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Our prehistoric ancestors were as violent as humans today
Cosmos ^ | September 29, 2016 | Amy Middleton

Posted on 09/29/2016 8:56:08 AM PDT by C19fan

The propensity for humans to kill one another may be hot-wired into our DNA but culture also has the power to change our behaviour, a new study has found.

The research, led by José María Gómez at the Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas in Spain and published in the journal Nature, explored the human tendency to act violently towards members of our own species.

This topic has been hotly debated among experts, with scores of studies questioning whether this vicious trait is an evolutionary development or the result of our cultural or social dynamics.

(Excerpt) Read more at cosmosmagazine.com ...


TOPICS: History; Science; Society
KEYWORDS: humans; violence
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To: C19fan
Geico caveman photo: Texas Tech Taylor potts Geico Caveman geico-caveman1.jpg Just don't diss me man and we're cool.
21 posted on 09/29/2016 9:42:08 AM PDT by tumblindice (America's founding fathers, all armed conservatives)
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To: C19fan

American Indian peace and harmony here!

http://www.dickshovel.com/scalp.html

“The scalping victims considered in this study came from the Southeast, the Midwest, and the Southwest.

The Midwest is by far the region with the largest sample, estimated at between 400 and 500 scalped individuals. However, most of these victims came from Crow Creek Canyon, the site of a large-scale massacre involving a minimum of 486 individuals (Gregg et al 1981).

The excavators report that not only were almost every person scalped, but they also were mutilated and dismembered, and many of their hands and feet appear to have been removed and taken as trophies.”

***
Interesting mention of the taking of hands and feet as trophies. In Burke’s book ON THE BORDER WITH CROOK he mentions how they the troops and their Shoshone allies had attacked a hostile Cheyenne camp, and in that camp they found a bag of hands cut from Shoshone babies.

The Shoshone allies took the bag, and spent the entire night weeping and wailing over it.


22 posted on 09/29/2016 9:43:21 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar (HANDGUNS; You don’t need it until you need it. And when you need it you NEED IT!”)
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To: C19fan
scores of studies questioning whether this vicious trait is an evolutionary development or the result of our cultural or social dynamics.

Try "Original Sin". You can read all about it in the "Book of Genesis".

23 posted on 09/29/2016 9:45:07 AM PDT by NorthMountain (Hillary Clinton: corrupt unreliable negligent traitor)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar
"The girls in the paintings for the book were smoking hot! Not a bit of cellulite anywhere!"

Like in any survival situation, body fat meant life, so I bet they didn't look like Rae Dawn Chong, either.


24 posted on 09/29/2016 9:45:43 AM PDT by PLMerite (Compromise is Surrender: The Revolution...will not be kind.)
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To: C19fan

I’ve often said that war is man’s natural state, and that peace is only the exception that proves the rule.

History is little more than a study of mankind’s repeated conflicts.


25 posted on 09/29/2016 9:47:20 AM PDT by IronJack
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

The practice arose from the Plains Indians’ belief that a spirit robbed of its hands and feet (and other ... appendages) would be unable to grasp or walk in the Great Beyond.

It was reported that many of Custer’s men at the Little Bighorn had their eardrums punctured with sharp bones or sticks since they had failed to listen to repeated warnings that they would be massacred.


26 posted on 09/29/2016 9:54:55 AM PDT by IronJack
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To: C19fan
Rousseau's idea of uncivilized man living in peace and harmony which still enthralls the Left needs to be assigned to the same trash heap as the idea of a flat earth.

Who are you going to believe, a guy wearing make-up and lacy drawers sitting around sipping wine or the evidence of your lying eyes?

I always wondered why anyone with two brain cells to rub together took Rousseau seriously.

27 posted on 09/29/2016 9:55:06 AM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (Not a Romantic, not a hero worshiper and stop trying to tug my heartstrings. It tickles!)
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To: C19fan

The subtext here is that those humans who evolved in what is now the British Isles,Western Europe and Scandinavia and who would later become the people who came to the new world were the brutal ones while those humans who evolved in the Northern and Southern hemisphere( American Indians , the Mexicans and peoples of Central and South America) were the happy children of the plains and forests and rain forests who were brutalized by the white Europeans.


28 posted on 09/29/2016 9:58:24 AM PDT by jmacusa ("Dats all I can stands 'cuz I can't stands no more!''-- Popeye The Sailorman.)
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To: jmacusa
Yeah, those Amerind Mexicans were REAL peaceful like:

Mayans, too:


29 posted on 09/29/2016 10:16:15 AM PDT by Alas Babylon!
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To: Alas Babylon!

Nice folks, huh?


30 posted on 09/29/2016 10:23:42 AM PDT by jmacusa ("Dats all I can stands 'cuz I can't stands no more!''-- Popeye The Sailorman.)
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To: Fiddlstix

Yes, the correct answer to the postulated question is “BOTH”.

Now, someone send me my $100,00 for this research. Address it to: Captain Obvious. I’d prefer a bearer bond instead of a check.


31 posted on 09/29/2016 10:50:00 AM PDT by MadMax, the Grinning Reaper
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To: C19fan

Unless you think CIVILization preceded the world of today, why would you think otherwise?

I can imagine myself, years ago, tracking down a saber-toothed tiger and, when confronted by a stone-age liberal, trying to stop me because the animal “had rights too”, I probably would’ve killed them on the spot.

Today I would hesitate.


32 posted on 09/29/2016 11:23:50 AM PDT by fruser1
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To: C19fan
whether this vicious trait is an evolutionary development or the result of our cultural or social dynamics.

Even if violence is evolutionary, there could still be cultural and ethnic dynamics that make some cultures and ethnicities not ready for a free and rational society and not able to fit in.

33 posted on 09/29/2016 11:33:03 AM PDT by mjp ((pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, natural rights, limited government, capitalism}))
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

I can’t imagine what koolaid drinker hasn’t known that for at least 40 years...

One of my cousins was married to an archaeologist-a paleoindian expert-my 1st husband and I always used our vacation time to visit whatever dig he was doing in the SW, or in Mexico, taking our cub to give her a REAL education. From villages torched with the inhabitants and their livestock, mutilated skeletons in pits on a battlefield 1000’s of years old, etc- violence was obviously the answer to just about every dispute, trespass or insult-some liberals are still in Lala land...


34 posted on 09/29/2016 11:46:52 AM PDT by Texan5 (`"You've got to saddle up your boys, you've got to drive a hard line"...)
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To: C19fan

Did our ancestors wear their bear skin rugs below the waist and expose their underwear too and chant cave men lives matter?


35 posted on 09/29/2016 12:29:15 PM PDT by minnesota_bound
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To: Billthedrill

36 posted on 09/29/2016 5:27:23 PM PDT by GreenLanternCorps (Hi! I'm the Dread Pirate Roberts! (TM) Ask about franchise opportunities in your area.)
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