lethal raids practiced by chimps and, subsequently, pre-industrial
man. "In primitive society, this is what war consisted of," Wrangham says.
"Setting fire to a hut with 50 people in it, or attacking the World Trade
Center." In an ironic twist, the mighty American military machine -- with all
its sophistication and firepower -- has also reverted back to this primitive
form of warfare. The current emphasis on Special Operations missions -- with
their covert actions and quick-hit raids -- is a weirdly atavistic military
strategy, not so far removed from the stealthy chimp patrols in Uganda.
"This is very alarming," Wrangham says. "Traditional warfare -- mutual raiding
-- is very difficult to stop. It is much more punishing on everybody. There is
just much more suffering. The ability to protect against raids is something
that predicts relative peacefulness. People have to recognize that the old
systems of protection are not going to be adequate. This is the message from Al
Qaeda. The message is that now more than ever, we need a moral agreement in the
world, because military agreements and military tactics are going to be very
ineffective against mutual raiding."
He adds: "I accept the overall message that reality is tough."
Then, perhaps aware that his visitor is about to leap from the nearest window,
Wrangham provides a little glimmer of hope: "Overall, the pattern of statehood
and nation growth has led to reduced levels of conflict," he says, though
without much conviction. Wrangham also points out that his Demonic Males
presents "a nice balance: here's the bad news, here's the good news." In
fairness, after 250 pages of testosterone-drenched strife, the book does end by
reminding us that human beings are also closely related to bonobos -- petite,
chimp-like creatures who live in peaceful, matriarchal societies, and who would
much rather engage in lengthy and elaborate sexual encounters with each other
than fight. Even the book's villains, male chimps, are partly redeemed in the
closing pages.
In May 1993, Wrangham reveals in his book's final chapter, he looked on with
fascination and delight as Kakama, a two-year-old chimp, dragged a little lump
of wood behind him -- "like Christopher Robin with Winnie-the-Pooh. Bump
bump bump." For the entire day, Kakama went to great pains to hang on to
his piece of wood, and at one point tenderly placed it in a little nest he had
built. "I had just watched a young male chimpanzee invent and then play with a
doll," Wrangham writes. "A doll!" Today, Kakama's little log-doll resides in a
glass case at the Peabody Museum, just downstairs from Wrangham's office.
Recently, the artifact was joined by a few others: a collection of
ordinary, harmless-looking sticks.
Chris Wright can be reached at cwright[a]phx.com.
Issue Date: November 15 - 21, 2002
