Chimp Warfare?

This article by Monty Morin appeared in the Los Angeles Times "Science Now" section. While most of the data are correct, it is in the interpretation of that data where I take exception. The fact is, that there are many vested interests in interpreting data in a way that will keep the military industrial complex alive and well (a global $1.3 trillion/year market in 2013).

Also, a lot of inconvenient data were left out. For example, in one particularly conflictual chimp band, all the more aggressive males died from hogging infected food wastes from a hotel, and the band suddenly became much more peaceful. This supports the "bad apple" hypothesis - it only takes a few dominant and aggressive members to create a 'culture' of conflict and violence.

The article states that our common evolutionary roots with the chimps goes back seven million years. However, this actually means 14 million of evolution, because if both species have a common root (which has not been proven), you would have to go back 7M to the root and then forward 7M to the other species. That is simply too much evolutionary time to reliably predict any behavioral commonalities, given the rate at which behavior evolves within species. Anyway, our closer 'relatives', the peace-loving bonobo 'hippy chimps' are a more likely candidate, if there were any truth to the behavioral continuity hypothesis.

Finally, archaeological studies have established that the nomadic hunter-gatherer bands of our past 100 thousand years of evolution, give or take, prior to the agricultural revolution, show little to no forms of intraspecies violence. This makes sense anthropologically too, because competition (zero- to negative-sum relations) is maladaptive in contrast to cooperation (positive-sum relations). Who knows if chimps are actually becoming violent due to the last 10,000 years of escalation in human violence, as per the 100th monkey hypothesis?