ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses violence, specifically murder and war. It addresses the questions: How common is murder in the world's societies and who are the people most likely to commit it? Who are its principal victims? Why does it occur? Are there similarities between human violence and the violence observed in chimpanzees—one's nearest relatives? Do chimpanzees commit murder? The chapter also addresses the questions: What do people expect to gain from it, in light of the severe costs it imposes on human populations? Why is it that human societies cannot live in peace with one another? Evolutionary psychologists stress that warfare in small-scale societies is primarily the result of competition for and conflict over women. Margo Wilson and Martin Daly have assembled evidence to show that women seem much more likely to kill husbands in modern industrial than in nonindustrial. Most small-scale societies, from the distant prehistoric past down to the present, have fought wars.
