'Our rise to global dominance began, paradoxically enough, when we set rigid dominance hierarchies aside. “In a typical primate group, the toughest individuals can have their way and dominate everybody else in the group,” said Dr. Wilson. “Chimps are very smart, but their intelligence is predicated on distrust.”
Our ancestors had to learn to trust their neighbors, and the seeds of our mutuality can be seen in our simplest gestures, like the willingness to point out a hidden object to another, as even toddlers will do. Early humans also needed ways to control would-be bullies, and our exceptional pitching skills — which researchers speculate originally arose to help us ward off predators — probably helped. “We can throw much better than any other primate,” Dr. Wilson said, “and once we could throw things at a distance, all of a sudden the alpha male is vulnerable to being dispatched with stones. Stoning might have been one of our first adaptations.”'
Trust, reciprocity, mutuality -- higher functions versus lowbrow primate functioning like bullying and dominance hierarchies. Big shock. Kind of puts the whole reactionary ethos in a new light -- they're not only retrograde in their ideology, but are actually retrograde on evolutionary lines, too. Old primate thinking, truly hidebound in their outlook (since "trust" is not a cardinal conservative virtue -- and studies bear that out, too, how fearful, paranoid, and distrustful reactionaries are).
