Humans are far gentler to members of their own community than chimps are, thanks to our ancestors' ability to plan organized murder.

Richard Wrangham compared the level of within-group conflict among hunter-gatherer humans to that of chimpanzees. Chimps are 150 to 550 times more likely than humans to commit violence against their peers.

How did human ancestors go from being despotic hierarchical great apes to egalitarian hunter-gatherers?

In fact, for most of human history and prehistory, homo sapiens have lived in egalitarian societies where men were granted roughly equal social status.

Anthropologist Christopher Boehm suggested 3 key reasons for this:

-The invention of hunting weapons

-The advent of large-game hunting

-The development of a large brain and its associated cognitive and linguistic capacities

Early human communities selected against reactive aggression: arrogance, bullying, impulsive violence, and the monopolizing of food and women.

Early humans learned to make weapons to kill large animals. They learned these weapons could be used to kill each other while incurring no damage to themselves.

When a group of chimps attack another chimp, the attackers risk incurring some injury. In fact, it takes a group of male chimpanzees about ten to 20 minutes of ferocious assault to kill an unfamiliar chimp they encounter on patrol. During that time, the victim might be able to inflict some damage to their attackers.

Humans with weapons can eliminate a target much faster than chimps. And humans armed with spears or projectile weapons face no equivalent risk of injury.

Especially when they have the element of surprise. Language allowed humans to coordinate and form conspiracies to dominate an individual.

Weaponry and language gave rise to egalitarian communities.