> By Wrangham & Peterson is a collection drawn from the field studies of
> the Orangutan, Gorilla, Chimp, and Bonobo. It is these primate field
> studies that give us the term "alpha male". And it was their video
> that recorded the alhpa male chimps forming gangs, going into adjacent
> territories to find a foraging couple.
>
> They would then murder him and any progeny she had, kidnap her, and
> gang rape her back with the rest of the troop until she was pregnant
> again. It was also recorded that its the alpha males who form the line
> and go toe to toe with other groups fighting over territory and
> females. Until this, it was thot that only humans raped, murdered,
> committed infanticide and kidnapping, or made war.
>
> It rather suggests that such behavior has a longer hominid history
> than previously imagined. The Blank Slate, Constant Battles, and Guns,
> Germs, & Steel are some of the books that proved the naked savages
> were not, in fact, peacefully living in harmony with their
> environment. Jared Diamond, in his latest, "Collapse" reports that
> until the whiteman showed up, 25%% of the New Guinea Highlander men
> died in battle. This compares with 2-3%% of the whitemen on both sides
> during WWII. Or 3000 some out of the hundreds of thousands that have
> served in Iraq & Afghanistan.
>
> 5000 years of history shows us innumberable examples of the alpha
> males leading advanced nations into war. it seems universal, but a
> closer look at obscure history shows it was not. And a closer look at
> the primate field studies also shows us a remarkable exception to the
> violence with the Bonobo. The Bonobo are not led by demonic males, but
> a sisterhood of elder females. And whereas the other apes use violence
> for control, they use sex to motivate males.
>
> A lot of it has to do with technological innovation. It was thot that
> only hominids used tools, but the Bonobo have been seen carrying
> herbivore bone shards that they use to dig tubers. Because of this,
> food is widely distributed along the forest floor, and there's no way
> the alpha males can control access. Females can, and do, run away from
> violent males, and can forage for food without his help. Their calls,
> which are numerous, keep them oriented, and if predators threaten,
> they gather together to meet the threat rather than depending on
> sending out the alphas to deal with it.
>
> A similar situation emerged in Anatolia 10,000 years ago, with the
> transhumesence from hunting to agriculture. Sass, The Substance of
> Civilization, shows that the shift to farming reduced the amount of
> territory needed to support a group by a factor of 500. A dozen of the
> world's first cities, like Chatal Hoyuk, quickly emerged.
>
> Whereas before tribes were no more than a few hundred, now communities
> of thousands- living in what looked like SW American pueblos, also
> built of adobe- existed that no group of tribal warriors dared to
> attack. And with that innovation we see the first evidence of females
> taking political and economic power.
>
> 9000 years ago, climate change, drought, drove most of them north to
> SE Europe with the happy result of finding the alleuvial flood plains
> of the rivers that empty into the West End of the Black Sea. Where
> they lived *peacefully* for the next 4000 years. A similar kind of
> thing emerged in the same floodplains of China.
>
> But in time the populations rose, pandemics broke out, the whole
> system collapsed into the sequence of war and anarchy we've seen
> since. However: after 5000 years of violence, the brave heart, strong
> right arm, sword in hand- no longer cuts it. Weapons have become so
> powerful even women can use them. And do so even more effectively.
>
> We see the growing power of women most clearly in the advanced
> cultures. We also see the reaction by the alpha males of the less
> developed, whose development has always been hindered by the innate
> level of violence. There are, nonetheless, unacceptably high levels of
> violence in the advanced cultures, and the risk that the whole system
> will be driven to collapse by the combined efforts of alpha males on
> all sides.
>
> But the genie is out of the bottle. Personal weapons are too abundant
> for women not to be picking them up if the general order of society
> breaks down. Agreed that there are legions of airheads who will trade
> sexual services for the perceived protection of alpha males. However,
> that wont work very long because of the virulence of STDs. These women
> will not be raising the next generation of warriors suffering with
> HIV, Herpes, and other STDs. And for sure, the warriors themselves are
> not going to keep it in their pants, or use safe sex to prevent the
> spread.
>
> And, smarter women are taking over the political/economic power
> structures. If they keep it together, they will use whatever force is
> necessary to disempower the warriors. Its the only way to prevent the
> damage to infrastructure and maintain profitability in their
> investments. If they fail to garner enough force to keep up
> production, they will gather together, as the Bonobo do, for their
> mutual protection, and focus on the management of a local resource
> base. They wont be going out hunting for soft targets like alpha
> males.
>
> We see alpha males in Africa right now having at each other trying to
> seize control, rather than properly manage, whatever resource bases
> are at hand. The cumulative result is famine. Aggrevated by disease.
> That too is a pattern revealed by the digs in Europe. After the Golden
> Age of Peace ended, we see the emergence of hill forts.
>
> Which we see were lived in for a few decades, or at most a few
> centuries, then abandoned. A closer look at the infrastructure reveals
> the problem. The typical alpha male lack of attention to hygiene. The
> wells would get contaminated, cholera and dysentery would break out,
> and they'd already murdered all the witch herbalists who mite have
> known how to deal with it because of the contending power base witches
> represented. The witches were also the midwives, so the maternal death
> rate rose, which intensified the competition for women and therefor
> the level of violence.
>
> Barford, "The Early Slavs" reveals what's next. Slavs were the first
> survivors to move into abandoned land which had grown up as bush, and
> built tiny dugout, earth bermed cabins with very low profiles that
> could not be seen. Slav women, quite naturally, avoided the aggression
> of alpha males by homesteading in the bush with betas. Like the
> Bonobo, the Slav women could not be controlled. If one felt she was
> abused, there was nothing to stop her from running off into the
> vastness of the European forests.
>
> Root crops, like turnips are abundant in European folklore. They are
> ready to eat in just 45 days. women, even with kids, could flee an
> aggressive man and with her knowledge of wild foods and modest
> gardening, make it. Slav men were therefore despised because they were
> not warriors. But they stayed in the gene pools. And despite the name,
> they did not make good slaves.
>
> Barford shows how the nations and armies rose and fell, and in the
> aftermath left vast regions of abandoned land that were homesteaded by
> Slavs. And if we see global collapse again, we will see the
> descendants of the Slavs respond to their instinctive behavior and go
> back in the small farm business.
>
> Alpha males of superior intelligence have indeed done great things,
> and had the vision to lead in the right direction. the problem is that
> they've not been able to keep it in their pants, and keep breeding
> with airheads. The result is sons who inherit the stupidity of their
> mothers with the instinct to want to dominate from the sires. The
> result, as Nietzsche put it, is the "rancor of the impotent".
>
> Smart women dont have the problem, and are not inclined to breed with
> stupid men. Smart women have always been challenging, and for this
> reason the alpha male dominated cultures have sent them off to
> nunneries. Taking their talents out of the gene pool, and- as we see,
> resulting in generally retarded cultures. That have aggressive alpha
> male attitudes. They just dont get it.
>
> But the smart women moving up in the power structures have some
> intuitive sense of this, and besides, pay more attention to sociology,
> psychology, anthropology, and the lessons of primate research. Much of
> which was done by women to start with. These women are catching on.
> What they will do remains to be seen.