Does evolution favour cooperation, and dominance is just a mistake?

niepoprawni.pl 4 weeks ago

What does the survey say about dominance and cooperation in human history?

We frequently hear that evolution makes people request to cooperate, and dominance is just an undesirable side effect that fades over time. Is that true? It turns out that modern investigation refutes this view — rather clearly.

The hierarchy of dominance is our starting point, not a coincidence.

Let's start with the basics: our common ancestor with chimps lived in the hierarchy of dominance. McBride's 2025 survey shows that in the primate group stronger individuals controlled access to resources (e.g. food, partners) by force. So dominance is not a mistake of evolution that must be eliminated — it is the starting state from which our past began.

Egalitarianism of hunter-gatherers: not deficiency of dominance, but its control

Were the first people (gatherers) surviving in perfect equality? It turns out it's not that the dominance is gone, but that it was actively suppressed. Christopher Boehm, an anthropologist, introduced the concept "the reversed hierarchy of dominance".

In hunter-gathering groups, weaker members joined together to halt those who tried to gain besides much power. Through gossip, ostracism, and even physical elimination.

The pursuit of dominance did not vanish — it was simply tamed by social mechanisms. Not 1 of the strongest, but a coalition of respective weaker. It's not that evolution eliminated dominance due to the fact that it interfered with cooperation. People just learned to control it so the group could function smoothly.

Self-household hypothesis: little aggression, but no little striving for power

An interesting theory, proposed by Richard Wrangham, says that in the course of evolution people became more socially tolerant — like domesticated animals (e.g. dogs that are little aggressive than wolves).

This is about impulse aggression (e.g. beating your fists in anger) and not about striving for dominance (e.g. wanting to be a leader). Wrangham distinguishes:

This evolution was limited by reactive (impulsive) aggression.
Proactive aggression (planned, e.g. competition for position) — this remains and is part of our nature to this day.

Moreover, it was the ability of the planned cooperation against tyrants (e.g. joining together to overthrow the dictator) that allowed people to make more equitable social structures.

Hierarchy harms cooperation, but does not disappear

Research (e.g.Cronin and others, 2015) shows that erstwhile a hierarchy appears in the group, cooperation falls.

People below the hierarchy are little active due to the fact that they do not see the benefits for themselves. This confirms that dominance and cooperation are in conflict.

However, the hierarchy has not disappeared — it is simply a permanent part of human groups. This is not a mistake of evolution that will yet disappear. It must be actively offset (e.g. by laws, institutions, social standards) so that cooperation can flourish.

Three floors of human nature

From the latest investigation emerges a clear image, which I extensively described in a note on 3 floors "Three floors of man: instincts, universality, civilizations":

✅ Domination is our evolutionary starting point — we inherited it from our primates.
✅ We did not get free of the drive to power — we developed mechanisms to control it (e.g. coalitions, social norms).
✅ Evolution limited impulsive aggression, but it did not destruct the pursuit of position — those remaining and inactive affecting our behavior.
The hierarchy continues to lower our cooperation — it is simply a permanent component of our nature, not something that evolution has repaired.

Science does not say that evolution excludes dominance due to the fact that it forces cooperation. It says that evolution has given us both these instincts at erstwhile — and it is up to us to balance them. That's why culture fights nature.

Grzegorz GPS Swiderski
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PS. Related notes: