The back cover says that this book asks "Why do men kill, rape and wage war and what can we do about it?" The book is said to be "Dramatic, vivid and sometimes shocking, but firmly grounded in meticulous scientific research . . ." and, unfortunately, that is only a half truth.
It begins " 'You will be killed!' " and proceeds like an exciting adventure story ("Killing was the reason we were in Africa.") written in the first person (Wrangham). There are marvelous word pictures, visions of teeming chaotic hordes of refugees, undisciplined soldiers, corrupt officials, intrigue, and excitement. Our recent television experiences of massacres in Rwanda and Burundi become firstperson accounts. There is a daredevil colorful bush pilot, hundreds of miles of tractless greenery ("broccoli"), isolated outposts, and armed men, simultaneously threatening and friendly, negotiating bribes. It is hot, exciting, and exotic. I can almost see the movie. But then the adventure story is suspended until chapter ten and when we return, it is no longer an adventure, the style has changed.
The narration shifts to a flashback to Gombe over twenty years ago and a dark story told by a Kenyan field assistant of murder by chimpanzees. Of course many animals kill their own kind, but of ten million species we are told that only humans and chimpanzees do so deliberately. We are next treated to a series of anecdotes, observations, and well-reasoned rationales covering a wide variety of topics, but all linked to the thesis that the nature of human and chimpanzee males is demonic. We learn: that whereas chimpanzee females refuse to have sex with their brothers, they may be raped by their brothers; that chimpanzees use a remarkable variety of tools for some very sophisticated purposes; that they teach their young; that they force themselves to swallow vilely bitter medicines when they are sick, and otherwise doctor themselves; that they conduct raids and engage in murder as a species-wide pattern; and that they undergo menopause, carry long-term grudges, force one another to make peace, and much more. One might believe that all of this occurred routinely in every chimpanzee community, but the data are sometimes limited to a single anecdote, a pattern from a single site, a richly interpreted observation, etc. Strangely, whereas the acceptance of patriarchy in science fiction merits a citation, few of these statements do. All of these observations are said to be due to natural selection (equated with the selfish gene theory) and who can deny that evolution shapes morphology and behavior?
Wrangham feels that many scientists are radical nurturists who deny an interactionist view. He counters by insisting that the biological underpinning of human violence and demonic male behavior is deeply entrenched (but not inevitable ). He describes chimpanzee life in detail because he believes that chimpanzees are not only our closest relatives, but also that "modern chimpanzees (are) . . . excellent models of our direct ancestors . . . modern humans (are) the dazed survivors of a continuous 5-million-year habit of lethal aggression. " (p. 63, but