From Brian Horton
Douglas Fry and Patrik Soderberg claim that in hunter-gatherer societies, the great majority of deaths due to violence happened as a result of events within a group rather than “wars” between groups (27 July, p 18). The researchers suggest that cooperation for intergroup fighting therefore played only a minor role in human evolution.
However, rivalry between groups does not necessarily result in violent deaths, and so could have been more widespread than Fry and Soderberg believe.
Once a group developed the ability to cooperate, it could have taken over the best areas, with starvation and disease – rather than war – seeing off its rivals. In this way, evolution could still have favoured those with a warlike group mentality.
West Launceston, Tasmania, Australia
