Could be.

And, though I know you aren’t much find of religion, it too plays a role – sometimes negative, sometimes positive.

It’s interesting to note that one of the stories Christians misinterpret to justify bigotry, Sodom, was originally a cautionary tale about inhospitality. Perhaps had Sodom been populated by bonobos rather than chimps, so to speak, gay folk would have less problems.

I watched an interesting TV program on the emotions in animals. On the part on Chimpanzees and Bonobos (human’s closest relatives) they did some experiements to test to see if they had a sense of fair play. They put two chimps in cages side by side and trained them to do a simple task for a reward, in this case a slice of cucumber. The chimps did the task and ate their cucumber slice happily. Then the researchers mixed it up and gave the chimp in the right cage a strawberry instead, but the one in the left cage the cucumber slice. The chimp in the left cage noticed his companion getting the much more desirable strawberry and threw his cucumber slice back at the researcher demonstrating he had a concept of fairness.

The researchers performed the same experiment with Bonobos with the Bonobo in the left cage also refusing to eat his cucumber slice after seeing his companion in the right cage getting a strawberry. The difference was that the companion in the right cage, noticing the unfairness also refused to eat the strawberry showing not only a sense of fair play, but empathy.

Chimps will share food within their tribe but not with strangers from another tribe who they will sometimes attack and kill. Bonobos on the other hand in encountering a stranger from another tribe will never attack and kill but will in fact share food with the stranger from another tribe. It’s difficult to believe that modern humans throughout our 200,000 year history had a less advanced morality than our closest relatives.

Perhaps. But it seems to me that history suggests that the social rules didn’t extend beyond the boundaries of the social unit. It wasn’t “stealing” to go into the foreigners land and take his sheep or his land. It wasn’t murder to kill those who tried to stop you.

I very much doubt it. Given that people thought it was wrong in their tribe its highly unlikely that most people didn’t generalize this to all people. Prohibitions on murder and stealing was a matter of self-interest for all people, not just tribal leaders. Cooperation is evolved into people for hundreds of thousands of years and a certain morality is inherent in that.

Well… yes and no.

Certainly inner-tribe prohibitions on stealing or murdering was probably a matter of self-interest from the leader(s). But stealing and murdering being inherently wrong when applied universally to all humans probably is a fairly recent notion.

Yes. But that is not just the story of Columbus, it’s the story of humans. Christian, pagan, or whatever.

The Powerful Invader story can be seen in almost every local and with almost every culture. “We were here first” has almost never won the argument when presented to people who want or need what you have.

And few who suffer it can claim unfairness too loudly. Often they were simply the descendants of those who displaced or killed the people who were there before them.