Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence

by Richard W. Wrangham, Dale Peterson

Whatever their virtues, men are more violent than women. Why do men kill, rape, and wage war, and what can we do about it? Drawing on the latest discoveries about human evolution and about our closest living relatives, the great apes, Demonic Males offers some startling new answers. Dramatic, vivid, and firmly grounded in meticulous research, this book will change the way you see the world. 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."

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Psychology, Anthropology, Evolution, Biology, History

350 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Richard Wrangham (born 1948, PhD, Cambridge University, 1975) is Ruth B. Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University and founded the Kibale Chimpanzee Project in 1987. He has conducted extensive research on primate ecology, nutrition, and social behaviour. He is best known for his work on the evolution of human warfare, described in the book Demonic Males, and on the role of cooking in human evolution, described in the book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Together with Elizabeth Ross, he co-founded the Kasiisi Project in 1997, and serves as a patron of the Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP).

Wrangham began his career as a researcher at Jane Goodall's long-term common chimpanzee field study in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. He befriended fellow primatologist Dian Fossey and assisted her in setting up her nonprofit mountain gorilla conservation organization, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund (originally the Digit Fund)

Wrangham's latest work focuses on the role cooking has played in human evolution. He has argued that cooking food is obligatory for humans as a result of biological adaptations and that cooking, in particular, the consumption of cooked tubers, might explain the increase in hominid brain sizes, smaller teeth and jaws, and the decrease in sexual dimorphism that occurred roughly 1.8 million years ago.

Reviews

[JJ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Total crap. If you have no background in anthropology or primatologist the arguments can seem compelling. I can understand the desire to try and empirically determine why humans and specifically us males can be such bastards, but this book doesn't do it in a valid way. They anthropomorphize behaviors of our great ape brothers and in doing so put human culture onto another species. The orangutan rape part was one of the worst. Rape in humans is not about procreation or sex, it's a sick and twisted display of power. This does not translate over to orangutan. Forced copulation seems like it would fit in, except that without it orangutan would be extinct by now. there are so many fantastic books out there about great ape behavior. This is not one of them.

[Jerome · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peterson and Wrangham have offered a fascinating book which probably has more appeal to the layman than to primatologists. Demonic Males draws a comparison between humans and chimpanzees (which share 98% of the same DNA) in the way both species engage in violence with other members of the species. 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. Chimpanzee social organization and violence with respect to other bands is treated in depth; humans, not so much. The authors are quick to write off pre-historic human social relations as Hobbesian: nasty, brutish, and short.

Rather than look at the remarkable variety of social forms that modern anthropologists have encountered and grapple with the complexity of what pre-agricultural humanity might have looked like, the analysis is extended to include social organization, male-directed violence, genocide, infanticide, and rape among not just chimpanzees but all of the other great apes, as well as hyenas (a matriarchal counterpart to primates). The authors argue that violence among the animals examined can be completely accounted for by reproductive ends. Male Gorillas killing the offspring of a displaced alpha male ensures that his progeny, not that of his predecessor, forms the reproductive line. Dwarf orangutans deemed unattractive to females engage in rape, which gives them the opportunity to continue the transmission of their genetic material. The problem is this explanation seems inadequate when dealing with human cultures. In the chapter "Taming the Demon" the authors give almost as many counter examples as support for this, and a wider anthropological analysis shows that most human cultures have as many forms and rituals to ensure reproductive parity between males (that there is not the same attention given to females does fit into the author's overall thesis).

Ultimately, the comparison focuses on the differences between chimps and bonobos, who as a species have managed to reduce the level of overall inter-species violence through a social form of female sexual bonding. Female sexual bonding is so strong that females form a united front against male aggression. What the authors argue is that the same kind of female power applied socially in humans could form a counter to male aggressiveness. It seems like a simplistic thesis based more on wishful thinking than anything else.

And this is the greatest shortcoming of an otherwise interesting book. 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. Granted, this is probably beyond the scope of this book, but any comparisons between humans and apes has to take into account how vastly different homo symbolicus (to borrow Cassirer's phrase) is from his primate cousins.

[Leanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very insightful look at the way different species, particularly apes, handle conflict and aggression. The authors give well-researched hypotheses for the reasons why our ape ancestors evolved more along the lines of patriarchal, male-bonded chimpanzees rather than along the lines of egalitarian, female-bonded bonobos. I understand that environmental conditions pushed each ape species to evolve in an area with a certain distribution of food choices. Because bonobos have no competition from gorillas or other large mammals for tender herbs, they are able to travel in larger party-groups all year round without depleting food sources. Large party-groups mean that females form supportive alliances, and eventually this enables them to challenge males enough to turn the tides of evolution to favour a much less violent lifestyle. Chimpanzees, on the other hand, were stuck in the same habitats as gorillas, so they never adapted to eat "gorilla food". Their group sizes were thereby limited by seasonal food availability. Small, isolated party-groups of chimpanzees are vulnerable to gang raids by demonic males. Demonic males are rewarded by the loss of competition from males from other tribes and by the addition of females to their own tribe. Sadly, we have evolved along similar lines to chimpanzees, and our task now is to evolve more consciously towards a new direction if we want to avoid the annihilation of our own species. The authors note that overcoming our evolutionary past will not be easy, but if bonobos can do it, we can too.

[J.D. Steens · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book tells a story about human ape origins as it split from the Chimpanzee line and it provides a theory to account for human male aggression.

The authors speculate that a drying, drought-inducing climate increased the competition for food, pushing some chimpanzees to migrate (5-3 million years ago [mya]) further from their long-established rainforest habitat and into the more open woodlands where forested outcrops could supply them with energy-filling roots. As the climate continued to dry, the woodland chimps (Ardipithecus or Australopithecus ramidus or, simply, A. ramidus, from 4.4 mya) increasingly became separated from the rainforest chimps. This is when the Hominid line, with its distinctive bipedal gait that allowed chimps to double their traveling speed and to escape predators, began. Subsequently, 3-1.5 mya, another ape line split from the chimpanzees. These were the bonobos whose habitat south of the Zaire River provided an abundant food supply and therefore, less male-driven competition. This in turn created the more peaceful temperaments of the bonobos and allowed for the development of a central governance role for bonobo females.

This book’s description of the male chimpanzee temperament was particularly striking. Driven by the darkest of genetic forces, male coalitions defensively patrol their territories and offensively conduct raids on the neighboring territories. And, they are brutally murderous with their occupants. The authors attribute this to the intense competition for limited food supply, both with each other and with gorillas. But an equal or larger factor to describe the male chimp temperament was the competition for mating privileges. On this point, the authors draw on Darwin’s sexual selection theory. This complements and enhances natural selection’s emphasis on fitness, especially when it is understood that the point of survival is to reproduce, and not survival per se. For these authors, sexual selection is far more than non-essential, qualities that relate to such things as body and skin type (attractiveness), and temperamental preferences. (1) Rather than long canines to aid fighting, the authors suggest it was the testosterone-driven broadening of the shoulders and strengthening of the upper body that designed bodies for fighting. With these physical developments that came with puberty, males could engage in male-male dominance battles for mating opportunities. Likewise, the authors note that the estrogen-filled females broadened their hips, and readied their body for its reproductive tasks. The authors see a basic male-female contract lying at the heart of the male-female relationship: In return for ready access to females, the females “evolved to prefer demonic males as mates” because they and their offspring would be best protected by strong, fighting males.

Structural changes were accompanied by aggressive temperaments, both vis-a-vis each other and their territorial fights with neighboring chimps, and this temperament is best described by the book’s title, “Demonic Males.” These physical (upper-body strength), temperamental (aggression) and behavioral (fighting, raiding) characteristics define the chimp line for the authors and, by extension, the Hominid line, including the modern Homo sapiens who added massive brain power to their behavioral repertoire to make them the beyond dangerous beings that they are today. In making that argument, the authors take on the rich anthropological body of literature, led in large part initially by Margaret Mead, which asserts that such characteristics are not inherent in human nature, but are culturally-created phenomena. In their own examination of “the anthropological record,” the authors, in contrast, note “how extremely common war appears.”

At the end of the book the authors make a pitch for bonobo female-like dominance to counter the heavily loaded chimpanzee male-dominance theme. And, though the aggression that pervades chimpanzee life and human history, it is not as bleak as it might seem because the authors argue that humanity’s saving grace might be its intelligence that would have us move toward a peaceful life rather than a world of violence and war.

There are two weak spots in the authors’ account of our origin as human apes. (2) First, though they acknowledge variation in chimpanzee and, by extension, human, temperament, their emphasis is on species-wide characterizations that all males are equally power-driven vis-a-vis other males and this is what defines their mating rights. Given Darwinian theory’s emphasis on variability as the stuff that natural selection works on, that variability applies not just to the development of species-wide traits, but pertains to individual variability within a species as well. It could be, particularly as seen in our own history, that there is a considerable range within our species regarding the dominance need among males. A good many males do the rank behavior thing but more than many do not engage in that competitive behavior, at least with nearly the same degree of intensity as the authors suggest. As long as basic needs are met, many males are content to live comfortable and other-regarding lives, and this speaks to humanity’s better side. (3) (Similarly, it could very well be that all females are not the peaceful, loving beings as the authors describe, and there is likely a variation here as well about basic temperaments, making some less appealing characters in their relationships with others and each other.)

As another issue, I think the authors fall into that old philosophical trap that says the mind controls the body. This is the strong undercurrent to their hope that mind will curb dominance impulses so that finally there will be peace on earth. “If we are cursed with a demonic male temperament and a Machiavellian capacity to express it,” they write, “we are also blessed with an intelligence that can, through the acquisition of wisdom, draw us away from the 5-million-year stain of our ape past.” In elaborating on this point, the authors, correctly, state that “temperament tells us what we care about. Intelligence helps generate options.” Presumably, we are to dust off the Hobbesian observation that if it’s a war of all against all, no one wins. So we better opt for peaceful mechanisms. In this day and age, this would not be the Hobbesian sovereign. Rather, it would be to assert our own capacity to self-regulate for everyone’s best interest. But beneath the mind lies Schopenhauer’s will. In its most basic form, it is the reproductive and survival urge and everything that goes along with them. The Will supplies the end, and mind supplies the means, and that just as likely means that if one has the power to dominate, there will be domination. It’s a Spencerian survival of the fittest world. It is might that makes right. Philosophically, and psychologically, if the motive force is not there, how will intelligence work to curb aggression and violence? In some, the will for self-advantage at the expense of others is stronger than in others (the variability argument), lending to the perpetual movement for dominance, rank, and aggression-violence. And this is what we see today. (4) This has been the case and it will always be this way. The authors throw out a suggestion that this darker side to human nature can be bred out of us but they say that such an eugenic solution is not likely. And, so it seems, we are plagued forever with a demonic side to our humanity, and the perpetual need to counter them by non-demonic humanity is and will be a perpetual task.

(1) I believe that the authors take sexual selection much further than Darwin himself did in his Descent of Man, the second half of which was devoted to the topic of sexual selection. In my review of that book, I wrote that “The second half of this book is entirely about sexual selection, where males and females develop various traits to attract mates and to outcompete rivals (this topic does not get much attention within contemporary theory). Sexual selection is separate from natural selection, which applies to the "general struggle for life." The secondary sexual characteristics (traits not directly connected to the sexual organs) are "highly variable (since they are not acted on by natural selection), both within a "race" and between "races." These include hair (or lack thereof); love of ornament (e.g., body paint; "clothes initially were "for ornament, not warmth); temperamental traits (e.g., courage); skin color ("Negroes admire their own color"); and love of musical tones (cadence and rhythm; "poetry is an offspring of sound"). Regarding ornament, "fashion" has an interesting role as it lies at the cusp of conformity to group standards, yet wears out over time, which results in variations, but not radically so: "The men of each race prefer what they are accustomed to; they cannot endure any great change; but they like variety, and admire each characteristic carried to a moderate extreme." Ornament and fashion are related importantly, to beauty and the variable (by "race") of the standards for beauty (face shape, skin color, location of cheekbones, etc.).” I added this as well: Darwin keeps sexual selection on a separate track from natural selection, yet he also says that sexual selection is even more important than natural selection as it leads to more progeny. Here, Darwin might be seaming these two selection theories back together as he states that “the better fit” leave more progeny. Yet, it's not clear how this all might work as those less fit can find each other and have children even though they don't compete at the higher levels. Much of the commentary on sexual selection focuses on males attracting females (“charming”) and out-competing other males, but Darwin is quite clear that females also do their considerable part to attract males via dress, ornament and beauty. Third, Darwin seems to have a strong Lamarkian strain. He makes continued reference to habitual actions that lead toward inherited traits, and it's not clear how that matches up with contemporary natural selection theory unless the genetic tendencies that lead to good habits result in greater survival and reproductive success.”

(2) Darwin, the authors say, thought the rejection of the primate designation for the human line was absurd. The Darwin quote is as follows: ‘“If man had not been his own classifier, he would never have thought of founding a separate order for his own reception.’”

(3) “What gives our own species such temperamentally violent males?” the authors ask. Elsewhere, they write that “individuals of the same species will certainly vary in temperament…..” and they state that “Inherited temperaments in different environments can express all sorts of different behaviors.” In a footnote regarding the Gombe chimpanzees, the authors also note that “a few individuals buck the trend.” One chimp “was famous for his failure to challenge for status, despite being one of the largest makes in the community.” Another chimp at another location was “an equivalent” of the Gombe chimp. “The relative importance of experience and genes in shaping these unusually timid personalities is unknown,” the authors conclude.

(4) The authors write that “the whole logic of evolution would indicate that animals use their intelligence to serve evolutionarily appropriate goals,” but their presumption is that it is the survival of all that intelligence concludes, whereas it could equally be stated that it is the survival of one’s self and one’s group/nation that should survive, and to hell with everyone else who stands in the way.

[Riccardo Mazzocchio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un saggio straordinario pubblicato nel 1996 focalizzato sulle cause del comportamento aggressivo e violento dell’uomo (leggi maschio prevalentemente) che l’autore dimostra, tramite anni di osservazione di primati allo stato brado, essere una caratteristica dei maschi, primi fra tutti gli scimpanzé - peraltro più vicini a noi geneticamente che ai gorilla. In sintesi, gli scimpanzé sono in grado di pianificare atti di persecuzione, stupro e violenza gratuita fino all’uccisione. Una prova schiacciante e a sfavore dell'idea che i primati si ammazzino solo per difesa (il gorilla pratica l'infanticidio così come l'orangutango lo stupro, a sostegno della fertilità). Amico e collega di Dian Fossey ha partecipato alla realizzazione delle prime riserve per i gorilla di montagna. “Despite the admirable intentions of those who believe that patriarchy is solely a cultural invention, there is too much contrary evidence. Patriarchy is worldwide and history-wide, and its origins are detectable in the social lives of the chimpanzees. It serves the reproductive purposes of the men who maintain the system. Patriarchy comes from biology in the sense that it emerges from men's temperaments, out of their evolutionarily derived efforts to control women and at the same time have solidarity with fellow men in competition against outsiders.”

[Thomas Ray]

The authors are so anti-male, it's hard to tell whether they dislike males because they're violent--or whether they dislike violence because it's male.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

On January 7, 1974, in Gombe National Park in Tanzania, a group of eight chimpanzees crossed the border of their range and came upon Godi, a chimpanzee eating peacefully in a neighboring territory. The group attacked Godi, tore him, punched him, bit him, and left him. He died shortly thereafter. A victim of random violence.
The attack on Godi was the first such attack witnessed by humans. Up until that time, naturalists waxed poetic about the the "arcadian existence of primal innocence" enjoyed by chimpanzees, an idyllic state "which we (humans) once believed was the paradise that man had somehow lost."
Could the violence inherent in all human society possibly be in our DNA? Could it be tied to something as simple as food? The need for our ancestors to leave the forest and search out foods in the plains with rich energy stores...such as roots. Why is the Bonobo a relatively peaceful animal, while its close relatives Homo Sapiens and Chimpanzees so violent? Could it be because the Bonobo is a matriarchal society where sexual relations between females is commonplace, as opposed to the male dominated Chimps and Humans? Could violence be genetic, and not evil, or even moral?
Wrangham and Peterson explore many of these ideas in their search for the origin of human violence. Their conclusions are worth the effort. An incredible book.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Biology, anthropology, feminism, and the great apes all in one book. Highlights include chimpanzee raiding parties, bonobo women's rights groups, and the bizarre adaptations of baby female hyenas.

[Moataz · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is great, but it doesn't hold itself together coherently. It calls some ideas 'oversimplification' and sometimes it's true, but the book also seems to slip into oversimplifications a lot. When it came to gender, the book made me uncomfortable. In my head, I've wondered forever my girl friends always seem to pick shitty men to date/marry, and it made me uncomfortable to even think about it, so it was difficult to go through with it in the book, specially that it made sense. I always like to differentiate between what is common sense (which can differ between cultures) and what's scientifically logical? I think I dislike this part, because when the authors dismissed that gender is social construct, they went on to say that masculine women dislike bright dresses and dolls. That killed me! What if dolls were a "man's thing" would masculine women prefer them then?
I wish there was no broad generalization in every turn of the book. The topic of violence, gender, evolution is complex to oversimplify with generalizations. I believe that some women are physical more capable than I am (meaning, they have bigger body mass and heavier muscles). It is safe to assert that gender is both biological and social structure intertwined together in utmost complexity, but it is also important not to assume them to be separate boxes, but rather in a spectrum. It's important to admit that some men like dolls (men whose mothers didn't have low testosterone during pregnancy or are homosexuals), and women to dislike dolls (women, unlike in the book, their mothers didn't have high testosterone levels during pregnancy) - I don't know why bright dresses and dolls are measurement for the affect of testosterone level in the pregnant woman. Also, a line like women are looking for "a man to provide for them" is absurd and I hated seeing it. The gender concept in the book somehow manages brilliantly to alienate successful and hungry-for-power women, and I don't know, perhaps even stigmatizes them. But that also bring me to another thought, we can defy nature. Medicine is defying nature. Anti-aging is defying nature. We are probably the only animals that can defy and conquer nature.

From my readings - not just this book - I understood that evolution is always the one factor among many factors that "works", so I didn't get how come this means that humans were essentially as violent as apes, specially that our population numbers are always on the rise, on the contrary apes keep killing each other fighting for power, dying young and end up in small populations. And it could be proved from the book, bonobos are relatively peaceful and they have large groups - compared to chimpanzee just a dozen. If humans can cluster in larger groups as well, why then can't we suggest we are like bonobos in this aspect? [the author is leaning towards the idea that we are demonic because of the close genetical/social relationship between us and chimps.] Maybe I'm wrong, but all I'm saying, it's very difficult to believe that the success of homo-sapiens was based on a bunch of alpha-males killing each over women (it's hard to believe that this is the optimum way for a brain - an intelligent brain - to evolve), instead of peaceful or somewhat-peaceful coexistence and cooperation.

The book is wonderful. It's one of those books that changes the way you see the world. Never in my life did I look and people in the streets and imagined them evolved apes. We are so many, and we've done a lot, to the world and to each other. We can assume that we have hints of chimpanzee but also some of bonobos. The book answer much, and but also pushes new questions, what else do we look for in a book other than scratching our minds?

[Nuno R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great work in evolutionary biology, that chalenges the nature vs nurture dilemma popularized by Francis Galton. Wrangham studied chimpanzee behaviour with Jane Goodall and was among the first scientists to witness primate violence, that would later be the subject of comparatives studies. Chimpanzees, like other primates, like humans, form male groups that perform acts of violence against outsiders. They raid, seeking other groups, behaving in a very organized way, and they attack and kill. In a brutal, effective, xenophobic way.

Wrangham traces the origin of our behaviour, in the evolutionary timeline. But he starts by doing something very interesting. He looks into the myths that anthropology and literature had about humans. In many cultures and periods in history people believed paradise was a physical place on earth, and it was always a recurring theme in culture with many representations. By the late Renaissance, Europeans were debating the possibility that the American continents represented "a real-world expression of the ancient fantasy [of paradise]". And by the 19th century, "many people turned their hopes to the South Pacific". The idea was that human nature, before it was poisoned by modern culture and its vices, or in other words, before God expelled man from paradise, was peaceful, in harmony with Nature, virtuous, not knowing war or illness or anger or greed, or jealousy or any other "modern" vice. Gaugin and Mellvile contributed to this idea of idyllic islands, where people lived in biblical paradises, like Adam and Eve, naked, before they knew sin. Margaret Mead went to Samoa and came back to write her book, "Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation" in 1927, further confirming the idea that primitive cultures did live in a state of bliss, away form the harms of western modern decay. She confirmed the notion that "nurture far more than nature wrote the human script". Those ideas were later confronted with the reality of human lives, and their contrasting difficulties and joys, everywhere in the world, in every culture.

Wrangham's book is interesting in the way he introduces several notions at once. Violence is not, was not a human invention. Other primates also kill and rape and brutalize. We should give up that idea that other animals only kill when they are hungry or defending themselves. The type of violence we see perpetrated by humans against humans started before humans. We see it in chimpanzees, that raid other groups to terrorize and kill. We see rape, frequently, in orangutans. Patricarchy, he writes, is usually seen as the product of nurture. But is it completely so? Where did this come from and how could this be different? The answer, the author attempts to seek it by comparing the primates (including humans) that do have a tendency for violence to another primate, the bonobo, that seems to be more peaceful. 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.

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

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. Other than that, I thought the book was very fairly unscientific. For instance, the authors didn't create or test hypotheses regarding human behavior; instead they made claims, often based off of feminist thinking, and attempted to defend their view using anecdotal evidence and flawed logic. For instance, they argued that the likely purpose of rape was to gain power over women as opposed to reproduction; they provide no empirical evidence of this.

They did not go into any level of depth to describe when males are violence or why. The thesis was essentially "males are violent", and the authors made no distinction between men who raid villages to rape women and men who were drafted into the Vietnam War; given the very different impacts that these two situations have on reproductive success I would expect a much more nuanced discussion of male violence. The authors also compared ape societies which are patriarchal to hyena societies which are matriarchal. I thought this would be where the authors explained what factors lead to patriarchy versus matriarchy, but this discussion never takes place.

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. However, these descriptions don't contribute to a very strong thesis. For those interested in reading books about human behavior and evolution, I would highly recommend Homicide: Foundations of Human Behavior, or Death from a Distance and the Birth of a Humane Universe.

[Bart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book. Its basic question is why humans use violence against each other, and are pretty unique in the animal kingdom in doing so. Its approach is quite broad, and after a few chapters it starts comparing us to the other three great apes. The answer is a surprising combination of biology and geography that influences society and behavior.

Both eye-opening and entertaining!

More non-fiction recommendations & SFF reviews on Weiging A Pig...

[Rob Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intriguing and frustrating. I was intrigued by the author’s analysis of violence, from the perspective of evolutionary biology. I was just as frustrated with his effort to end on a note of “hope” - hope that depends on the reader being around long enough for either a miracle to occur or for evolution to have its way in eliminating violence. Ultimately, I thoroughly enjoy this book, particularly the author’s approach: easy to follow and logical. I’m going to read it again to see what I missed; maybe see a more pragmatic route to hope the second time around. I recommend reading “Down Girl” (Kate Manne), as it helps put more meat on some the idea of how some women are “willing participants” in male aggression. Two other books come to mind that envision possibilities where humans may evolve from violence: “Novacene” (James Lovelock) and “Homo Deus” (Yuval Harare).

[Gideon Maxim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fascinating subject matter. Knowledgeable author. Just too much psychological conjecture that doesn't really add up. Interesting anecdotal accounts.

Also, has some of that annoying, boys-are-so-bad ethos that people often think makes them seem sensitive or objective or whatever.

A better book is here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1.... I'm reading that now. Some of it's over my head, and sometimes dry reading, but much better.

and here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2....

[Catherine Gentry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very important book as it discusses the origins of male violence. It is a realistic look at the evolution of our species and the proclivity of male violence which literally has defined history. 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.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

A self-contained discussion of human morality, written in the language best suited to bring empiricism to ethics: primatology. By the end, Wrangham has taken the reader on a journey to other lives, perceiving, condemning, and forgiving each. The reader learns the scientific method as well as a lifetime of expertise in primatology, and the ruminations on the meaning of life it has sparked.

I can't recommend this book enough. It will change the way you view gender relations, forever.

[marcali · Rating 4 out of 5]

we're zeroing in on the science of why males tend to be assholes....

but seriously, folks-- be sure and balance Wrangham's slightly polemic flavor with the mellow nerdom of Sapolsky's Trouble with Testosterone and Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. (esp since Demonic inspires some responses that lack answers)

[Andrés Astudillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We should accept the likelihood that male violence and male dominance over women have long been a part of our history. But with an evolutionary perspective we can firmly reject the pessimists who say it has to stay that way. Male demonism is not inevitable.”

Richard W. Wrangham

There are many feelings concerning this book. If you ever have the chance to watch a documentary, such as Criminal Case, On the Case, CSI, Hawaii 5-0, Discovery ID, and many, many material concerning crimes, most of them, if not all of them, happen because of male violence. That violence is easily explained and most of the horrible actions they commit too, can be explained via the evolutionary lens. Most of them happen for -sexual- reasons, betrayal, parenthood, jealousy, rejection, and most of them are commited by men.

Evolutionary lens and the study of primates (we are primates) really help us understand we are like that, and our behavior. Chimpanzees are our closest relatives, we share almost 99.8% of genetic similarity, and unfortunately they are violent, and patriarchal societies. But there are actually two species of apes that are this closely related to humans: bonobos (Pan paniscus) and the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). The analysis of Ulindi's complete genome, reported online today in Nature, reveals that bonobos and chimpanzees share 99.6% of their DNA. The researchers also found that bonobos share about 98.7% of their DNA with humans—about the same amount that chimps share with us. The book explains both societies: the chimp and the bonobo as well.
Richard L. Currier mentioned something about meat consumption and a violent trend (Neanderthals were more violent than Homo Sapiens) which I remembered whole reading this book, in the part were the author mentioned that chimps hunt in groups and eat the prey; they are amazing and successful hunters. Bonobos on the other hand, eat more fruits and roots like apes, and like meat but dont gorge on it. Its just the same as well. Bonobo's male violence towards females are really less compared to chimpanzee society. If you are looking for equality, the answer lies in evolutionary feminism (yes, it exists), is real compared to gender ideology.

Male humans are violent, men rape, men create coalitions, kill as many people as they can because of cognition biases and evolutionary baggage, however, there's no such thing as biological determinisn, and I deeply believe that education on knowing who we are -Temet Nosce- is gonna saves us from ourselves.

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books that I have ever read, fiction or nonfiction, and it may be the best nonfiction book that I have ever read.

It is very accessible and easily read and understood, however, it took me a long time to get through it because upon finishing a chapter I often spent days on end just ruminating over what I had read.

It's hard to put everything that is great about this book into a short review, but I felt compelled to write something about it as best as I can. This book has drawn from evolutionary and comparative biology mostly but also sociology, psychology, and history to produce an extremely well-documented, supported, and researched view into what makes people... act like people.

So much of human religion, philosophy, and ideology has been concerned with why do people have such a capacity for cruelty and violence? Applying the lens of evolutionary biology to this question makes some of the answers so clear and obvious, it will change the way you think about everything related to humans and human society.

Biology and evolutionary history are not destiny, but they plays a huge impact on human life, especially the differences between sexes and the contexts in which evolution took place: food sources available, competition for sex and reproduction, territorial concerns, etc.

By looking to the apes and other animals, there is SO, SO much to learn about humans and human behavior, and the traps and perils in which we find ourselves currently as a species.

This book offers far more insight into the nature of good and evil, the nature of why people act the way that they do, and the external and historical factors that characterize human behavior than almost anything else I have ever read, more than any ideology, religion, or social theory. Not even close.

[Maher Razouk · Rating 5 out of 5]

على الرغم من أن مقارنة ألدوس هكسلي الموسعة بين تشريح الغوريلا وتشريح الإنسان هي بالفعل تشير بقوة إلى أصل مشترك ، إلا أنه كان هناك دائمًا احتمال آخر ، مهما كان بعيدًا. عبر الانتقاء الطبيعي ، يمكن للأنواع المختلفة أو ذات الصلة البعيدة أن تتطور نحو التشابه المادي كاستجابة لضغوط بيئية مماثلة. وهذه العملية ، التي تسمى التقارب ، لا يمكن أبدًا استبعادها كتفسير للتشابه التشريحي للأنواع.

ضع في اعتبارك ، على سبيل المثال ، حقيقة أن البشر وأنواع القردة الأربعة العليا لديهم عظام ذيل بدائية. التفسير الأكثر احتمالاً لهذه الخاصية المشتركة هو الانحدار من سلف مشترك. ومع ذلك ، لا يزال من الممكن أن ينحدر البشر والقردة الأربعة من سلالات منفصلة ، مع عظام ذيلهم البدائية نتيجة انتقال كل مجموعة بشكل مستقل إلى نفس المكان البيئي ، وبالتالي تتطور بشكل منفصل بسبب بعض الضغوط البيئية المماثلة التي تعزز غياب الذيل : تكيف منفصل مع نتائج متقاربة.
.
Richard Wrangham
Demonic Males
Translated By #Maher_Razouk

[Carlo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Demonic Males è un saggio che va alla ricerca dell'origine della violenza maschile di gruppo, analizzando e raffrontando i comportamenti violenti nelle Grandi Scimmie (Scimpanzé, Bonobo, Gorilla e Umani). Nonostante lo scopo sembri decisamente ambizioso, gli autori danno molte risposte decisamente soddisfacenti sul senso evolutivo di questa particolare forma di violenza, sorprendentemente rara in natura in quanto presente solo negli Scimpanzé e negli Umani.
Senza mai cercare di giustificare la violenza (dalle guerre ai femminicidi), il libro arriva a spiegare la distribuzione e l'esercizio del potere tra i generi della nostra specie, dando un senso biologico al patriarcato, al femminismo, agli incel, proponendo altresì una soluzione attingendo dal nostro cugino "buono": il bonobo.
Un libro senza finti moralismi, senza retorica, che ha dato finalmente corpo e coerenza a quelle che prima erano solo intuizioni. Indispensabile per chi volesse provare ad essere un animale più consapevole e, infine, migliore.

[Caesiellus · Rating 5 out of 5]

An utterly fascinating and mind opening book. Examines the social behaviors of the Greats Apes, including Homo Sapiens. Sapiens are placed directly in the middle of the Ape family tree, in between Bonobos and Gorillas. It’s absurd to imagine a human as something other than an animal Ape, such as a big-ego’d creature ordained by God to be superior to all other creatures earth. This book reminds us that we are inescapably intertwined with our biological natures and perceive the world through a narrow cognitive evolutionary window that defined our ecological niche for thousands of generations.

[Cody Vandergrift · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thought provoking.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Consider three categories of violence: wiithin-group killing “homicide”, between-group killing “war” and sexual coercion “patriarchy”. Across the animal kingdom, the intensity of violence varies a lot by these categories, and there usually is no clear gender bias. Most primates are female-bonded, and the philopatric sex is typically the one involved in territory defense, for example. Bonobos have low rates of all three forms of violence. Hyenas do engage in lethal aggression against neighboring groups, but females do the fighting.

But in chimpanzees and humans, violence in all three categories is unusually strong and all three categories are dominated by males. Why? What biological or cultural properties have bestowed our men with this “demonic” phenotype?

The author calls chimps the first killer ape, the only primate whose males will proactively kill nonspecific males via raiding. Since humans share this very unusual trait with our closest relative, we have likely inherited this “warmaking phenotype”.

Wrangham is at his best when he is talking about male raiding. His general points are

1. For the vast majority of mammals, territorial behavior is defensive and non-lethal.
2. In only a few species however, intergroup conflict includes lethal aggression, and only when the fighting capacity between groups is highly asymmetric.
3. Lethal territoriality behavior predominantly manifests in fission-fusion groups with highly variable party size.
4. In fission-fusion groups, encounters are more likely imbalance, which selects for the lethal territoriality phenotype
5. Chimps and foraging humans both engage in a particular style of lethal territoriality known as the raid, the behavioral overlap suggests it is inherited.

More here, https://kevinbinz.com/2024/05/27/the-.... This line of argument is particularly potent when you include Wrangham’s more recent work in The Goodness Paradox, where he incorporates the data for human self-domestication, and also the reactive vs proactive violence distinction. https://kevinbinz.com/2020/02/22/the-...

The author is eager to argue that warfighting and raids were prevalent in our foraging past. But this controversial thesis isn’t required to accept the above arguments.

The book was written in 1996, and at that time many didn’t have a clear grasp on the implications that humans lived in multi-family groups, in multilevel societies. Wrangham also doesn’t mention our species' penchant for cooperative breeding. I think that both of these social structures shed quite a bit more light on our species.
https://kevinbinz.com/2024/05/15/the-...

I came to this book hoping to get insight into evolutionary feminism, and the biocultural drivers of patriarchy. I didn’t get the answers I wanted. He spends a lot of time rebutting cultural determinism in anthropology, and advocating for the universality of gender differences. But I wish the author had spent more time exploring how these three categories of violence interact. Wrangham does float three hypotheses forward, but I just didn’t find these particularly persuasive,

Intelligence turns affection into love and aggression into punishment and control.
Carnivory habituates an animal to killing, which helps explain the co-occurence of male demonic traits.
The Great Apes are male philopatric, humans are too - such a trait strengthens male coalitions.

In Rodseth (2011), one of Wrangham’s collaborators did put forward a model connecting human social organization with patriarchy. The connection between MLS bachelor threat and the fraternal interest group hypothesis is particularly interesting.

> Probably the most important single reason for accepting the argument presented here is the fact that now warfare has been effectively suppressed by the Australian administration, the relations between men and women are rapidly changing. Indeed, the Gahuku-Gama [Read 1955, 1965], who are similar to the Bena in most respects, gave up the pattern soon after contact.
Men began sleeping with their wives, the sacred flutes were burned after a public display, and the men's houses and associated activities were largely abandoned.

Rodseth (2011). From Bachelor Threat to Fraternal Security: male associations and modular organization in human societies.

Chapter 1, 4, 7-9 and 12 contain the main arguments in the book.
Chapter 2 and 3 are detours in anthropogeny, only tangentially related to its main thesis.
Chapter 5 and 6 are arguments against certain “cultural determinism” theories of violence/gender.
Chapter 10 and 11 were a digression towards discussing bonobos

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quintessential introductory anthropology reading. Love pairing this with works by Bell Hooks or other intersectional feminist works.

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine the Victorians reading this book

This book is about bonobos and chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans and their social behavior as it relates to ours. How we are similar, how different. Chimpanzees are surprisingly violent and make gang raids on neighboring tribes and kill (with their bare hands, by the way) if the raiding party has a big advantage. We and the chimps broke off from a common ancestor about five or six million years ago. We went out of the forest and onto the woodlands and the savannas. We learned to dig up and eat roots and of course bone marrow from kills. This is how we survived the loss of the forest and the recurring dry seasons.

We are a little less closely related to gorillas and orangutans, but the point the authors are making is we are the fifth ape, and it is valuable to study how the other apes behave so as to gain insight into ourselves. While the authors seem to lay the problem of human violence squarely at the feet of males, it is allowed—albeit only briefly and incidentally (p. 239-240)—that women choose these demonic males through sexual selection, and ultimately the problem of male violence is a human problem.

What is especially interesting here is the thorough examination not only of the violence practiced by apes, but of their differing sexual practices: gorillas form harems with a single silver back male getting most of the reproductive tries, while orangutans live alone and the males often engage in rape. 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.

This is evolutionary psychology with a wary eye on political correctness. I note that Edward O. Wilson does not appear in the bibliography but Naomi Wolf and Andrea Dworkin (for example) do. In fact, this book is something of a blatant attempt to make evolutionary psychology palpable to women. The authors even have a category they call "evolutionary feminism" represented by "writers like Patricia Gowaty, Sarah Hrdy, Merdith Small, and Barbara Smuts" united in their opposition to "the patriarchy" (p. 124). 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. The authors even suggest (p. 125) that "If all women followed Lysistrata's injunctions and refused their husbands, they could indeed effect change."

If.

By the way: ugly dust cover.

--Dennis Littrell, author of “Understanding Evolution and Ourselves”

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Would you rather be alone in the forest with a Bear or a Man?

This viral social media trend has exploded recently in 2024, after a tiktoker posed this question to her husband. "Would you rather be alone in the forest, with a bear, or with a man?"

When this question is asked to a man, the reply is typically "I would rather be alone in the forest with a man, because a bear will kill me". On the other hand, most women on tiktok and other platforms have answered this question with " I would pick the bear, because I am more afraid of the man".

This begs the question, why are human males and indeed, males of other mammalian species such as the chimpanzee or dolphin so menacing to their female counterparts? This book seeks to answer that question in a variety of case studies involving primate society, including chimpanzees, orangutans and bonobos. Genetically our closest cousins, chimp society in particular is analyzed for details that could unlock the mystery of why men are inherently more violent than women in human society.

[L.L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

To ta z rodzaju tych książek popularnonaukowych, które są bardzo dobre ;) Dobrze się czyta i dość lekko. Humoru nie ma za dużo, ale czasami się trafi. Rzeczowa i ciekawa wiedza.

"Dobór płciowy, proces ewolucyjny wytwarzający cechy różnicujące płcie, odpowiada za to w dużym stopniu. Bez niego samce nie zostałyby obdarzone budową fizyczną pozwalającą im na stosowanie groźnych broni ani nastawieniem umysłu sankcjonującym przemoc. Samce, które lepiej walczą, mogą powstrzymać inne samce od kopulacji i same kopulują z większym powodzeniem. Ci, którzy lepiej walczą, mają przeważnie większą liczbę dzieci. To prosta, głupia, samolubna logika doboru płciowego. Co zatem z nami? Czy dobór płciowy jest ostatecznie powodem, dla którego mężczyźni awanturują się w barach, tworzą miejskie gangi, planują ataki w wojnach podjazdowych i wyruszają na wojnę? Czy to rzeczywiście dobór płciowy przeznaczył mężczyzn do bycia szczególnie agresywnymi?"

- ma to sens i mogło tak być. Ale to jest proces i czasy się zmieniły, i to że jako ludzkość stajemy się co raz łagodniejsi, też wynika z tego że takich (agresywnych) partnerów już się nie wybiera ;) To już nie jest efektywna strategia reprodukcyjna wśród homo sapiens ;)

"19 kwietnia 1995 roku w centrum Oklahoma City, w stanie Oklahoma, dwóch młodych mężczyzn zaparkowało wynajętą ciężarówkę (...) z załadowaną na niej dwutonową bombą przed budynkiem federalnym Alfreda P. Murraha w godzinach pracy. (...) O godzinie 9.02 rano bomba wybucha, a eksplozja jest tak potężna, że cała ściana dziewięciopiętrowego budynku rozpada się od góry do dołu, tworząc gigantyczną pomarańczową kulę ognia i mieszaninę szkła, betonu, stali, pyłu, mebli biurowych, ludzi i części ciał. (...)
Po kilku dniach ujęto głównego podejrzanego. Jest nim niejaki Timothy McVeigh, rodowity Amerykanin, który niedawno opuścił szeregi armii amerykańskiej, mający pewne powiązania z nieformalną grupą, paramilitarną organizacją nazywającą siebie Michigan Militia. Żołnierska postawa McVeigha, uważne spojrzenie jego niebieskich oczu oraz wyraz jego szczupłej, obojętnej twarzy sprawiają wrażenie, jakby uważał siebie za bohatera i jeńca wojennego. Nie chce powiedzieć ani słowa o sobie, swoich poglądach, motywach czy swoim możliwym związku z wybuchem bomby. Okazuje się, że paramilitarną organizację Michigan Militia stworzył handlarz broni Norman Olson, który wierzy, że Organizacja Narodów Zjednoczonych jest całkowicie przygotowana do przejęcia Stanów Zjednoczonych. Dlatego zorganizował 12 000 noszących broń mężczyzn w całym swoim rodzinnym stanie, aby mogli stawić opór. Członkowie grupy, którzy nieoficjalnie określają siebie mianem amerykańskich patriotów, widząc czarne helikoptery latające nad ich głowami, uważają, że są to oczywiste przygotowania do międzynarodowego przejęcia USA. „Zbrojny konflik może być konieczny, jeśli kraj nie będzie się bronił”, oznajmi Olsen.' Później obarcza odpowiedzialnością za wybuch w Oklahomie Japończyków, podczas gdy inny orędownik tej grupy, zarządzający oddziałem Stephen Bridges, cnotliwie zapewnia o braku jakiegokolwiek powiązania z tym atakiem bombowym lub jego sprawcami.
Szczegóły sprawy są nowe: poważni patrioci i brzuchaci ideolodzy wierni temu, co uważają za pierwotne amerykańskie ideały, tworzą w swoim gronie wizję zagrażających sił tak solidną, jak broń, którą przy sobie noszą, i tak fantastyczną w swym zamyśle, jak odwiedziny z kosmosu."

- :D :D ale dalej:

"Szczegóły są nowe, lecz model klasyczny. David Trochmann, współzałożyciel innej amerykańskiej grupy o podobnej ideologii, paramilitarnej organizacji Militia of Montana, wyraża to stanowisko tak: „Skąd się wzięliśmy? To bardzo proste. Są dobrzy faceci i źli faceci - tam na zewnątrz. Ze złymi facetami trzeba zrobić porządek.”
Sposób myślenia, odczuwania i zachowania nie różni się pod względem dynamiki i tkwiącej u podstaw psychologii od tego, jaki jest właściwy tysiącom innych, przeważnie męskich grup, wliczając w to miejskie gangi, gangi motocyklowe, organizacje przestępcze, pozapaństwowe społeczności bojowników, a nawet bardziej sformalizowane i finansowane przez państwo armie (które przecież wciąż organizują swoje podstawowe jednostki bojowe na poziomie plutonu). Psychologia, z jaką mamy tu do czynienia, nie różni się prawie od tej, którą można by zastosować w odniesieniu do przeważnie męskich sportów drużynowych - na przykład amerykańskiego futbolu i hokeja. Zachowanie Jest znajome, nieobce, i wciąż powtarza model tak stary i powszechny jak gatunek. Demoniczne samce gromadzą się w małych, samodzielnie napędzających się, samodzielnie powiększających się i zyskujących na znaczeniu bandach. Dostrzegają lub wymyślają wroga „gdzieś tam” - za górami, po drugiej stronie granicy, po drugiej stronie językowego, społecznego, politycznego, etnicznego lub rasowego podziału. Wydaje się, że natura tego podziału nie ma prawie żadnego znaczenia. Znaczenie ma to, że można zaangażować się w wielki i zniewalający dramat przynależności do gangu, rozpoznawania wroga, odbywania patroli, uczestniczenia w ataku."

- to jest i śmieszne, i smutne i niestety prawdziwe. I czy nie przypomina to samozwańczych granicznych patroli? (i innych tego typu...)


Ale czegoś mi w tej książce brakuje. Chyba faktów które zauważył autor "Zmierzchu przemocy" ale to dziwnie powiedzieć, że tym, czego mi w tej książce najbardziej brakuje, to tego, że nie jest tamtą książką :D Ale ta jest starsza, chociaż jak spojrzałem na datę - 1996 - to pomyślałem że nie aż taka stara! A potem, że jednak tak :D (to prawie 30 lat!), wolałbym przeczytać je jednak w odwrotnej kolejności, bo tu jest dobrze opisany punkt wyjścia - predyspozycje (głównie samców) do przemocy, natomiast "Zmierzch przemocy"... ech, dobra, poddaję się, bo nie umiałem ująć tego co chciałem i zrobił to za mnie chatGPT kiedy mu o tym opowiedziałem ;) ale przysięgam, to moje myśli! (co za czasy, żeby chatGPT lepiej formułował moje myśli niż ja sam :D ale cóż, jest jak jest i trzeba korzystać):

""Demoniczne samce" przedstawia człowieka, a szczególnie mężczyzn, jako gatunek obdarzony pewnymi genetycznymi predyspozycjami do agresji i rywalizacji, dziedzictwo ewolucyjne, które wciąż wpływa na nasze zachowania. To wciągające spojrzenie na biologiczne i psychologiczne mechanizmy stojące za przemocą i rywalizacją w ludzkim społeczeństwie.
Z kolei "Zmierzch przemocy" daje inny punkt widzenia: mimo że agresywne instynkty są w nas obecne, ludzkość uczy się je kontrolować i ograniczać, dzięki kulturze, normom społecznym i instytucjom. Pokazuje to pewną dynamikę, dzięki której świat staje się stopniowo bardziej pokojowy.
Razem tworzą obraz ewolucyjnego procesu, w którym surowe instynkty stopniowo ustępują miejsca bardziej pokojowemu współżyciu.”" - o właśnie, tego mi zabrakło w "Demonicznych samcach": że to jest proces. Tak ja to widzę.

(czytana/słuchana: 24.10-3.11.2025)
5-/5 [7/10]

[Cy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a strange book. The beginning was very interesting; I learnt things that I didn't even get from my classes on human evolution, like humans having much thicker enamel than other great apes, and relatively large molars. I also agreed with a lot of the authors' takes, such as nature vs nurture being a false dichotomy, and that people are too quick to dismiss evolution and its impact on human behaviour, believing themselves elevated beyond animal instincts or motives. But cracks began to appear in the reasoning by the midpoint, and at the end it had lost me completely.

Before I do my deep dive, I should clarify that I am a zoologist. I have nowhere near Wrangham's experience, but I do feel a bit more qualified to critique the science than a layman. What I noticed was a pattern of underexplaining hypotheses or brushing past contradictions to support the thesis: that human men are violent because they come from a violent evolutionary branch, and that their bodies and brains are built for violence.

First of all, the common ancestor of the hominines (gorillas, chimps, bonobos, and humans) is asserted to be chimp-like in temperament. If the common ancestor had a chimp-like temperament - aggressive and patriarchal - then Occam's Razor tells us all hominines are ancestrally aggressive and patriarchal, with peaceful, matriarchal bonobos deviating from the norm. This makes sense and would be a compelling argument, but there is no explanation given for the claim. The fact that 3/4 hominines appear to be aggressive and patriarchal would support this from a top-down approach, but only if chimps and gorillas are aggressive in the same way. They aren't. The book itself distinguishes them. While male chimps are known to batter females, male gorillas are rarely aggressive towards females or each other. Their aggression mainly manifests in the form of killing infants of rival groups. Females are more likely to be aggressive with each other, with the male intervening!

Secondly, the argument of sexual dimorphism. The authors state that increased aggression in one sex is usually correlated with dimorphism: if a species has a larger sex with some kind of weaponry, and a smaller, no or less weapon-bearing sex, the larger sex is more aggressive. This is generally true and, I'd argue, common sense. The book points out that human men do not appear built for fighting, being slender and lacking the dimorphic weaponry other apes have - larger canine teeth. This is quickly brushed past to claim men have a different kind of weaponry - a large upper body. Humans, they argue, have the shoulder joints and hands to allow them to throw and punch, so large canines weren't necessary. The fact that other great apes have the same traits and use their arms to fight too is ignored, despite being mentioned earlier in the book. That humans are markedly less dimorphic compared to other great apes is not brought up either. Men may generally be larger than women, but by 30% vs the 43% difference in chimps or 100% difference in gorillas. In fact, male bonobos are 36% bigger than females; they are more dimorphic size-wise, yet do not show the expected aggression! So to use this as an argument for aggression being baked into human, specifically male, physiology simply doesn't work.

Where the book completely lost me was the implication that female animals, and by extension women, lack an entire emotion that is the root cause of male aggression: pride. It also explicitly claims that pride in males is the result of sexual selection.

"Male chimpanzees compete much more aggressively for dominance than females do. If a lower-ranking male refuses to acknowledge his superior with one of the appropriate conventions, such as a soft grunt, the superior will become predictably angry. But females can let such insults pass.

...

Pride obviously serves as a stimulus for much interpersonal aggression in humans, and we can hypothesize confidently that this emotion evolved during countless generations in which males who achieved high status were able to turn their social success into extra reproduction. Male pride, the source of many a conflict, is reasonably seen as a mental equivalent of broad shoulders. Pride is another legacy of sexual selection."

There are further bold implications that sports prowess corroborates with being a rapist or physical abuser, and that women who are victims of abuse stay because, among other things, they are on some level attracted to the aggression. I will point out that the authors clarify they don't think women deserve or secretly want abuse, and I am not accusing them of sexism. I just found that after a very well laid foundation in the early chapters, the later ones have some extreme extrapolation without much basis. It's like they move from Point A to Point B to Point C, and then suddenly jump to Point 31.

Another thing that bothers me is the use of the word "demonic". In the title, I assumed it was sensationalist to catch people's eyes, but it's used throughout the text in a serious manner. This sentence in particular really got my back up, as a pretty unscientific and derogatory statement:

"The problem is that males are demonic at an unconscious and irrational level."

All in all, this book brought up some great points, as well as anatomy and history lessons. I was sure it would be one of my favourite non-fiction books. But there just wasn't enough evidence to support the idea that "demonic males" were based in biology, or even real. Bonobos had been mentioned earlier, as "critical to the vision" in the book. But their chapter frames them as a what-could-have-been, as a peaceful vision we unfortunately never reached. Despite the attempt to end on a hopeful note, the conclusion ultimately ends up reinforcing earlier fatalistic ideas, and makes me think the authors perhaps have some baggage to unpack about being male and apes.

"If we are cursed with a demonic male temperament and a Machiavellian capacity to express it, we are also blessed with an intelligence that can, through the acquisition of wisdom, draw us away from the 5-million-year stain of our ape past."

[Connor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read overall. Touches on a variety of compelling anthropological/evolutionary topics, but I don't think the book actually fully proves its original thesis. 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. Clearly male aggression, tribalism, etc. have been characteristic of our lineage for perhaps millions of years, but it's really hard to place the origin of a behavior exactly. 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. The authors don't fully address this. 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.