Demonic Males : Apes and the Origins of Human Violence

Rating:
Summary: A DISSERVICE TO ANTHROPOLOGY
Review: This book is unbelievable. It seems as though everyone is reading this book because of the MacArthur fellow, the Harvard researcher. His claims are unvalid and unscientific! He is making a POLITICAL statement. Do these animals live in our culture? We are not bonobos, chimps, gorillas, or lemurs; studying primates can only give us hints of how our ancestors might have lived.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting theories, with some drawbacks
Review: This book puts forth interesting theories of violence in primate communities. It does have some flaws, mostly in the selection of primatological field studies. But if you are able to distinguish between theory and fact, it is a good read and an interesting set of theories.

Rating:
Summary: Gutsy Title- Good Read!
Review: This book will remain a classic resource on my shelf, ready to be fetched whenever the issue of nature vs. nurture rears its head. We often balk at the thought of personality traits being passed from one generation to the next. This book addresses these issues in the very logical context of survival.

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Summary: ((Omnipotent the Creator may be, but not weird)) pp.41
Review: This exciting exploration of primate phylogeny and cross-cultural anthropology examining social behavior is what seems to me knowledge to power a path for a better human world. That's my first complement to the authors--by uncovering biological causes for aggressive social behavior they are not deemed natural and thus to be embraced. There are no attempted justifications for war, rape, or the overlooked aggression of patriotism and carnivorism. These things have prevented us from any sort of external paradise. I'm not suggesting any belief that utopias are attainable, but only that scientific explanations are beneficial to us for advancement. Or as they've put it on pp. 107, "There is no such thing as paradise, not in the South Seas, not in southern Greece, not anywhere. There never has been. To find a better world we must look not to a romanticized and dishonest dream forever receding into the primitive past, but to a future that rests on a proper understanding of ourselves." In their study of bonobos we catch a glimpse of a forgotten rustic path never taken in the development of earlier humans. There is less male violence, and a greater balance of power between genders. By learning about close evolutionary relatives and the sources of their violence we can learn alot about ourselves and our options for a more arcadian societal enviroment. The language constructed by the human mind allow cultural dimensions of war to make it become more dynamic and complicated as well as more self-deceiving and confused than that of, say, chimpanzee intercommunity violence, but their similarity and common sources are apparent through observation. And to that is what the essential question of the book pertains, "did we leave the old ape brain behind? Did we at some point simply jettison the whole thing as a worthless relic from the troubling shadow of time? Or is the elaborate, nervous and anxious and proud, superstitious and self-deceiving edifice of cerebral material that makes up our humanity still deeply infused with the essence of that ancient forest brain?" (pp. 62)
Aside from content, this book was written well enough that it became hard to put down at times. All and all a definite recommendation of mine.

Rating:
Summary: ((Omnipotent the Creator may be, but not weird)) pp.41
Review: This exciting exploration of primate phylogeny and cross-cultural anthropology examining social behavior is what seems to me knowledge to power a path for a better human world. That's my first complement to the authors--by uncovering biological causes for aggressive social behavior they are not deemed natural and thus to be embraced. There are no attempted justifications for war, rape, or the overlooked aggression of patriotism and carnivorism. These things have prevented us from any sort of external paradise. I'm not suggesting any belief that utopias are attainable, but only that scientific explanations are beneficial to us for advancement. Or as they've put it on pp. 107, "There is no such thing as paradise, not in the South Seas, not in southern Greece, not anywhere. There never has been. To find a better world we must look not to a romanticized and dishonest dream forever receding into the primitive past, but to a future that rests on a proper understanding of ourselves." In their study of bonobos we catch a glimpse of a forgotten rustic path never taken in the development of earlier humans. There is less male violence, and a greater balance of power between genders. By learning about close evolutionary relatives and the sources of their violence we can learn alot about ourselves and our options for a more arcadian societal enviroment. The language constructed by the human mind allow cultural dimensions of war to make it become more dynamic and complicated as well as more self-deceiving and confused than that of, say, chimpanzee intercommunity violence, but their similarity and common sources are apparent through observation. And to that is what the essential question of the book pertains, "did we leave the old ape brain behind? Did we at some point simply jettison the whole thing as a worthless relic from the troubling shadow of time? Or is the elaborate, nervous and anxious and proud, superstitious and self-deceiving edifice of cerebral material that makes up our humanity still deeply infused with the essence of that ancient forest brain?" (pp. 62)
Aside from content, this book was written well enough that it became hard to put down at times. All and all a definite recommendation of mine.

Rating:
Summary: Thought-provoking in the extreme
Review: This is a great and thought-provoking book. It is also amusing categorizing people you know as either more chimp-like or bonobo-like after you read the book, although this was not the intention of the authors. Research on chimps especially illuminates human behavior and society since we are more similar socially to chimps than the more pacific bonobos. The counter example of bonobos, to whom we are equally related, can be viewed with hope by some, although a human society based on the bonobos would be very hippie indeed.

Rating:
Summary: This Book is Epic
Review: This is among the best books I have read. I originally heard Wrangham on an NPR show discussing some facets of this book & quickly sought it out. It provides an excellent evolutionary background and discussions of humans' closest relatives- especially our closest, the chimpanzee and bonobo, whose life patterns are distinctly different from one another and provide some insight into human behavior and possibilities. The book is very well-written and highly readable regardless of a reader's background on the topic.
I had to write after reading some of the negative reviews and misinformation on the book- especially the first editorial review. The book is hardly as dark and disillusioning as it leads one to believe- quite the contrary. I finished the book a few months ago and am still pondering it. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: This Book is Epic
Review: This is among the best books I have read. I originally heard Wrangham on an NPR show discussing some facets of this book & quickly sought it out. It provides an excellent evolutionary background and discussions of humans' closest relatives- especially our closest, the chimpanzee and bonobo, whose life patterns are distinctly different from one another and provide some insight into human behavior and possibilities. The book is very well-written and highly readable regardless of a reader's background on the topic.
I had to write after reading some of the negative reviews and misinformation on the book- especially the first editorial review. The book is hardly as dark and disillusioning as it leads one to believe- quite the contrary. I finished the book a few months ago and am still pondering it. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: The best book ever on our primate past
Review: This is by far the best book I have read about the behavior of primates, including humans, with regards to violence, genocide, infanticide, lesbianism (bonobos), mate selection, etc. This book is another large step in dispelling culture as the basis for aggression. If we are to get beyond violence, war, wife beating, and hatred we have to understand how these forces came about in our evolutionary past. This book looks at our four closest relatives: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans and uses their life history to construct human evolution. This book reads like a novel, and can be appreciated by the novice as well as the academic. And it doesn't shy away from facing what we are really about; dominate males, and females who want to mate with dominate males because they are better adapted to pass on genes to the next generation. But it also explains how we can turn our backs on that pattern by understanding it, and behaving differently. For me, one of the exiting things about understanding human evolution is that I no longer have to follow the herd. I can get an understanding of the tensions between the sexes and rise above it to some extent. Understanding is the first step towards changing behavior that is innate, but not necessary.

Rating:
Summary: PC pseudo-science
Review: This is the most fascist piece of work I've read recently. The authors have taken scientific research - or allegedly scientific research - and assigned a politically correct moral to their conclusion, which is that male higher primates are inherently aggressive and therefore "evil." Himmler would have been proud. Keep in mind that the Nazi's quasi-scientific thesis was that some human races are genetically inferior to others, and therefore the "superior" races have to assume responsibility for the advancement of humanity. The thesis of "Demonic Males" is that males are genetically predisposed to "evil" and therefore inferior to females, who therefore must be given "equal" (actually, superior) status so they can lead human civilization down the flower-strewn path to Peace, Love and True Happiness. Both appear to be guilty of the unscientific sin of describing genetic traits as morally good or bad; that is, if you're born an "untermensch" or a male, respectively,