Human social origins: Oh please, tell us another story

Abstract

This paper aims at a rigorous comparison between accounts of the origins and evolution of society. Since the paper is a collaboration between a sociologist and a primatologist, the list of accounts includes political philosophers and social theorists as well as modern sociobiologists and anthopologists. In order to make the comparison possible, a questionnaire was devised which clearly spells out the basic elements necessary to account for the origin and evolution of society. This questionnaire was then applied to several well known philosophical and biological texts (Rousseau, Hobbes, Dawkins, Axelrod and Hamilton, Trivers, and Leakey and Lewin). The results of the inquiry are reviewed. The discrepancies between accounts are equalled only by those within the accounts. Since more coherent views are found in the least informed texts, some propositions are made to increase the constraints put on the accounts of our social origins.