The Evolutionary Biology of Human Conflict

Understanding Human Conflict Through Evolution

Has the world gone crazy? The intractable MAGA-WOKE divide. The brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Hamas-Israel catastrophe. Iranian nuclear ambitions. Saber rattling China.

Today, more than ever we need to understand why we so often join together in groups to go to war.

The amount of effort and resources humans put into killing one another is utterly mind-boggling. A careful reading of our history shows that—after obtaining sustenance, mating, and rearing offspring—we invest most of our life energy in murderous, coalitional aggression. Up until now, there has been no sufficient explanation for this fact: Human behavior appears to have been designed (shaped by natural selection) to include what is apparently the most maladaptive behavior imaginable.

Furthermore, the beliefs and reasoning that guide such horrific behavior have all the characteristics of psychotic delusions. So, how could it be that history demonstrates that our devotion to murdering one another based on utter nonsense has evolved and become part of the core of the human psyche?

The Adaptive Design of Warfare

Using a cutting-edge application of modern evolutionary biology, we can present the first complete answer to the conundrum of human inhumanity. The unavoidable conclusion is that we have been designed by millions of years of natural selection to join together in groups that use ethnocentric racism, religious, and quasi-religious systems of belief to guide organized, intergroup violence.

During the evolution of our species, such tribal madness and mass murder of outsiders can be shown to have been highly adaptive. As our species evolved, a tendency to denigrate and murder the subhuman "others" was reinforced when the winners (most often the perpetrators) survived, prospered, and went on to increase their lineage, while the losers were typically enslaved, decimated, and/or exterminated.

The Co-evolution of Symbolic Thought and Violence

The tendency to engage in murderous warfare based on our shared, tribal identities co-evolved alongside the burgeoning, symbol using, human brain. The ways the semi-social human animal constructs personal meaning and group identities become clarified in an evolutionary analysis.

Modern humans have been around for 300,000 years or so. Yet it is only with the recent advent of Darwin's theory of evolution that, for the first time, humanity has had what can be called a "scientific theory of creation." And it is just during the past 50 years that this powerful explanatory theory has been turned toward the study of human behavior.

Today, the elaboration of the breakthrough explanations of evolutionary biology has provided a foundation for understanding much of why people believe and act as they do.

The Psychology of Intergroup Conflict

In addition to understanding the evolutionary history of warfare, examining the psychology that motivates murderous intergroup conflict presents us with a real foundation for solving this horrific problem.

The beliefs and reasoning that guide such horrific behavior have all the characteristics of psychotic delusions. Yet history demonstrates that our devotion to murdering one another based on utter nonsense has evolved and become part of the core of the human psyche.

Toward a Solution

This new understanding presents us with a real foundation for solving this horrific problem. By recognizing the evolutionary origins of our tribal tendencies, we can begin to address the root causes of intergroup violence and work toward more peaceful solutions.