To the editor:

Among primates — the great apes — the newest kid on the block is Homo sapiens. That's us. We first appeared on the planet only 200,000 years ago. Between 90,000 and 10,000, our genome became defined. Judging from the archaeological evidence, we lived as hunters and gatherers in small groups cooperatively and peacefully.

The genes of Homo sapiens individuals are still with us. Yet, there is violence and war in our history as well - occasional violence since 10,000 BCE, and war since the time of ancient Egypt in 5,000 BCE.

Is violence inevitable - simply a part of human nature? I think that the science says no. Rather, we are hard-wired for cooperation.

In the Upper Paleolithic period, for instance, it took several men to bring down a large animal and carry it back to share with others in the camp. The women (from whom half of our genome comes) had gathering parties in which a trusted sister, aunt, or grandmother would watch over the small children of a number of mothers who could join the work force for that time. The mothers were also responsible for rearing the children, a multi-year process that included nurturing and a kindness of spirit.

We must attribute violence, not to genes but to culture, and we know that culture can change in a short time, sometimes overnight. Germany today is not militaristic. Neither is Japan. Some other countries have established a culture of peace by proclamation and maintained it for a long time.

Iceland has not been at war for 700 years. Switzerland has maintained neutrality for 200 years. Sweden, too, has had no military alliances for 200 years. Yet, in the time of the Vikings, Sweden practiced violence throughout Europe and was widely feared. Another 20 or so countries each have had over 100 years of peace. Costa Rica abolished its army and navy by decree in 1949.

War, it is agreed by most disciplines studying evolution, is culturally and not genetically determined.

The great majority of ordinary people deal with conflict in their daily lives without resorting to violence, let alone having a war over it. To quote the Lebanese painter, Rabih Alameddine, “At the heart of of most antagonism is unreconcilable similarity.”

To show the paucity of violence in our Paleolithic past, a pair of evolutionary anthropologists, Jonathan Haas and Matthew Piscitelli, did a recent review of the archaeological record of the hunter-gatherer period of Homo sapiens.

They report on over 400 sites in the literature and describe 2930 human skeletons, only 5 of which showed possible evidence of violence. Five in all those millennia! That, you will recall, was the time when our genes became established. So much for the genes of Homo sapiens.

Dr. Malkin has just had a book entitled Homo Sapiens—A Violent Gene? published by Pisgah Press, from which this article is excerpted. He lives in Northeastern Pennsylvania