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From: geb@dsl.pitt.edu (Gordon E. Banks)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,soc.women
Subject: Re: War and Peace and Chimpanzees
Message-ID: <1990Jan29.135054.29507@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu>
Date: 29 Jan 90 13:50:54 GMT
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Organization: Decision Systems Laboratory, Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.
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>In article <12900@cbnewsd.ATT.COM> kja@cbnewsd.ATT.COM (krista.j.anderson) writes:
>Then again, in view of the fact that *most* mammals don't
>kill their rivals,
>
>1.  that most mammals have an instinct that forces them to halt
>aggressive behavior in response to submissive gestures and
>postures.  (If such an instinct were not part of the animals'
>brain organization, the species would have failed to survive.)

And do you suppose humans are any different in this regard 
(otherwise, WE would also have failed to survive!)?  Learning
about these submission gestures can help a lot in confrontations
with persons in a position of dominance over you (such as when
a cop has stopped you for a traffic violation).  Fights in which
a human is killed when our natural weapons (feet, fists, and teeth)
are used are very very rare.  The problem is we have equipped ourselves
with unnatural weapons over which our instincts have less control
(clubs, knives, guns, nuclear weapons...).  See Kubrick's 2001 for
a film dissertation on the subject.  Unfortunately, our technology
has run faster than our instincts can evolve to keep up with it.
Our only hope is that we can use our intelligence to survive in
spite of this.