The First Artificial Selection

Power becomes Hereditary

Cooperation may be the cornerstone of human evolution. It is a key feature differentiating us from other life forms. Sure, some social insects, fish, birds, and even plants exhibit degrees of cooperation, but we made it the foundation of who we are. Cooperating makes us human; it makes us somewhat worthy of the name Homo sapiens. Not that we’re wiser, or stronger, or more violent, but that we’re better at sharing, being friends, and having relationships with ourselves, each other, and our world.

This essay is about how that changed. Not through biology, but through power. How a species built on cooperation began selecting, deliberately, for the opposite.

The Perfect Storm 

Our blossoming, loving, and cooperative nature meant positive interactions outnumbered negative. Resources were shared, there was no concept of ownership, and exchanges were more gift than reciprocal. The newly found resource surplus was certainly tempting, though, especially to individuals who exhibited higher degrees of selfishness. Plus, our cooperative nature meant many of us would turn the other cheek when someone got out of line, despite the cultural tools of shunning and shame. Assertive and self-centered individuals knew, as we all probably did, that there was potential power in the lootable wealth we created together, and that it could be possessed.

The transition from surplus to ownership probably didn’t take very long. Wealth was collective at first, but some people figured out that controlling the surplus meant controlling the village. Control offered power — access to mates, the best meat, even servants. Hierarchy was just a few steps away, which meant shame and shunning were more important than ever, and had to be universally enforced by group hypervigilance.

So the potential for hierarchy came along with cooperation, but how did we shift from more egalitarian interactions to the sort of winners versus losers we see today? What I think happened wasn’t inevitable; it was the perfect storm. 

Human Nature

We used to think this change happened overnight with the shift from nomadic hunter-gatherer bands to sedentary agrarian villages. Recent research suggests we were more likely to switch between these modes, or hybrids thereof, for perhaps ten or twenty thousand years toward the end of the Pleistocene. In any case, the number of people living together likely grew as some groups stored more surplus and moved around less.

The combination of cooperative egalitarianism, increased village size, and resource surplus likely fueled an expanding neurology that supported cultural development. That development, in turn, accelerated further neural change. Social and group selection are among the unique adaptations differentiating humans from other hominids: communication, language, storytelling, and a communal understanding of the world built our modern capacity for cooperation, generation by generation.

Of course, evolution isn’t perfect, and selection gradients produce a spectrum of phenotypes. Some of us expressed wisdom as hypersensitivity to predict weather patterns. Others may have had innate expertise in determining which plants were medicinal. Still more might have expressed hunting prowess and more violent behaviors necessary for killing. Combined with our expanding neurology, our egalitarian nature may have seen communal roles matching neurotypes and skillsets rather than being assigned. A homeostatic social group resulted where needs drove duties and selected for phenotypic ability that suited those needs.

This also meant our nature wasn’t entirely peaceful. Humans are characterized as having good and bad elements discussed in modern stories like the Garden of Eden and The Lord of the Flies. The potential for evil to ‘win’ has always been there, but it was kept in check. The spectacular cultural prowess developed, at least in part, to maintain a nonviolent intraspecific homeostasis, at least within one’s village. We likely fought with other tribes or bands, but I don’t believe we were murderous savages. 

The most adaptive version of the good versus evil story is that good behavior prevails. The pathway of triumphant evil only ends in two ways. With a ‘last one standing, winner takes all’ situation where no one is left to breed with, or some version of what we have today.

Mechanisms Maintaining Peace

Every functional system has mechanisms to maintain balance. The human body regulates temperature, pH, and hydration with elegant precision. Social systems are no different. And for early humans, the stakes of social imbalance were just as existential as a fever.

Imagine a young male villager coming into puberty. Raging hormones drive a strong urge to mate. Nonconsensual mating would not be tolerated. So social norms evolved to contain these impulses — not through law or government, but through something older and more immediate: the group’s collective disapproval.

Shame and shunning were the primary tools. Taking away food, reducing access to mates, or isolating someone from the group went a long way toward deterring bad behavior. For the worst offenders, banishment, or worse. The group enforced its own norms, bad behavior was called out by whoever witnessed it, and collective awareness emerged as its own selection pressure, further driving neurological complexity. Individual needs existed and were met by the group. When individuality became exploitation, it was removed by all means necessary. At least for a few hundred generations.

The Tipping Point

Many argue it is inevitable that power will be consumed and directed by more selfish leadership. It isn’t hard to imagine a cooperative bunch of folks being outsmarted or beaten down by a strong and charismatic individual or group. It is similarly obvious that a stockpile of lootable wealth, like food stores or tools, would tempt coups that would render a single entity the solitary owner of power, and thus direct control over subservients. When the only mechanisms maintaining group-level dynamics are the group itself, the group’s failure can mean its downfall.

The argument isn’t whether humans are inherently good or evil because we are both. Evil, however, is maladaptive for our species and could not persist without help. It is easy to see how stronger and more competitive individuals can steal power away from the group, and how our cooperative nature makes us easy targets for this behavior. But for our species to persist in groups for hundreds of thousands of years, and for our evolutionary prowess to be defined by neurological advances supporting cooperation and social complexity, only to be destroyed, makes no sense. 

The burden of hypervigilance, of policing for misbehavior, probably outweighed the freedom of egalitarian life. Such a culture prized being over doing, and that very freedom became the vulnerability. When people misbehaved, it fell to the group to respond. And groups at leisure are slow to act.

It’s easy to envision the tipping point at which a tribe’s collective attention was focused on leisure. Perhaps a seasonal celebration, when our collective guard was down. A Machiavellian, selfish, and perhaps psychopathic individual planned for this moment to steal some tribal resource for himself – yes, most likely this was a male. Maybe the grain stores. Or tools. Or weapons. He is a stronger, larger, and more aggressive individual, likely adept at hunting and killing game. He could act on impulses others kept in check, more completely than anyone anticipated. And he knew it. By the time the tribe responded, shame and shunning were not enough to reclaim the valued resources. 

Humans became adapted to cooperative social structures, survived incredibly hostile environmental conditions, and still evolved mechanisms to strengthen social and familial bonds. Yet, all of this crumbled due to the adaptations that made us so strong. The Shakespearean nature of this tragedy does beg the question of inevitability, but I think it was more accidental. Our nature made us easy targets, and despite coevolved systems to avoid selfish leadership, we still fell victim to usurpation. And what’s worse? We incorporated subservience into a survival strategy. 

Exception Becomes the Rule

Once power transitions from the group to the individual, the group is controlled by a single entity or a subgroup. Self-serving, antisocial personality traits are selected for at one level, and a hierarchy necessarily follows. Social groups stop being egalitarian and become purposefully structured to maintain exploitative personality types in leadership positions. Ancestral cooperative traits dominate the lower classes. Selection to maintain the new hierarchy becomes human-induced. 

Suddenly, our species can change because of the things we do and the choices we make. And our least adaptive, most selfish individuals are making decisions for newly obedient masses. A total shift from nature-as-advisor to cooperation-based group selection occurs, favoring selfish individuals. A small portion of the global human population inverts society, and something new arises. It is the dawn of civilization. For the first time in the history of life on Earth, someone chooses who you can love and mate with. 

This is part of an ongoing series on human nature, cooperation, and how we got here. Previous essays:
 — Yet Somehow We Got Egypt
 — We Have it All Wrong
 — Who We Used to Be