Violent Behavior Was Tamed Once Civilization Started Rising

Violent behavior has actually decreased in levels over time.

According to a new study, violent behavior is an inherited reaction. The closer some species are in the tree of life, the more chances these innate emotions will define their character. In other words, any animal who is related to a violent species has higher chances of reacting violently in an argument with its own kind, than animals who are and are related to more peaceful species.

In order to reach these conclusions, scientists analyzed over a thousand mammal species, focusing on the rate in which the animals kill each other. The conclusion was that violent behavior is an inherited reaction, and humankind managed to keep it in check ever since the rise of civilization.

Thanks to the media, people are more aware of the behavior of individuals from other parts of the world, every negative incident being reported almost immediately. This lead people to believe that we are becoming increasingly violent towards each other. However, we could not be more distant from the truth.

According to a group of researchers from Spain’s Granada University, currently, humans are not the most violent species, by far.

While mammals take the lead with three interspecies murders, humans are not the most violent mammals when it comes to killing their own kind. Moreover, in present times, humans are killing fewer humans than in the Medieval Era, for example.

In the mammal kingdom, killer whales almost never kill each other, not even during the mating season. However, meerkats, chinchillas, baboons, and lemurs kill more than ten percent of their kind.

Back when media coverage was represented by the old ladies in a village, between 700 and 1500 AD, to be more precise, the rate of human to human killings was of 120 out of 1,000. This meant that twelve percent of deaths were caused by another person.

Now, the number has lowered to an impressive 13 out of 1,000. Only 1.3 percent of murders are caused intentionally, as an act of violent behavior originating from another individual.

The researchers believe that the impressive change is caused by the rise of civilization. Once people started to live closer together, depend on each other for services, and develop a functional society, their violent behavior suffered drastic changes.

Summing it up, humans are actually the good mammals when it comes to the number of interspecies murders.

Image source: Wikipedia