# Richard Wrangham **Domain:** Anthropology of aggression **Doc Type:** Developed Person Node **Maturity:** Developed **Collection:** [[collections/Gamification|Gamification Collection]] ## Definition **Richard Wrangham** is a biological anthropologist and primatologist whose work distinguishes reactive from proactive aggression and develops a hypothesis of human self-domestication. He argues that selection against impulsive dominance aggression could coexist with unusually strong human capacities for planned coalitionary violence. ## Significance Wrangham supplies the mechanism joining the collection's two anthropological claims: lower everyday reactive aggression need not mean lower capacity for organized killing. His execution hypothesis remains a scientific hypothesis, not an established single-cause history of human evolution. ## Relationships - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. - **Species-level behavioral comparison:** [[wiki/Human Animality|Human Animality]] places Wrangham's account of unusual cooperation and destructive capacity together, rather than extracting either half as the whole of human nature. - **Mechanistic distinctions:** [[wiki/Reactive vs. Proactive Aggression|Reactive vs. Proactive Aggression]] and [[wiki/Coalitionary Aggression|Coalitionary Aggression]] separate impulsive and planned violence; the interview also discusses institutional prevention. - **Article and collection routes:** [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley]] and [[collections/Consciousness Continuity|Consciousness Continuity]] provide adjacent evolutionary and human-continuity contexts, without implying Wrangham endorsed a machine-succession thesis. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > “Cooked food has so many important biological effects that its adoption should be clearly marked in the fossil record by signals of a reduced digestive system and increased energy use. While such signs are clear at the origin of Homo erectus, they are not found later in human evolution. The match between the biological merits of cooked food and the evolutionary changes in Homo erectus is thus so obvious that except for a scientific obstacle, I believe it would have been noticed long ago. The obstacle is the insistence of archaeologists that the control of fire is not firmly evidenced before about a quarter of a million years ago. As a result of this archaeological caution, the idea that humans could have used fire before about 250,000 to 500,000 years ago has long been sidelined.” > **— Richard Wrangham**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Cooking May Have Created Homo Erectus by Richard Wrangham|Cooking May Have Created Homo Erectus by Richard Wrangham]] > “We're amazingly more cooperative than almost any other species and we're extraordinarily destructive compared to most species.” > **— Richard Wrangham**, *Big Think interview* [[reminders/Human Animality/Humans Are Both Cooperative and Destructive by Richard Wrangham|Humans Are Both Cooperative and Destructive by Richard Wrangham]] > “However, current evidence supports the hypothesis that selection has favored a hunt-and-kill propensity in chimpanzees and humans, and that coalitional killing has a long history in the evolution of both species.” > **— Richard Wrangham**, *“Evolution of coalitionary killing,” 1999* [[reminders/Human Animality/Coalitionary Killing Has an Evolutionary History by Richard Wrangham|Coalitionary Killing Has an Evolutionary History by Richard Wrangham]] > “Compared to chimpanzees, for instance, we kill each other, in particular other adults, at rates so high that they are almost unknown in other species, exceeded by only a very few, such as wolves.” > **— Richard Wrangham**, *Harvard Gazette interview, January 28, 2019* [[reminders/Human Animality/Humans Kill at Rates Rare Among Species by Richard Wrangham|Humans Kill at Rates Rare Among Species by Richard Wrangham]] ## Sources - Richard Wrangham, [Human domestication and the roles of human agency](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7250791/) - Richard Wrangham, *The Goodness Paradox* (2019) - [Richard Wrangham, *Big Think* interview and transcript](https://bigthink.com/videos/big-think-interview-with-richard-wrangham/) — source for the complete cooperation/destruction quotation and later qualifications. ## Routes [[wiki/Human Self-Domestication|Human Self-Domestication]] · [[wiki/Execution Hypothesis|Execution Hypothesis]] · [[wiki/Reactive vs. Proactive Aggression|Reactive vs. Proactive Aggression]]