How warfare shaped human evolution

Chimpanzees don’t go to war in the way we do because they lack the abstract thought required to see themselves as part of a collective that expands beyond their immediate associates, says Wrangham. However, “the real story of our evolutionary past is not simply that warfare drove the evolution of social behaviour,” says Samuel Bowles, an economist at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and the University of Siena, Italy. The real driver, he says, was “some interplay between warfare and the alternative benefits of peace”.

Though women seem to help broker harmony within groups, says Van Vugt, men may be better at peacekeeping between groups.