Among those imagining a chimpy past, without recognizing that this is what he was doing, was 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who famously declared that humans, in our “state of nature” (that is, without government), are destined to live lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”21 More recently, intellectual luminaries from Sigmund Freud to Steven Pinker have, similarly, imagined that humans need civilization to save us from our basest instincts. It is true that chimps tend toward war rather than peace, and are often found fighting at the edges of their territories.
...more
