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The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall
Biologist Mark W. Moffett draws on findings in psychology, sociology and anthropology to explain the social adaptations that bind societies. He explores how the tension between identity and anonymity defines how societies develop, function, and fail.
468 pages, Hardcover
First published April 16, 2019
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1676 people want to read
About the author
Mark W. Moffett
9 books17 followersMark Moffett (born 7 January 1958) is a tropical biologist who studies the ecology of tropical forest canopies and the social behavior of animals (especially ants) and humans. He is also the author of several popular science books and is noted for his macrophotography documenting ant biology.
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April 11, 2021Update 2. We are told that man is the only animal that kills, and tortures, for pleasure.
1. "No chimp has to grapple with the rules of a speedway or the upkeep of a homestead. Nor does it contend with traffic congestion, public health issues, assembly lines, complex teamwork, labor allocation, market economies, resource management, mass warfare, or slavery." Only people and ants have societies with these features. The difference is, of course, that ants have made no progress in millions of years, and humans have.
The most fascinating of the above was market economies. Ants who have been foraging or hunting, bring in food, other ants come up to take the food, they 'buy' it. But if there is too much of one kind of food and the 'sellers' are left with their offerings, they go out and look for different food, and perhaps different again, depending on how varied a diet that species of ants require. In in this way, among others - garbage removal and sanitising - the colony is kept healthy.
This follows on for me from The Social Conquest of Earth, a study of eusocial societies from my favourite ant-man (book writer, not superhero).
"Wolves don’t dispatch members of outside packs with the quick chomp to the neck they employ to take down elk. While visiting the wolf researchers based at Yellowstone, I learned that a pack had just killed an old female and her companion from another pack. Both died from abdomen and chest bites apparently inflicted over many hours.____________________
The viciousness of chimps and wolves toward foreign animals can exceed what they employ to bring down prey or kill rivals within their own community."
1. "No chimp has to grapple with the rules of a speedway or the upkeep of a homestead. Nor does it contend with traffic congestion, public health issues, assembly lines, complex teamwork, labor allocation, market economies, resource management, mass warfare, or slavery." Only people and ants have societies with these features. The difference is, of course, that ants have made no progress in millions of years, and humans have.
The most fascinating of the above was market economies. Ants who have been foraging or hunting, bring in food, other ants come up to take the food, they 'buy' it. But if there is too much of one kind of food and the 'sellers' are left with their offerings, they go out and look for different food, and perhaps different again, depending on how varied a diet that species of ants require. In in this way, among others - garbage removal and sanitising - the colony is kept healthy.
This follows on for me from The Social Conquest of Earth, a study of eusocial societies from my favourite ant-man (book writer, not superhero).
July 23, 2019
In most accounts of world or macro history, you get a few introductory sections or chapters on our hunter-gather past before moving on to the civilizations of written history. Yet 6,000 years of written history represents only three percent of our collective 200,000 year history as a species. Surely this span of time has more relevance and deserves more attention than it is typically given.
The Human Swarm by biologist Mark Moffett does not suffer from this limitation; it takes 21 chapters and 275 pages before the author gets to the societies of written history. In what truly represents a biologist’s take on the history of our species and societies, the majority of the book discusses our deep evolutionary past and our connections to other social species, including chimpanzees, bonobos, dolphins, elephants, and even ants.
We like to think of ourselves as distinct from and superior to nature, yet there is significant continuity between us and other species in both our genes and behavior, most notably in comparison to our closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos. As Moffet points out, the behavior of chimps can be uncomfortably similar to our own. But the point of the book is not to show how similar we are to the other great apes; rather, it is to compare and contrast our knowledge of animal behavior with that of hunter-gatherer bands and other primitive societies to understand the deep roots of our societies, including their formation, rise, and fall.
Moffet first notes that most animals are not social; the Jaguar, for example, is a solitary animal that lives and hunts alone, associating with other Jaguars only during mating season. In the relatively few species that do form societies, the jump to sociality requires that individuals somehow identify each other as distinct from “outsiders.”
Typically, cooperation is thought to be the key factor in the formation of societies, but as Moffett points out, this is not a good way to think about it. First, cooperation is found in some asocial species, so by itself cooperation is not sufficient for the emergence of society. Additionally, conflict is often a large part of functioning societies, making cooperation only part of the picture. The key element in the formation and maintenance of a society, therefore, is not cooperation, but identity.
Without ingroups and outgroups, and the ability to tell the difference, societies cannot exist. To form societies, different species have developed different mechanisms to distinguish individual members of the ingroup. With chimpanzees, this requires more or less intimate knowledge of each member (via facial recognition, vocal characteristics, and other markers). This requirement means that chimpanzee societies must remain relatively small (15-150 members).
While violence exists within chimpanzee societies, violence between societies is more frequent and much more extreme, clearly demonstrating that chimps can identify society-mates versus outsiders and think in terms of us versus them.
Ants adopt a different approach; Argentine ants, for example, identify members of its society by scent, and attack Argentine ants of a different society and with a different scent when encountered. The use of chemical markers of identity means that ants can develop massively larger anonymous societies that number in the millions. While these ants are peaceful within their own society, they are very aggressive with ants in other societies.
In between the strategy of intimate acquaintance found in chimps and impersonal chemical markers found in ants is the middle-ground strategy found in humans. Following the chimpanzees and bonobos, we develop intimate social connections with a limited number of individuals, but following the ants, we also develop societal markers that allow us to function peacefully within a society of anonymous strangers that we, for the most part, don’t have to worry about as threats.
These societal markers can be large and small, and encompass the vast number of languages, dialects, dress codes, hair styles, body adornments, ideas, religions, and cultural practices found throughout the world and throughout history. These collective markers are a double-edged sword; they enable us to live peacefully within large anonymous societies while at the same time creating a xenophobic predisposition toward foreigners or outsiders. The history of our species is largely the consequences of this groupish psychology, and our efforts to either exploit it or find ways to overcome it.
Slavery is a prominent example of the exploitation of differences, viewing members of the slave race as less than human and deserving of their own subjugation. Conversely, the various human rights movements represent the rational counteracting forces to our psychological tendency to see those with different social markers as inferior. Human history is largely the continual alternation between our base urges to separate and dehumanize groups and the rational forces seeking to universalize humanity. This is why the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on universalizing human rights, was a majorly important period in human history, despite the modern vogue to question its significance.
Moffet leaves the reader with the question of whether or not we can ever dispense with societies entirely or outgrow our proclivity for ingroup bias and the dehumanization of outgroups. He doesn’t seem to be optimistic in this regard, and he may be right. But he also points out that we are the only species that can use our intelligence to overcome the aspects of our biology and history that we don’t like. In this respect I’m more optimistic.
Our deep evolutionary past predisposes us to xenophobia, distrust of strangers, ingroup bias, and racism. It compels us to judge individuals by the perceived characteristics of a group, even when those perceptions are inaccurate. It’s not hard to be a bigot; you simply need to suspend all of your critical faculties and become a slave to your biology.
But we need not become slaves to our biology. Reason can show us that individual variation within a group means that you cannot judge an individual by group averages; that our genetic and behavioral similarities transcend superficial differences; that there is nothing special about us simply because we were born in a particular place with a specific skin color; and that human cooperation across time and place is what is responsible for all the technological and scientific progress we take for granted.
Moffett proposes the idea that for societies to bond and function optimally, they require an adversarial outside group. Maybe this is true. I’d like to think it’s not, but history seems to give us conflicting information. History is rife with examples of bigotry, nationalism, war, violence, racism, and oppression. At the same time, rational countervailing forces have eliminated slavery, expanded human rights, and increased toleration for diversity. The question is, will the trend continue or will we backslide into our old patterns of behavior, allowing our deepest psychological tendencies to override our reason? For what it’s worth, and despite the current political environment, in the long run, I’m betting on reason—not to create a perfect society, but to continue to make slow and steady progress in the battle against the inner demons of our psychology.
The Human Swarm by biologist Mark Moffett does not suffer from this limitation; it takes 21 chapters and 275 pages before the author gets to the societies of written history. In what truly represents a biologist’s take on the history of our species and societies, the majority of the book discusses our deep evolutionary past and our connections to other social species, including chimpanzees, bonobos, dolphins, elephants, and even ants.
We like to think of ourselves as distinct from and superior to nature, yet there is significant continuity between us and other species in both our genes and behavior, most notably in comparison to our closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos. As Moffet points out, the behavior of chimps can be uncomfortably similar to our own. But the point of the book is not to show how similar we are to the other great apes; rather, it is to compare and contrast our knowledge of animal behavior with that of hunter-gatherer bands and other primitive societies to understand the deep roots of our societies, including their formation, rise, and fall.
Moffet first notes that most animals are not social; the Jaguar, for example, is a solitary animal that lives and hunts alone, associating with other Jaguars only during mating season. In the relatively few species that do form societies, the jump to sociality requires that individuals somehow identify each other as distinct from “outsiders.”
Typically, cooperation is thought to be the key factor in the formation of societies, but as Moffett points out, this is not a good way to think about it. First, cooperation is found in some asocial species, so by itself cooperation is not sufficient for the emergence of society. Additionally, conflict is often a large part of functioning societies, making cooperation only part of the picture. The key element in the formation and maintenance of a society, therefore, is not cooperation, but identity.
Without ingroups and outgroups, and the ability to tell the difference, societies cannot exist. To form societies, different species have developed different mechanisms to distinguish individual members of the ingroup. With chimpanzees, this requires more or less intimate knowledge of each member (via facial recognition, vocal characteristics, and other markers). This requirement means that chimpanzee societies must remain relatively small (15-150 members).
While violence exists within chimpanzee societies, violence between societies is more frequent and much more extreme, clearly demonstrating that chimps can identify society-mates versus outsiders and think in terms of us versus them.
Ants adopt a different approach; Argentine ants, for example, identify members of its society by scent, and attack Argentine ants of a different society and with a different scent when encountered. The use of chemical markers of identity means that ants can develop massively larger anonymous societies that number in the millions. While these ants are peaceful within their own society, they are very aggressive with ants in other societies.
In between the strategy of intimate acquaintance found in chimps and impersonal chemical markers found in ants is the middle-ground strategy found in humans. Following the chimpanzees and bonobos, we develop intimate social connections with a limited number of individuals, but following the ants, we also develop societal markers that allow us to function peacefully within a society of anonymous strangers that we, for the most part, don’t have to worry about as threats.
These societal markers can be large and small, and encompass the vast number of languages, dialects, dress codes, hair styles, body adornments, ideas, religions, and cultural practices found throughout the world and throughout history. These collective markers are a double-edged sword; they enable us to live peacefully within large anonymous societies while at the same time creating a xenophobic predisposition toward foreigners or outsiders. The history of our species is largely the consequences of this groupish psychology, and our efforts to either exploit it or find ways to overcome it.
Slavery is a prominent example of the exploitation of differences, viewing members of the slave race as less than human and deserving of their own subjugation. Conversely, the various human rights movements represent the rational counteracting forces to our psychological tendency to see those with different social markers as inferior. Human history is largely the continual alternation between our base urges to separate and dehumanize groups and the rational forces seeking to universalize humanity. This is why the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on universalizing human rights, was a majorly important period in human history, despite the modern vogue to question its significance.
Moffet leaves the reader with the question of whether or not we can ever dispense with societies entirely or outgrow our proclivity for ingroup bias and the dehumanization of outgroups. He doesn’t seem to be optimistic in this regard, and he may be right. But he also points out that we are the only species that can use our intelligence to overcome the aspects of our biology and history that we don’t like. In this respect I’m more optimistic.
Our deep evolutionary past predisposes us to xenophobia, distrust of strangers, ingroup bias, and racism. It compels us to judge individuals by the perceived characteristics of a group, even when those perceptions are inaccurate. It’s not hard to be a bigot; you simply need to suspend all of your critical faculties and become a slave to your biology.
But we need not become slaves to our biology. Reason can show us that individual variation within a group means that you cannot judge an individual by group averages; that our genetic and behavioral similarities transcend superficial differences; that there is nothing special about us simply because we were born in a particular place with a specific skin color; and that human cooperation across time and place is what is responsible for all the technological and scientific progress we take for granted.
Moffett proposes the idea that for societies to bond and function optimally, they require an adversarial outside group. Maybe this is true. I’d like to think it’s not, but history seems to give us conflicting information. History is rife with examples of bigotry, nationalism, war, violence, racism, and oppression. At the same time, rational countervailing forces have eliminated slavery, expanded human rights, and increased toleration for diversity. The question is, will the trend continue or will we backslide into our old patterns of behavior, allowing our deepest psychological tendencies to override our reason? For what it’s worth, and despite the current political environment, in the long run, I’m betting on reason—not to create a perfect society, but to continue to make slow and steady progress in the battle against the inner demons of our psychology.
July 2, 2019
What a strange book. I hoped, based on the titles and reviews, to find some overarching way to look at our modern anomized huge society differently. A new perspective. What this book is instead is a series of reinforced belabored concepts about the human tendency to find nothing of value in other societies. That we are are inherently and perpetually stuck in a world where there will be conflict and division between societies. Yes, we all know this. It’s the entire extent of human history. But if you are going to title a book based on the idea that we’ve become supernumerous and anonymous, I would at least expect some insight into a way forward. Nope. Distinction and difference. Humanity as a discerning perpetrator of nationalism, racism, othering. With no possibility of a future. Dismissive of all the major trends of the past 200 years where we all have learned to deal with each other way more and in many ways. Generally this is a very backward looking and paranoid book that fits right into the modern narratives of permanent division and irreconcilable differences. It offers almost nothing of interest to the modern policy maker interested in making society a better place. Skip it.
February 2, 2024
Moffett, pozitif bilimlerin sosyal bilimlerde kullanılmasına örnek olabilecek bir kitap çıkarmış. İnsan türünün tarihsel olarak simgelediği anlamı diğer türlerle koşutluk kurarak anlatma çabasında. Tıpkı insan gibi kendi aralarında sosyalleşen, komünite oluşturan bonobo, şempanze, yunus ve fil gibi türlerden birçok örnek kitap boyunca bizi takip ediyor. Yazarın karıncalar üzerine de bir kitabı var. O kitapta etraflıca açıkladığı gibi bu kitapta da insanların davranış örüntülerini karıncalarla karşılaştırıyor. Review yazarken çok basit bir dil kullanıyorum ama yazarın direkt bir davranış kalıbı üzerinde durmadığını söylemem gerek. Diğer türlerle aramızda olan benzerlik ve süreklilikleri açıkladığı kısımlar büyüleyici.
İnsanlık tarihine bakarken odaklandığımız kısım soyut düşüncenin ortaya çıkışından sonrası. Moffett evrimsel olarak bundan daha eskiye de gidebileceğimizi ifade ediyor. Hatta bir insanlık tarihi olabilmesi için bunun yapılması gerektiğini söylüyor.
Kitabın eleştirilebilecek eğilim ve sapmaları illa ki vardır. Moffett sosyal bilimlerde iddialı olduğunu da söylemiyor. Bu nedenle kitabın eksikliklerinden çok olumlu yanlarına odaklandım. Yazarın çabasını çok önemli buluyorum. Edward Wilson bu konuda bir simge. Wilson pozitif bilimlerin kullanılmasını yaygınlaştırdı der birçok araştırmacı. Ama çıkarımları pek çok kez özellikle soldan ağır eleştiriler aldı. Bu eleştirileri de göz önünde bulundurarak sosyal bilim yöntemlerinin geliştirilmesi gerektiğini düşünüyorum. İnsan sosyal bir canlı olsa da biyolojiyi bir kenara atamayız. Tıpkı istatistiğin sosyal bilimlerde yaygınlaşması gibi diğer pozitif bilimlerin de yaygınlaşması gerek. Yalnızca tarihsel okumayla, measure edilmemiş kavram ve çıkarımlarla sosyal bilim araştırmalarının yapılması modası geçmiş hatta yanlışlarla dolu bir yöntem. Moffett gibi biyologları göz ardı etmek yerine kompleks bir yöntem üretilmeli.
İnsanlık tarihine bakarken odaklandığımız kısım soyut düşüncenin ortaya çıkışından sonrası. Moffett evrimsel olarak bundan daha eskiye de gidebileceğimizi ifade ediyor. Hatta bir insanlık tarihi olabilmesi için bunun yapılması gerektiğini söylüyor.
Kitabın eleştirilebilecek eğilim ve sapmaları illa ki vardır. Moffett sosyal bilimlerde iddialı olduğunu da söylemiyor. Bu nedenle kitabın eksikliklerinden çok olumlu yanlarına odaklandım. Yazarın çabasını çok önemli buluyorum. Edward Wilson bu konuda bir simge. Wilson pozitif bilimlerin kullanılmasını yaygınlaştırdı der birçok araştırmacı. Ama çıkarımları pek çok kez özellikle soldan ağır eleştiriler aldı. Bu eleştirileri de göz önünde bulundurarak sosyal bilim yöntemlerinin geliştirilmesi gerektiğini düşünüyorum. İnsan sosyal bir canlı olsa da biyolojiyi bir kenara atamayız. Tıpkı istatistiğin sosyal bilimlerde yaygınlaşması gibi diğer pozitif bilimlerin de yaygınlaşması gerek. Yalnızca tarihsel okumayla, measure edilmemiş kavram ve çıkarımlarla sosyal bilim araştırmalarının yapılması modası geçmiş hatta yanlışlarla dolu bir yöntem. Moffett gibi biyologları göz ardı etmek yerine kompleks bir yöntem üretilmeli.
December 21, 2021
This is a difficult read, I have had to trudge through it over a rather long time, but an extraordinary collection of thoughts on human society from the point of view of an evolutionary biologist, particularly one who has looked intensely at social insects. There are all kinds of gems strewn within the book that are worthy of further thought and consideration.
"One underappreciated aspect of roughing it in remote parts of the world is that one is forced to slow down. From long days spent as a biologist waiting out tropical downpours under a tarp or lumbering along on a camel over bleached bone and sand, I’ve come to learn that true creative time is the time between things, empty intervals a packed calendar rarely affords."
One can only wish Mark many more thoughtful times during rainy days under the tarp under a rainforest canopy!
Some years ago I heard Mark talk at Bangalore about insect societies, but this book develops far beyond all that. I wish some of Mark's outdoor companions like the Late Drs Musthak Ali and K. Chandrasekhara had been alive to read this work.
If you are an outdoors person, a naturalist, a zoologist or anyone who has looked at non-human life and have thought about how peculiar (or not) human animals are, then you really need to read this book! I would also recommend it to academics who may not have looked at animals and ... perhaps even to those who find it hard to accept humans as animals
"One underappreciated aspect of roughing it in remote parts of the world is that one is forced to slow down. From long days spent as a biologist waiting out tropical downpours under a tarp or lumbering along on a camel over bleached bone and sand, I’ve come to learn that true creative time is the time between things, empty intervals a packed calendar rarely affords."
One can only wish Mark many more thoughtful times during rainy days under the tarp under a rainforest canopy!
Some years ago I heard Mark talk at Bangalore about insect societies, but this book develops far beyond all that. I wish some of Mark's outdoor companions like the Late Drs Musthak Ali and K. Chandrasekhara had been alive to read this work.
If you are an outdoors person, a naturalist, a zoologist or anyone who has looked at non-human life and have thought about how peculiar (or not) human animals are, then you really need to read this book! I would also recommend it to academics who may not have looked at animals and ... perhaps even to those who find it hard to accept humans as animals
March 29, 2020
An exhaustively researched analysis of human tribalism and the evolutionary underpinnings of in-group selection, cultural identifiers, and racism, for some reason put together by a tropical biologist who specializes in insects.
Humans are unique in that they can pass other, strange humans on the street without it becoming an ordeal. Very few social animals are capable of ignoring one another due to instinctual acknowledgement of potential competitors. We've adapted to being able to disregard strangers, but that's not the same thing as acceptance, and our monkey-mind still has us giving preferential treatment to those we deem to belong to our group/tribe/band, which is usually divided along lines of nationality, religion, and ethnicity. You're invited to feel guilty about it, but the full gauntlet of implicit bias psych tests demonstrate that shades of bigotry come standard with the human portfolio, and no amount of re-learning can shake the heuristic from its root.
Neither does this give us carte blanche, so to speak, to be 12-year-old Call of Duty gamers. This reflexive identification with others like us at the expense of others not like us only registers for a few milliseconds before our higher reasoning circuits kick in and we're able to make up our own minds. That initial impression could color the rest of the interaction, but it's up to us and our utilization of the orbitoprefrontals as to how. It's like a balloon popping. There's no getting around the startle reflex, but then it's your choice to either laugh it off, or to curl up into a corner and shriek until sedated.
A lot of the book was about hunter-gatherer societies, which I consider to be my jam as I am a major proponent of being joined in the shrub by my brethren. They tend to exhibit the usual human level of xenophobia, scaling in severity dependent on how violent their societies are, but with the exception of cross-tribe exchanges, usually of women, as a means of avoiding the incest taboo. They are avoidant of leaders as we know them, suggesting that human rulership is a relatively recent development; the anthropologists all agree that in these close-knit tribal communities, humility is the coin of the realm, and braggarts are smacked right tf down by everyone else. It's common for the tribe to heap praise on the hunter who bagged tonight's dinner, while the hunter is apparently expected to say things like "No, this was the smallest one there!" and "I was just lucky", stuff like that. Self-aggrandizement is viewed with either suspicion, best case, if not outright scorn.
We've come a long way.
Humans are unique in that they can pass other, strange humans on the street without it becoming an ordeal. Very few social animals are capable of ignoring one another due to instinctual acknowledgement of potential competitors. We've adapted to being able to disregard strangers, but that's not the same thing as acceptance, and our monkey-mind still has us giving preferential treatment to those we deem to belong to our group/tribe/band, which is usually divided along lines of nationality, religion, and ethnicity. You're invited to feel guilty about it, but the full gauntlet of implicit bias psych tests demonstrate that shades of bigotry come standard with the human portfolio, and no amount of re-learning can shake the heuristic from its root.
Neither does this give us carte blanche, so to speak, to be 12-year-old Call of Duty gamers. This reflexive identification with others like us at the expense of others not like us only registers for a few milliseconds before our higher reasoning circuits kick in and we're able to make up our own minds. That initial impression could color the rest of the interaction, but it's up to us and our utilization of the orbitoprefrontals as to how. It's like a balloon popping. There's no getting around the startle reflex, but then it's your choice to either laugh it off, or to curl up into a corner and shriek until sedated.
A lot of the book was about hunter-gatherer societies, which I consider to be my jam as I am a major proponent of being joined in the shrub by my brethren. They tend to exhibit the usual human level of xenophobia, scaling in severity dependent on how violent their societies are, but with the exception of cross-tribe exchanges, usually of women, as a means of avoiding the incest taboo. They are avoidant of leaders as we know them, suggesting that human rulership is a relatively recent development; the anthropologists all agree that in these close-knit tribal communities, humility is the coin of the realm, and braggarts are smacked right tf down by everyone else. It's common for the tribe to heap praise on the hunter who bagged tonight's dinner, while the hunter is apparently expected to say things like "No, this was the smallest one there!" and "I was just lucky", stuff like that. Self-aggrandizement is viewed with either suspicion, best case, if not outright scorn.
We've come a long way.
January 7, 2022
It's very difficult to put together a review that does this book justice. Admittedly not only is the topic right in my wheelhouse at the moment, but Human Swarm fits well with having 'Sapiens' and 'Guns, Germs and Steel' as precursor reading... (Not saying you have to have read those pieces just that it was worked well for me.)
Reasoning for my above comments is that many historical analysts express confusion over exactly how and why large scale societies emerged for the human race and how do modern States fit in with our natural social instincts. While Human Swarm doesn't necessarily answer every question on the topic, as some will likely remain a mystery for some time, Moffett provides a strong thesis on Society.
But that is not all that is brilliant about this book, while is it a little daunting in its density, Human Swarm explores almost every aspect imaginable about human societies. This means chapters on kin relationships, comparative psychology with primates, ants, whales, racism, warfare, hunter gatherer cultures, slavery and so on.
What I particularly like is that Moffett is both optomisitc and progressive, while also being real and concrete about the world, he doesn't sugarcoat some unpleasant aspects of society but acknowledges the problematic nature of some elements. I imagine for some this could be hard reading especially chapters about slavery and racism, however as said I believe they are presented with the intention of truth-telling and shining a light on the ugly parts of human society.
The variety and useful of insights from this book would be too many to list, but I think I can safely say that Human Swarm is one of my favourite Non-Fiction reads in 2021 and will problem sit on my top-ten for a while!
Reasoning for my above comments is that many historical analysts express confusion over exactly how and why large scale societies emerged for the human race and how do modern States fit in with our natural social instincts. While Human Swarm doesn't necessarily answer every question on the topic, as some will likely remain a mystery for some time, Moffett provides a strong thesis on Society.
But that is not all that is brilliant about this book, while is it a little daunting in its density, Human Swarm explores almost every aspect imaginable about human societies. This means chapters on kin relationships, comparative psychology with primates, ants, whales, racism, warfare, hunter gatherer cultures, slavery and so on.
What I particularly like is that Moffett is both optomisitc and progressive, while also being real and concrete about the world, he doesn't sugarcoat some unpleasant aspects of society but acknowledges the problematic nature of some elements. I imagine for some this could be hard reading especially chapters about slavery and racism, however as said I believe they are presented with the intention of truth-telling and shining a light on the ugly parts of human society.
The variety and useful of insights from this book would be too many to list, but I think I can safely say that Human Swarm is one of my favourite Non-Fiction reads in 2021 and will problem sit on my top-ten for a while!
April 4, 2020
Human beings are lauded by human beings as the greatest thing since sliced bread; a thing that they invented. The main problem is that people don’t have a real comparison to go against. Human beings are closely related to Chimpanzees, this is something that is a biological fact. Although humans and chimpanzees share many similarities they also have plenty of differences. This is mainly highlighted by their social structures.
In the book titled The Human Swarm author Mark W Moffett compares our overall social structures to that of the social insects; most notably ants. Moffett is a biologist who has studied ants and other social insects. Moffett makes several excellent points. If you ever see an anthill or a massive collection of insects, they all have little individual jobs suited to their body type. They have fantastic organization skills and prove that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Aside from the Civil Engineering project that is the anthill itself, they also take care of waste, care for their young, farm a certain type of fungus for food, and all sorts of other things.
Far deeper than that though is how humans relate to other humans. Moffett claims that if you took a bunch of chimpanzees from many different places and put them together there would be chaos. They couldn’t have airports and travel to many different places. Moffett discusses several different types of social constructions. For example, humans and certain types of ants have what Moffett calls an Anonymous social structure. We don’t need to know every single member of our society to feel safe or at least somewhat comfortable. We can go to coffee shops or restaurants and not fall into chaos.
Moffett talks about tons of animals that form social groups, from Meerkats and Naked Mole Rats to Lions and Dolphins. He even discusses racism and how infants tend to have biases. It is superbly done and fascinating. Generally, you tend to think of racists as horrible people but everyone profiles. As I said, even babies have preferences. Stereotypes save a lot of brainpower since you can automatically categorize someone based on perceived danger. It happens automatically in your subconscious.
So as I said, this book is really interesting.
In the book titled The Human Swarm author Mark W Moffett compares our overall social structures to that of the social insects; most notably ants. Moffett is a biologist who has studied ants and other social insects. Moffett makes several excellent points. If you ever see an anthill or a massive collection of insects, they all have little individual jobs suited to their body type. They have fantastic organization skills and prove that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Aside from the Civil Engineering project that is the anthill itself, they also take care of waste, care for their young, farm a certain type of fungus for food, and all sorts of other things.
Far deeper than that though is how humans relate to other humans. Moffett claims that if you took a bunch of chimpanzees from many different places and put them together there would be chaos. They couldn’t have airports and travel to many different places. Moffett discusses several different types of social constructions. For example, humans and certain types of ants have what Moffett calls an Anonymous social structure. We don’t need to know every single member of our society to feel safe or at least somewhat comfortable. We can go to coffee shops or restaurants and not fall into chaos.
Moffett talks about tons of animals that form social groups, from Meerkats and Naked Mole Rats to Lions and Dolphins. He even discusses racism and how infants tend to have biases. It is superbly done and fascinating. Generally, you tend to think of racists as horrible people but everyone profiles. As I said, even babies have preferences. Stereotypes save a lot of brainpower since you can automatically categorize someone based on perceived danger. It happens automatically in your subconscious.
So as I said, this book is really interesting.
May 17, 2019
I did not finish this book. It is long, 362 pages. It has 26 chapters. I got to chapter 11. The book seemed to me to ramble on. To what extent can we try to figure out early humanoid and human societies from looking at bonobos, chimpanzees, and hunter-gatherers? Well, true, that is what we have to go by, but..... Can we ignore other types of societal organization? What about gorillas? Many societies have had one "band" with a single male--Solomon with all his major and minor consorts comes to mind. (And women anthropologists/archaeologists do have different takes on how to imagine early human societies).
I looked to see in the index a discussion of male dominance: I looked under "male" and "dominance" and did not see any reference. Bonobos do not have male dominance, chimp females have a way of negotiating out of male dominance. But humans? Very few societies have been egalitarian (hunter-gatherers some) or female dominant (or at least matrilineally and female ownership of housing, garden plots, cooking utensils (see Nepal, and a number of Native American tribes).
This book should include dominance by gender.
I looked to see in the index a discussion of male dominance: I looked under "male" and "dominance" and did not see any reference. Bonobos do not have male dominance, chimp females have a way of negotiating out of male dominance. But humans? Very few societies have been egalitarian (hunter-gatherers some) or female dominant (or at least matrilineally and female ownership of housing, garden plots, cooking utensils (see Nepal, and a number of Native American tribes).
This book should include dominance by gender.
February 14, 2023
Beautifully written, but the book is definitely not “Sapiens” by Yuval Harari or Jared Diamond, sorry for benchmark, but it is. Collection of interesting facts and parallels about social insects and hunter-gatherer societies - this is fine, but overall I can’t find any new insights or different perspectives in this book.
August 31, 2019
This is a book written by an amateur who pretends to be an expert. Come on, just because you are a biologist, it doesn't mean you can claim yourself as a sociologist! There is few meaningful insight or scientific proof. Also, the book is very hard to read.
August 31, 2019
This was an excellent read. Author Mark W. Moffat takes the reader on a deep dive into sociology here.
He drops an interesting quote early on:
He continues on, talking at great lengths about different animal societies, as well a human societies.
There's an interesting chapter about the Argentine ant. He also covers tribalism and group badging, aka "markers".
He speaks with great insight and clarity about identity, and its societal implications. His talk about identity is worth the price of the book alone, IMO.
Here is a great quote about flags, from the section about markers and identity:
He also speaks with great clarity and insight about tribalism in relation to identity:
The book also has very informative and well-written talk about the biological basis of stereotypes, "xenophobia", and racism. SPOILER: They have existed long before recorded history, and are inherent aspects of the human (and sometimes ape) condition.
Moffett also talks at length about the foundation myths common to every society, the disgust mechanism, nationalism, patriotism, the Dunbar number, and other themes in sociology.
He lays a bit of a smack-down on the pie-in-the-sky progressive John Lennon's "Imagine" types near the end of the book with this quote:
He wraps up the book with a great conclusion, which would also make for an excellent Coles Notes/ tl;dr version of the book:
In closing, this was an *excellent* book, that I thoroughly enjoyed. My only criticism of it was that it may have done with some better structuring, IMHO... While the book is absolutely teeming with super-interesting information, I found that the author tended to jump around a lot; in one second talking about ants, then jumping quickly to horses, to chimps to bonobos, and so on. It was a bit hard to follow at times because of this. I had trouble retaining some of the information presented because he jumped around so much.
All and all, this wasn't such a big deal for me, and I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in sociology and culture.
It is a much read for you, if so.
I wanted to give it 5 stars, but took one star off for the somewhat erratic structure the book was presented in.
He drops an interesting quote early on:
"Chimpanzees need to know everybody.
Ants need to know nobody.
Humans only need to know somebody."
He continues on, talking at great lengths about different animal societies, as well a human societies.
There's an interesting chapter about the Argentine ant. He also covers tribalism and group badging, aka "markers".
He speaks with great insight and clarity about identity, and its societal implications. His talk about identity is worth the price of the book alone, IMO.
Here is a great quote about flags, from the section about markers and identity:
"DYING FOR A FLAG: Humans follow a flag like an experimentally imprinted duckling, a ball,” says Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, a pioneer in studying human action through the lens of how animals behave.
Evidence suggests that learning markers and using them to categorize people, places, and things is instinctive—organized in advance of experience.
Even though the inspiring stories we share like the raising of the American flag at Iwo Jima add to the meaningfulness and importance of markers, knowing those meanings isn’t imperative for us to be aroused by anything that acts as a potent marker. Nor does such a signal need to be connected with a person to set off an impassioned reaction: either its presence (a stirring anthem) or its absence (imagine a town where Americans shoot bald eagles) engages the limbic system, the brain’s emotional center. Those circuits can go off like a firestorm when a powerful marker is evoked—an act of violence becomes all the more horrendous when it also involves the destruction of a national monument.
Given the right onlooker and context, even the simplest object or word is enough for a strong emotional response. As an example, picture an equilateral cross with arms hooked at ninety-degree
angles. Seeing this apparently banal design can put a Holocaust survivor into a faint. Yet pausing to think about the symbolic implications of the swastika isn’t required for the horror it may cause. Once an anguished response is set by a kind of Pavlovian conditioning, casting it aside is no more possible than stopping our gag reflex at outlandish ethnic food: take a moment to visualize walking cheese, once popular in Corsica, wriggling under maggot-power. Even so, at the time they were in widespread use, swastikas made Nazi hearts swell with the same rapture we expect to experience when we stand before our national flag at the ball game.
People do love a flag. Today, even “mild-mannered Danes go nuts over their national colors,” says historian Arnaldo Testi. Indeed, he goes on, “in democratic, secular republics, the flag acquires an even greater, near-sacred, civic importance, if anything, in the absence of other public binding icons, like king or God.” This mania ties to our most essential groups: to fight or die for the flag is a personal pleasure and honor.
How a mere color pattern, shape, or sound can precipitate fervor or fear in the human brain is poorly understood.
The response emerges in childhood, and no wonder. In the United States, flags are displayed in classrooms, and the Pledge of Allegiance is often recited in preschools (though children can now opt out). By six years old, a child perceives flag burning as bad; pride in country comes soon after.
The omnipresence of signs of national identity accords everyone a similarity of experience that primes our feelings even when our minds are elsewhere.
Faced with adversity, symbols turn into beacons that galvanize us to action. A recording of the national anthem became a hit single in 1990 after the United States committed to the Gulf War; American flag sales exploded in 2001 the day after the 9/11 attacks."
He also speaks with great clarity and insight about tribalism in relation to identity:
"...By contrast, starting at the age of three, people see their society, and their race or ethnicity, as essential and inalterable features of identity, fixed permanently by an essence, the way species are.
More so than many betrothals, a national or ethnicity identity stays with us till death do us part. For us, they are, in a word, natural.
On this basis the single human species is splintered into many. Outsiders—the people of other societies, and nowadays other ethnicities and races—are treated as if they were distinct creatures. Their markers are passed on to their offspring as dependably as the traits distinguishing a swan from a duck, so that their memberships persist through time."
The book also has very informative and well-written talk about the biological basis of stereotypes, "xenophobia", and racism. SPOILER: They have existed long before recorded history, and are inherent aspects of the human (and sometimes ape) condition.
Moffett also talks at length about the foundation myths common to every society, the disgust mechanism, nationalism, patriotism, the Dunbar number, and other themes in sociology.
He lays a bit of a smack-down on the pie-in-the-sky progressive John Lennon's "Imagine" types near the end of the book with this quote:
"Popular science fiction tales like The War of the Worlds depict all of humankind pulling together against a common enemy. Yet our societies will endure even this. Space aliens wouldn’t make nations irrelevant any more than Europeans arriving in Australia caused Aborigines to dispense with their tribes. That would be so regardless of how much the aliens shattered the beliefs people held about their own societies, whose beloved differences would now look trivial by comparison. Moreover, when societies of our species turn to one another, whether for commercial advantage or to defend against aliens, that reliance doesn’t diminish the weight they place on their differences. The notion of cosmopolitanism, the idea that the people of the world will come to feel a primary connection to the human race, is a pipe dream."
He wraps up the book with a great conclusion, which would also make for an excellent Coles Notes/ tl;dr version of the book:
"...Here I distill these down to a few essential conclusions. The most fundamental of these is that societies are not solely a human invention. Most organisms lack the closed groups we call societies, but in the species that do have them, societies serve in diverse ways to provide for and protect the members. In all such animals, individuals must recognize each other as belonging to the same group. This membership can offer advantages regardless of whether or not those members cooperate or have any other social or biological relationship.
While societies are not unique to humans, they are necessary to the human condition, having existed since ancient prehumans diverged on the evolutionary tree from other apes. A million human societies may well have come and gone. Every one has been a group closed to outsiders, a group that its members were willing to fight for and that at times they died for. Each commanded intense commitments from its members extending from birth to death and through the generations. Until recent millennia, all of those societies were small communities of hunter-gatherers, but that didn’t mean their attachments to their societies were any weaker than ours today.
In the societies of our prehuman ancestors, as in those of most other mammals, the members had to recognize each other individually to function as a group. The resulting constraint on memory put an upper limit of roughly 200 on the size of societies in most animals. At some point in our evolution, probably before the origins of Homo sapiens, humans broke this glass ceiling by forming anonymous societies. Such societies, found in humans and a few other animals—notably ants and most other social insects—can potentially attain vast sizes because the members no longer must remember each other personally. Instead, they rely on identifying markers to accept both individuals they know and strangers who fit their expectations. Scents serve as markers in the insects, but humans go broader. For us, markers range from accents and gestures to styles of dress, rituals, and flags.
Markers are essential components in all societies of more than a few hundred individuals, whether mighty human or mere insect. At a certain point of growth, however, markers alone are insufficient to hold a society of humans together. Large human populations depend on an interplay between the markers and an acceptance of social control and leadership, along with increasing commitments to specializations, such as jobs and social groups. In early humans, new societies were born in a two-step process that has its parallels in other vertebrates. The process begins, usually very gradually, with the formation of subgroups within a society, brought on by divergences in identity. Years later, those identities diverge to such an extent that they become incompatible. The factions then separate to permanently form distinct societies.
The ability to accept strangers born in the same society as fellow members does not on its own account for the enormous growth of human societies. What made such vast expansions possible was the acquisition of people from other societies. Outsiders had to make accommodations to the expected identity to be accepted as part of the society. The addition of foreigners in numbers, initially by force through slavery and subjugation and more recently by immigration, generated the mixtures of ethnicities and races found within societies today. The relationships between these groups retain the imprint of differences in power and control that in some cases extend back to before recorded history.
The differentiation of identities among society members continues to be a source of disruption. However, rather than dividing in the manner of hunter-gatherer groups, today’s societies more often fragment along geographical fault lines that roughly reflect the claimed ancestral homelands of the ethnic groups that have come to live within them.
The need for societies, by its very ancientness, has shaped all aspects of human experience. Most notably, relationships between societies have profoundly influenced the evolution of the human mind, which would in turn affect the interactions among the ethnic and racial groups that emerged later in our history. While we may not be operating out of pure ignorance of outsiders the way early humans often did, automatic responses reflect our proneness to harbor stereotypes about different groups and about the superiority of our own group. The psychology underlying our identification with societies and ethnicities is registered in our every action. Our reaction to each person we see, how we vote, and whether we approve of our country’s decision to go to war have all been shaped by processes deeply embedded in our biology. The buzzing confusion of modernity may simply exacerbate our reactions.
Even as we face this deluge of social interactions as individuals, our nations grow ever more interdependent. Yet we are who we are, and so our societies still put inordinate effort into jockeying for territory, resources, and power, just as societies of animals have always done. We attack. We cajole. We blame. We abuse. We insulate ourselves from foreign powers we don’t trust by partnering with those we do. Such alliances, unique to humankind, may save us. Nevertheless, they can bring further uncertainty and destruction, angering or striking fear into those who have been left out."
In closing, this was an *excellent* book, that I thoroughly enjoyed. My only criticism of it was that it may have done with some better structuring, IMHO... While the book is absolutely teeming with super-interesting information, I found that the author tended to jump around a lot; in one second talking about ants, then jumping quickly to horses, to chimps to bonobos, and so on. It was a bit hard to follow at times because of this. I had trouble retaining some of the information presented because he jumped around so much.
All and all, this wasn't such a big deal for me, and I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in sociology and culture.
It is a much read for you, if so.
I wanted to give it 5 stars, but took one star off for the somewhat erratic structure the book was presented in.
July 28, 2021
This is a big book, with a capital “B.” It is brimming with big ideas and leans heavily on a cross-disciplinary approach to understanding this basic set of questions: what is a society? And how does society relate to humanity?
Does Mr. Moffett get it right? Largely, yes, I think. This is a breathtaking scope of research and thinking. I mean, 17% of the book is basically a works cited page, if that tells you anything, which is not that normal for a science book meant for popular consumption. The book is worth reading and thinking about, most certainly. It is one eye-popping revelation after another.
Moffett expands on understanding what a society is by comparing societies of various styles throughout nature - elephants, lions, dolphins, chimpanzees and bonobos and, especially, ants, among others.
It turns out that society maketh the human. Or, rather, we are so predisposed to the mechanics of a society that it is as natural as breathing...that if one were to take it away, part of the definition of what it means to be human might whither away and die. You can't pull a human out of societal thinking any more than you can pull an ant out of a colony and expect them to survive.
It is with ants that humanity most closely aligns, in terms of societal organization. Both humans and ant species have massive, highly organized, but, crucially, anonymous societies. Chimps and dolphins and elephants all, more or less, have to know each other to function in a society. But with people and ants, and other fully eusocial creatures, individuals don’t have to personally know each other in order for the whole thing to function. "The Human Swarm" picks up a little bit of the lead that Dr. E.O. Wilson lays down in his big idea book, "The Social Conquest Of Earth." Knowingly, too - "The Human Swarm" is dedicated to Wilson.
Just stop and think about how strange it is that humans and ants live in gigantic, anonymous societies. This is how the book opens, by asking you to imagine you are in a local coffee shop. You walk in and you see people everywhere, but you personally know none of them. And nothing happens. You buy some coffee...you sit down to read a book and no one bothers you and you bother no one. It is a marvelous day. But, imagine chimpanzees, our closest living primate cousins, upon walking into a coffee shop filled with other, unknown chimps...well, it would be a bloodbath of violence. From there Moffett begins an insightful deep dive on how intertwined, how ingrained, how predictive societies can be for humans.
I not only recommend this book for reading and understanding who you are, who we all are, but I recommend that it be mandatory in public schools. You will come away from this experience understanding a great deal more about how humans work than you ever thought possible, something of which every modern society needs. Moffett pulls in anthropologists, sociologists, biologists, psychologists...all manner of research to explore the question of society and, in the end, it'll remake your understanding of the world. Nationalism, nations, immigrants, ethnicity, family, slavery, economies, all those pesky societal markers we carry around in our heads and on our person marking which group and sub-group we belong to, consciously and unconsciously, ...you'll see the world with new eyes. And that is the best kind of reading experience.
Does Mr. Moffett get it right? Largely, yes, I think. This is a breathtaking scope of research and thinking. I mean, 17% of the book is basically a works cited page, if that tells you anything, which is not that normal for a science book meant for popular consumption. The book is worth reading and thinking about, most certainly. It is one eye-popping revelation after another.
Moffett expands on understanding what a society is by comparing societies of various styles throughout nature - elephants, lions, dolphins, chimpanzees and bonobos and, especially, ants, among others.
It turns out that society maketh the human. Or, rather, we are so predisposed to the mechanics of a society that it is as natural as breathing...that if one were to take it away, part of the definition of what it means to be human might whither away and die. You can't pull a human out of societal thinking any more than you can pull an ant out of a colony and expect them to survive.
It is with ants that humanity most closely aligns, in terms of societal organization. Both humans and ant species have massive, highly organized, but, crucially, anonymous societies. Chimps and dolphins and elephants all, more or less, have to know each other to function in a society. But with people and ants, and other fully eusocial creatures, individuals don’t have to personally know each other in order for the whole thing to function. "The Human Swarm" picks up a little bit of the lead that Dr. E.O. Wilson lays down in his big idea book, "The Social Conquest Of Earth." Knowingly, too - "The Human Swarm" is dedicated to Wilson.
Just stop and think about how strange it is that humans and ants live in gigantic, anonymous societies. This is how the book opens, by asking you to imagine you are in a local coffee shop. You walk in and you see people everywhere, but you personally know none of them. And nothing happens. You buy some coffee...you sit down to read a book and no one bothers you and you bother no one. It is a marvelous day. But, imagine chimpanzees, our closest living primate cousins, upon walking into a coffee shop filled with other, unknown chimps...well, it would be a bloodbath of violence. From there Moffett begins an insightful deep dive on how intertwined, how ingrained, how predictive societies can be for humans.
I not only recommend this book for reading and understanding who you are, who we all are, but I recommend that it be mandatory in public schools. You will come away from this experience understanding a great deal more about how humans work than you ever thought possible, something of which every modern society needs. Moffett pulls in anthropologists, sociologists, biologists, psychologists...all manner of research to explore the question of society and, in the end, it'll remake your understanding of the world. Nationalism, nations, immigrants, ethnicity, family, slavery, economies, all those pesky societal markers we carry around in our heads and on our person marking which group and sub-group we belong to, consciously and unconsciously, ...you'll see the world with new eyes. And that is the best kind of reading experience.
June 28, 2020
Good thesis -- Large societies must be anonymous societies, but how do you hold people together? In short, with identity markers. That oversimplifies it, of course, but that's the essence. Also a lot of evidence and detail to support the premise, of course, as the author traces the thesis from animal societies to hunter-gathers, chiefdoms, kingdoms, and nation states. Relevant considering how identity markers have shaped some of our recent politics.
March 15, 2025
4.2⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
October 19, 2025
I love ants. I have always loved ants. From a young age I enjoyed watching ants. When I went to Greece on holiday, I enjoyed watching new species of ants that I didn't recognise. Ants have shaped the way I think about the world. I saw them as a way of viewing human society. I probably attribute to ants as to why I am political leftist as ants being collectivist creatures act for their society above all else.
I am not the only one who has viewed ants like human society. Mark W Moffett argues that ants unlike any other creatures are the best at understanding societies at large. The book The Human Swarm attempts to understand society through the lens of biology. Comparing humans to many creatures including apes, whales/dolphins and other mammals including mole-rats, the animals Moffett argues that the species best for understanding human society at a macro level is ants.
Ants like humans have high degrees of social cooperation. Like Ludwig Von Mises who viewed human cooperation at the centre of societal development, Mark Moffett argues that human society works due to the high degrees of social cooperation across society. Unlike Von Mises, like ants Moffett argues this is done at a collective level. This, like humans the high degrees of specialisation found within ant colonies leads them to become advanced social systems. Humans likewise become advanced through cooperation and specialisation.
Like ants, humans also have unique social development towards being highly ethnically distinct. Ethnic distinctions between humans according to Moffett is the highest form of distinction between people. Ants are seen as "nationalistic" and having a "police state" by Moffett which gives the impression that the book depicts ants as fascists who have existed for millions of years.
The Human Swarm gives the impression that ethnicity is the largest driver of human development and that at a society level right down to an individual level human society is driven by ethnic differences. These are cultural as well as differences in perceived looks but nevertheless there is always othering that goes on. Humans, like ants are instinctively xenophobic.
There is also a focus on how societies collapse and the points at which it takes to sustain societies. Social collapse is seen as a part of many different societies and natural in smaller societies such as hunter gathering communities. Slavery is also looked at in comparison with ants kidnapping slaves and this is compared to slavery that existed in a human context.
In many ways this book reflects the zeitgeist of populist nationalism of the current period. Trying to boil down society to cultural differences and then explaining the innate tendencies to other people from other ethnic groups, The Human Swarm would probably be welcomed by many from the Populist Nationalist Right as an intellectual defence of their worldview.
That said, it is a well researched book with many citations. I love any book that compares humans to ants. I enjoyed my much of this book as I think it was a reasonably plausible way of explaining our societies in a biological way.
My main critique of this book and the reason why I am giving this a 3 star review is that I think the book fails to explain societal development from anything other than cultural or ethnic differences. The book does not do enough to explain how economics shapes society and human development. The history of human civilization is the interplay between economics, politics and culture. Yet The Human Swarm seems to be only interesting by culture and ethnicity as the main causes of difference in the world.
Other books such as Homo Sapiens do attempt to explain ideology and economics in a better way. But The Human Swarm seems to ignore how economics is a key shaper of human development. The difference between our societies today and our societies 250 years ago is cultural to an extent but also heavily tied to economic changes. These changes mean that societies today have become as different as hunter gathers were to agricultural societies.
I think this book gives too many attempts to justify racism as an inbuilt part of human culture. Of course, this book ignores the historic invention of racism in the West that coincided with the need for slavery. The existence of slavery within society and its comparison with slavery adopted by ants ignores the heavy socio-economic developments that slavery creates. I.e. slavery is created to serve economic conditions brought on with mass crop cultivation in plantations. Racism therefore isn't just some cultural thing that developed naturally from evolution but a culturally created socio-economic relationship.
Finally, The Human Swarm attempts to anthropomorphise ants as a fascist collective species malignes ants and propagates inadvertently a dangerous idea of justifying fascism in nature. Richard Overy's Why War gives a biological justification of war and explains fascists used biology to justify war. But humans don't have just instincts based on smell. We have advanced ethical systems that have developed through millennia of biological and cultural evolution. We can choose to help other people.
Ants aren't some fascist super-states in nature. Their economic structures resemble that of socialist tendencies in which everything is shared for the community and state at large. But humans aren't like that. Self-interest is part of human cooperation. By ignoring economics, this book fails to explain societies in anything other than a cultural phenomenon.
An interesting book on the development of society through the lens of comparative study with ants. Worth a read. Fails to explain economic development as a part of social development.
I am not the only one who has viewed ants like human society. Mark W Moffett argues that ants unlike any other creatures are the best at understanding societies at large. The book The Human Swarm attempts to understand society through the lens of biology. Comparing humans to many creatures including apes, whales/dolphins and other mammals including mole-rats, the animals Moffett argues that the species best for understanding human society at a macro level is ants.
Ants like humans have high degrees of social cooperation. Like Ludwig Von Mises who viewed human cooperation at the centre of societal development, Mark Moffett argues that human society works due to the high degrees of social cooperation across society. Unlike Von Mises, like ants Moffett argues this is done at a collective level. This, like humans the high degrees of specialisation found within ant colonies leads them to become advanced social systems. Humans likewise become advanced through cooperation and specialisation.
Like ants, humans also have unique social development towards being highly ethnically distinct. Ethnic distinctions between humans according to Moffett is the highest form of distinction between people. Ants are seen as "nationalistic" and having a "police state" by Moffett which gives the impression that the book depicts ants as fascists who have existed for millions of years.
The Human Swarm gives the impression that ethnicity is the largest driver of human development and that at a society level right down to an individual level human society is driven by ethnic differences. These are cultural as well as differences in perceived looks but nevertheless there is always othering that goes on. Humans, like ants are instinctively xenophobic.
There is also a focus on how societies collapse and the points at which it takes to sustain societies. Social collapse is seen as a part of many different societies and natural in smaller societies such as hunter gathering communities. Slavery is also looked at in comparison with ants kidnapping slaves and this is compared to slavery that existed in a human context.
In many ways this book reflects the zeitgeist of populist nationalism of the current period. Trying to boil down society to cultural differences and then explaining the innate tendencies to other people from other ethnic groups, The Human Swarm would probably be welcomed by many from the Populist Nationalist Right as an intellectual defence of their worldview.
That said, it is a well researched book with many citations. I love any book that compares humans to ants. I enjoyed my much of this book as I think it was a reasonably plausible way of explaining our societies in a biological way.
My main critique of this book and the reason why I am giving this a 3 star review is that I think the book fails to explain societal development from anything other than cultural or ethnic differences. The book does not do enough to explain how economics shapes society and human development. The history of human civilization is the interplay between economics, politics and culture. Yet The Human Swarm seems to be only interesting by culture and ethnicity as the main causes of difference in the world.
Other books such as Homo Sapiens do attempt to explain ideology and economics in a better way. But The Human Swarm seems to ignore how economics is a key shaper of human development. The difference between our societies today and our societies 250 years ago is cultural to an extent but also heavily tied to economic changes. These changes mean that societies today have become as different as hunter gathers were to agricultural societies.
I think this book gives too many attempts to justify racism as an inbuilt part of human culture. Of course, this book ignores the historic invention of racism in the West that coincided with the need for slavery. The existence of slavery within society and its comparison with slavery adopted by ants ignores the heavy socio-economic developments that slavery creates. I.e. slavery is created to serve economic conditions brought on with mass crop cultivation in plantations. Racism therefore isn't just some cultural thing that developed naturally from evolution but a culturally created socio-economic relationship.
Finally, The Human Swarm attempts to anthropomorphise ants as a fascist collective species malignes ants and propagates inadvertently a dangerous idea of justifying fascism in nature. Richard Overy's Why War gives a biological justification of war and explains fascists used biology to justify war. But humans don't have just instincts based on smell. We have advanced ethical systems that have developed through millennia of biological and cultural evolution. We can choose to help other people.
Ants aren't some fascist super-states in nature. Their economic structures resemble that of socialist tendencies in which everything is shared for the community and state at large. But humans aren't like that. Self-interest is part of human cooperation. By ignoring economics, this book fails to explain societies in anything other than a cultural phenomenon.
An interesting book on the development of society through the lens of comparative study with ants. Worth a read. Fails to explain economic development as a part of social development.
July 14, 2021
El libro trae una nueva perspectiva a la sociobiología ya que, en vez de haber sido escrito por psicólogos evolutivos, fue escrito por weyes que estudian hormigas.
El libro da un paso más alla del consenso del "gen egocentrico" y se enfoca principalmente en el paradigma de "nosotros vs ellos" como la base del comportamiento social complejo.
Todo el libro es estar proveyendo evidencia para esta interpretación - desde las hormigas argentinas hasta los chimpances, y los seres humanos.
3 Estrellas por que me perdió a veces, no está tan "entretenido" aunque la idea es buena.
El libro da un paso más alla del consenso del "gen egocentrico" y se enfoca principalmente en el paradigma de "nosotros vs ellos" como la base del comportamiento social complejo.
Todo el libro es estar proveyendo evidencia para esta interpretación - desde las hormigas argentinas hasta los chimpances, y los seres humanos.
3 Estrellas por que me perdió a veces, no está tan "entretenido" aunque la idea es buena.
August 9, 2019
It wasn't bad, but it didn't inspire me. I think that maybe it was just the wrong book at the wrong time. I read books like this because I want them to stimulate my thinking about big picture issues for humanity. This one didn't. Oh well. Next.
July 17, 2020
Dense and captivating, The Human Swarm is a proper big history take on the deep history of human societies. See my full review at https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2019...
October 26, 2023
Mark Moffett is the latest ant expert (the sort of person who will hang from ropes in the tropics to see what kind of ants are on that tree/cliffside/what-have-you) to express his opinions on life, humanity, and society. He includes E.O.Wilson, a predecessor of this type, in the dedication. There is a sort of superficial sense to the idea, at least. Ants (and other social insects) are a sort of proof that living together in groups is not an intellectual activity, which we decided upon after considering the cost-benefit analysis. By demonstrating that specialization, group violence, agriculture, caring for livestock, and a lot of other things we associate with humans, have been occurring in societies far, far older than ours (by many millions of years), it can immediately discredit many ideas about how and why we do them.
Moffett has also done a fair amount of research into topics other than ants. When he discusses how other mammals (especially primates) recognize others as members of the same group, he has a lot of knowledge to draw on. He also gives the impression that he has done a lot of anthropological reading, at least. His background as an entomologist, though, is probably helpful in providing some perspective. An example: most insects do not practice slavery; other insects are simply killed and eaten (unless they are conspecifics and it is mating time). The development of slavery, by some species of ants, was actually a step up in their ability to tolerate members of the outgroup. Among humans, as well, it is likely the case that long before we practiced slavery, the standard practice when meeting someone not from your own group (whatever that was), would be to fight to the death, or else stay away from each other. Slavery, appalling as it was, actually required a step up in humans' ability to build larger societies. This is not, I am guessing, the sort of insight that a modern humanities or liberal arts college environment is normally going to provide.
I do have to say, though, that I found the parts of the book where Moffett talks about humans, to be less convincing than the parts where he talked about ants. Perhaps it is that I have more emotional investment in what I think humans are like, or could become. But, just perhaps, it is that Moffett has more emotional investment in what humans are like, or could become. His text seemed more like an argument in favor of something, and less like a presentation of interesting facts in an engaging manner. It's not even that I necessarily object to, or disagree with, Moffett's ideas about how human societies currently work, or could work. It's more that I felt less like I was reading the report of an expert on a matter for which he has the accumulated knowledge of many years' study, and more like I was reading some guy's opinion.
Nonetheless, the parts that were good, were definitely worth reading, and even the parts that were not as good, weren't bad. When he releases another book, I will buy it.
Moffett has also done a fair amount of research into topics other than ants. When he discusses how other mammals (especially primates) recognize others as members of the same group, he has a lot of knowledge to draw on. He also gives the impression that he has done a lot of anthropological reading, at least. His background as an entomologist, though, is probably helpful in providing some perspective. An example: most insects do not practice slavery; other insects are simply killed and eaten (unless they are conspecifics and it is mating time). The development of slavery, by some species of ants, was actually a step up in their ability to tolerate members of the outgroup. Among humans, as well, it is likely the case that long before we practiced slavery, the standard practice when meeting someone not from your own group (whatever that was), would be to fight to the death, or else stay away from each other. Slavery, appalling as it was, actually required a step up in humans' ability to build larger societies. This is not, I am guessing, the sort of insight that a modern humanities or liberal arts college environment is normally going to provide.
I do have to say, though, that I found the parts of the book where Moffett talks about humans, to be less convincing than the parts where he talked about ants. Perhaps it is that I have more emotional investment in what I think humans are like, or could become. But, just perhaps, it is that Moffett has more emotional investment in what humans are like, or could become. His text seemed more like an argument in favor of something, and less like a presentation of interesting facts in an engaging manner. It's not even that I necessarily object to, or disagree with, Moffett's ideas about how human societies currently work, or could work. It's more that I felt less like I was reading the report of an expert on a matter for which he has the accumulated knowledge of many years' study, and more like I was reading some guy's opinion.
Nonetheless, the parts that were good, were definitely worth reading, and even the parts that were not as good, weren't bad. When he releases another book, I will buy it.
May 18, 2019
An serendipitous sequel to The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution, the last nonfiction I read before tackling this one. Where Wrangham focused on humans' decreased reactive aggression compared to other animals, Moffett focuses on humans' ability to create anonymous social networks similar to those of social insects like ants or bees.
My goal is to show that membership in a society is as essential for our well-being as finding a mate or loving a child....
The evidence presented in this book points to societies being a human universal. Human ancestors lived in fission-fusion groups that evolved, by simple steps, from individual recognition societies to societies set apart by markers. The ingroup-outgroup boundaries of society membership would have made it through this transition unaltered. That means that humans have always had societies. There was no original, "authentic" human society, no time when people and families lived in an open social network before deciding to set themselves apart into well-defined groups. Being in a society - indeed, multiple, contrasting societies - is more indispensable and ancient than faith or matrimony, having been the way of things from before we were human. (p. 13, 353)
November 3, 2024
This is an interesting topic for a book - a big picture overview of human societies - and its parts are interesting enough, but it doesn't really come together as a whole. I liked the individual chapters and the way Moffett discuses ants and elephants and other social animals and insects in really interesting, but he loses sight of the big picture. We get lots of details but it never really comes together convincingly.
I did take away a few interesting things:
-societies that are roving hunter gatherer bands don't expand.
-societies that are settled can expand by taking slaves and conquering neighbors. Conquest and slavery are the rule rather than the exception.
-societies don't usually admit outsiders easily. Ancient Rome and Chine are referenced for the expansion of ancient societies that expanded to admit minorities, who eventually merged with the dominant group.
-immigration as it is currently practiced in western Europe, North America and Australia is the exception rather than the rule. Historically no other societies have admitted outsiders in this way.
I did take away a few interesting things:
-societies that are roving hunter gatherer bands don't expand.
-societies that are settled can expand by taking slaves and conquering neighbors. Conquest and slavery are the rule rather than the exception.
-societies don't usually admit outsiders easily. Ancient Rome and Chine are referenced for the expansion of ancient societies that expanded to admit minorities, who eventually merged with the dominant group.
-immigration as it is currently practiced in western Europe, North America and Australia is the exception rather than the rule. Historically no other societies have admitted outsiders in this way.
July 3, 2025
An interesting take on sociology through the lens of biology, drawing parallels to bug colonies in their massive structure. Anyone that enjoyed Sapiens would probably also enjoy this book as it also deep dives into concepts that make humans unique compared to other species in their ability form both large yet flexible societies. Moffett makes that argument that groups are inherently defined by their exclusion as much as their inclusion, and that there can never be a fully unified race absent an external threat to the species as a whole, such as aliens, because humans won't form strong allegiances to groups that have no external threat to rally around. That the lack of external threats will cause humans to inevitably search for them within the group, fracturing it.
November 27, 2019
Moffet uses his background studying animal societies in order to compare them to the evolution and development of human societies. Some interesting takes on human development from hunter-gatherer bands to state societies and the forging and breaking of ethnic and national identities in history as an integral part of the cycles of rising and declining states. Basically, its Guns, Germs, and Steel, but from a biologists point of view, with more reflections on the psychological of ethnic/national identification.
March 26, 2020
While this book has some interesting information, I feel it is arranged and presented very poorly, as I got about 40% through and gave up. This book focuses on looking at human societies and comparing them to animal societies. Again, while this is interesting, getting halfway through the book I still haven't found many conclusions linking biological systems and how they may drive society. Disappointing, but may be worth picking up again in the future.
September 29, 2019
This is a tremendous accomplishment of cross-disciplinary association.
Curious about assimilation, racism, xenophobia, language discrimination? Maybe you just want to know what ants can teach us about borders, wars, or why you can sit next to someone completely unlike you at a coffee shop without feeling the need to eradicate them? Then I suggest you read this book.
Curious about assimilation, racism, xenophobia, language discrimination? Maybe you just want to know what ants can teach us about borders, wars, or why you can sit next to someone completely unlike you at a coffee shop without feeling the need to eradicate them? Then I suggest you read this book.
November 25, 2020
This fascinating book has something for everyone! Perhaps the most comprehensive yet readable account of animal societies - how and why they occur, and their benefits and consequences for a range of species, including our own. This book has a special place on my bookshelf of humans and human evolution in the company of works by E.O. Wilson, Paul Ehrlich, Jared Diamond, and more recently, Yuval Harari. I loved it, and highly recommended it!
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June 26, 2021Combines outrageous humor with curious facts, breathtaking cross species insights, and colorful characterizations of his august colleagues and friends. Well worth several reads! And then you'll want to know the author!
During the read I became sidetracked by a few other non-fiction books, but finally came back to the SWARM, and glad I did.
During the read I became sidetracked by a few other non-fiction books, but finally came back to the SWARM, and glad I did.
June 14, 2019
Many animals live in societies that can even become very complex (such as ants) through markers. Humans have scaled this and made sophisticated societies where we connect even on emotional levels and are part of humanity.
February 5, 2021
Despite its length, I was always hungering for more relatable human examples. Moffett is on top of such a large sweep of relevant history, it should have been easy to liven it up a bit. Well worth a read, however.
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