Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)
It consists of cooperation, amiability, learning, etc., all involving an efficiency that starts with the group, the tribe, the clan or whatever group and family designation one uses according to the groups cultural belief system.
When anthropologists look back over human history and trace, as best as they can, human evolution from the humanlike ape, to apelike human, and finally through the various stages to the state of humans today, the anthropologists were struck by an important realization: that cooperation and competition both are responsible for our evolution, our very existence. This, and other factors, puts a new spin on our competitive nature of today.
One must note, as expressed by those same anthropologists, is that evolution of man from what ever origins such as animals is that the process of evolution is gradual, continuous and very, very slllloooooowwww. This gradual process did not proceed in straight lines or in some arborizing fashion as believed but rather resembles a reticulum in which there were lots of crisscrossing along with new developments. There is some evidence that humans evolved faster that generally believed/supposed.
Here is where I feel group dynamics is explained, i.e., it is now recognized that the evolutionary process is a result of whole populations of humans who changed over that period. Evolutionary processes took place within groups sometimes widely separated from each other.
Our evolution involved a need to adapt to many different and changing conditions, accidental genetic mutations useful to our survival according to specific places at specific times that were retained, learned patterns of behavior that were to become a part of the culture that are then transmitted from generation to generation. Then we add in one more item, chance (sometimes luck too).
In such groups there had to be cooperation and mutual aid. If not for those two it is believed that humans who, as many thought, depended on competition and mutual hostility that our species would never have evolved to a state of humanity. Had we been natural born killers with an innate aggressive and hostile ‘instinct’ then we would have had a much harder time surviving.
It is because of cooperation and mutual aid, to provide necessary services to the tribe or group, humans would not have developed the physical attributes and the intelligence to cooperate with each other, they might well have been killed off by other predators. It is a required attribute of our species to evolve through cooperation among individuals; without it we would not have evolved.
Ever wonder why we have both eyes in the front of our heads vs. one eye on each side? This type of vision is called, “Binocular.” It is a type of vision that makes it possible for us to see in three dimensions, and that means the ability to judge distances and depth. Ever hear of, “Arboreal?” Since we are believed to come from a type of man-ape and that our ancestors came out of the trees it is, “Us, living in trees.” Such a life was good regarding brain development: it was a life filled with surprises, every surprise called for quick response, the reward for correct response was living to another moment and incorrect response could possibly mean a fatal penalty.
In short, the ones with the quickest response (OODA :-) ) and the greatest ability to make correct decisions and to survive incorrect decisions is the one creature most likely to live long enough to pass on those genes and that comes from the development of our brains.
A side note: primates are either or not our ancestors but it is believed that among those very primates were the “Australopithecines,” what some believe are our close relatives if not ancestors. They were what I have already termed, from the anthropologists, etc., who did this study, ‘ape-men. Ape-men that were men non the less who were about four feet tall, with a brain larger that that of present-day chimps and they may have had the power of speech. Primarily vegetarians - fruits, nuts, seeds - who on occassion also ate birds eggs when they came upon them, and the experts say we can add small slow moving animals to their diet.
Since these Australopithecines were considered more than apes, they stood up and moved about on their hind legs, etc., which gave their ever developing hands freedom to explore, to hold things, to poke, to squeeze, to reach, to grab, and thus to feed the curiosity that even then was becoming an important tool or mechanism for “Learning and Understanding and Adapting.”
Now we can look at another important mechanism that fed the evolutionary process, “Sociability.” It is believed and understood that one of the major reasons we have survived and evolved is our group dynamic of sociability. The dual concept is, “Sociability and Amiability” because they, like a yin-yang thing, go together often. Humans to survive live in groups, spend most of their time in groups, and carry out almost all their projects - eating, copulating, raising young, and protecting the group from predators - in groups.
Humans being of this nature tend to apply punishments short of death that maintain the order and discipline of the group by meting out the worst possible punishment of our species - put in solitary confinement. Loneliness is widely considered the most severe malady one can suffer, we all have an emotional reliance on one another. This characteristic has had great significance for the evolutionary development of our species. Evolution would not have been possible in any form like it did without emphasis on cooperation and mutual aid.
Example, Hunting: To hunt could never have developed without a high degree of cooperation among members of the group who were working together for the mutual good. Groups that hunted together and shared food were healthier; the individuals in these groups tended to live longer than individuals who went out alone, and groups that did the best job all around tended to prevail.
The same principle - that groups are better than individuals - applied when it was necessary to protect themselves from other hunters. A group is clearly better equipped to stand off predators than a single individual.
Speaking of flight-or-fight, etc., fighting among australopithecines is unlikely to have been any moe frequent than it is among apes because they had already developed the ability to ‘FLEE’ from dangerous situations and flight rather than fight would, in many cases, have been to their advantage. Flight of a group is safer by far than flight alone for each individual in that group. This brings us to a mainstay of this article, “Learning.”
LEARNING: “The most important function of the tribe, the group, in the evolution of early humans was in the area of ‘learned behavior’.”
It is possible to learn alone, by trial and error, but it is much easier and faster to learn from ‘watching others’. Often times, learning by trial and error is way to slow. There is no question that learning from other members of the group is an important component of evolution and survival.
When threatened by lions, fleeing to trees is good and such behaviors obviously represents several kinds of learning - from observation, from adult to adult, from adult to young. The advantages that accrue when many learn from a single experience is evident and obvious. It is also understood from research and studies that long before the emergence of the first true human beings, the patterns of cooperative living had been established and individuals were helping each other survive.
Remember, evolution depends upon circumstance and environment, upon the challenges met and surmounted, and upon chance mutations in the genetic material in each group. As we now understand as to our history, the development of hunting among early humans and it later extension to the hunting of large animals probably served to intensify the importance of cooperation in the lives of the group. Cooperation enhanced their chances of developing and evolving and eventually becoming something more.
Side note: The whole question of division of labor, i.e., hunter-gatherer where men hunted and women gathered along with caring for young, etc., between the sexes evidently goes back to our earliest days as humans. During prehistoric times such an arrangement was necessary for survival. Natural selection, in fact, greatly favored those individuals and those groups who cared for their young for extended periods, and whose tribal lives were organized on the highly cooperative principle of mutual support between men and women.
Bibliography (Click the link)
Montabu, Ashley. “The Nature of Human Aggression.” Oxford Press, New York. 1976, 78.
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