Ancestral War and the Evolutionary Origins of "Heroism"
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Date
2007-11
Authors
Smirnov, Oleg
Arrow, Holly
Kennett, Douglas J.
Orbell, John
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Abstract
Primatological and archeological evidence along with anthropological accounts of hunter-gatherer societies indicate that lethal between-group violence may have been sufficiently frequent during our ancestral past to have shaped our evolved behavioral repertoire. Two simulations explore the possibility that heroism (risking one’s life fighting for the group) evolved as a specialized form of altruism in response to war.We show that war selects strongly for heroism but only weakly for a domain-general altruistic propensity that promotes both heroism and other privately costly, group-benefiting behaviors. A complementary analytical model shows that domain-specific heroism should evolve more readily when groups are small and mortality in defeated groups is high, features that are plausibly characteristic of our collective ancestral past.
Description
Keywords
Heroism, Evolution, Evolutionary, Ancestral War