The science of altruism

Collective action protected humans from huge predators 10,000 years ago

May 23, 2018 12:15 am | Updated October 13, 2018 04:03 pm IST

3d illustration of a giant sloth

3d illustration of a giant sloth

Earlier this month, scientists from Bournemouth University, U.K., uncovered evidence of how human beings stalked a ground sloth, or a giant sloth, and outwitted and killed it. The evidence was the fossilised footprints found beneath a vast salt flat in New Mexico. These trackways are embedded in what was once a lakeside, about 10,000-15,000 years ago, and contain a combination of human and ground sloth footprints, initially travelling in a straight line and ending in what appear like ‘flailing circles’. Some human footprints lie on top of the now-extinct ground sloth’s colossal ones. From this, the scientists teased out the story of a hunt — one in which some humans worked collectively to distract, divert, attack and eventually kill the ground sloth — and published their analysis in Science Advances . If such stalking behaviour had been prevalent, it shows how humans, despite being diminutive, could have overpowered huge animals such as the ground sloth and mammoth and even contributed to their extinction. In this case, some humans would have probably risked their lives by attracting the ground sloth’s attention and diverting it, while others from behind would have delivered the death blow. Therefore, some humans were altruistic and risked their lives for the sake of the collective.

Altruism in animals is not a new idea in science. Well-documented and studied examples abound, such as of bees and ants not having their own offspring and spending their lives rearing the young ones of others. They do this so that the kin, rather than the individual ant or bee, benefit from the sacrifice of personal well-being. In such instances, the individual ant or bee’s genes are not passed on, but the ant or bee colony prospers. The concepts of altruism and kin selection have been studied, accepted and formulated by many evolutionary biologists. One of them was W.D. Hamilton (1936-2000), who is considered the forerunner of sociobiology. While pointing to specific behaviour in humans and trying to prove rigorously that such behaviour has a genetic root is not simple, the question is, what does science have to say about the glorification of competitive individualism? The belief that only pure individualism is backed by science is a misreading of the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’. As many writers and scientists have pointed out, there’s plenty of evidence and thought in science to say that kinship and kin selection are as important as the survival of the fittest individual. And in this, the term ‘kin’ goes beyond family relationships such as of genetically close siblings, cousins and second cousins to refer to phenotypic closeness, which may be born of proximity rather than genotypic closeness. Science tells us that 10,000 years ago, acting collectively protected humans from huge predators. Today, collective action can help us tackle the enormous challenges facing us which seem impossible to overcome by individual efforts.

The writer covers Science for The Hindu .

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