ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the importance of the bonds for the establishment of community, and focuses on the all-important breakthrough from breeding systems to kinship systems. There is the crucial set of male-male bonds that underlie politics, defense, the conduct of war, and a host of other activities vital to the broad self-interest of the community; and the set of female-female bonds important in maintaining social coherence. Males and females in the primate group even actively compete for food; and when the males do on the odd occasion indulge themselves in the luxury of the flesh of a newborn gazelle, for example, the alpha male either keeps it for himself or at best allows his nearest male bondmates to take a little. But the females are given nothing. All this changed when the species changed to a semicarnivorous diet.
