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​Here’s The Reason Why Humans Began Killing One Another

​Here’s The Reason Why Humans Began Killing One Another

Are we getting more psychopaths?

James Dawson

James Dawson

A new study has suggested why violent behaviour and killings by humans and other animals towards their own species is common, whereas in other animals it is virtually unknown.

The study suggests that lethal violence was likely passed down to humans by their primate ancestors during the evolutionary process.

Animal such as primates and humans exhibit violent behaviour towards members of the same species. But other animals, such as whales and bats, have virtually no evidence of lethal violence towards one another.

In their paper, published in Nature, researchers from the Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas in Spain wrote: "Lethal violence is considered by some to be mostly a cultural trait. However, aggression in mammals, including humans, also has a genetic component with high heritability.

"It is widely acknowledged that evolution has also shaped human violence."

To understand how these violent traits developed, researchers compiled data from over four million deaths across 1,024 mammal species.

The authors reconstructed the rate of lethal violence at the origin of mammals at about 0.30 percent, which is approximately one in 300 deaths.

Rates of lethal violence rose steadily over time and today the incidence of humans killing one-another is around two percent of all deaths (remember wars can account for millions of deaths) - about six times higher than the first mammals, suggesting that human violence is a genetic tendency that has evolved over time.

Mark Pagel, a researcher from the University of Reading, who reviewed the study, told MailOnline: "Environments can modify the degree to which this tendency is expressed.

"Global homicide rates, for example, are currently about 1 in 10,000 and this reflects the influence of laws, police forces, jails and public attitudes.

"But the point is that we shouldn't expect lethal violence to disappear given our evolutionary tendencies."

The research indicates that lethal violence has primarily changed over time as socio-political changes have taken place.

As the paper puts it: "It is widely acknowledged that monopolisation of the legitimate use of violence by the state significantly decreases violence in state societies."

This suggests that culture can influence evolutionary inherited lethal violence in humans.

Featured image credit: Lions Gate Films

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Topics: Murder