Nature marries nurture on the banks of the Congo River
The champions of evolution are those who can adapt to survive and bequeath their genes to the next generation – actively obeying the laws etched into primordial DNA is not a priority.
1.5 million years ago, the Congo River grew and grew into one of the world’s most notable rivers we know of today. The basin widened and deepened, which more or less cut the African Continent into two, and the sheer volume of the water made it impossible for any non-amphibious species to cross.
The formation of this flow of water lead to the creation of two new simian species, one fighting for survival on the northern banks, and the other flourishing unimpeded in the south. The new simian species welcomed into the world, once they had adapted to their respective environments, are our closest great-ape cousins: The Chimpanzees, who inhabit the north and eastern banks, and the Bonobos, who dwell beneath the southern bank to this day.
While identical in appearance, they could not be more different in behaviour. The Chimpanzees, fighting to survive in an environment with limited resources while vying for scare food supplies with Gorilla troops, had to become tribal, aggressive, and violent. The Chimpanzee had to cut in line for food, wage war on neighbouring tribes to defend their precious territories, and forge an extreme suspicion of any outsiders, be they troglodyte or otherwise.
The Bonobos on the hand were much like the dodo, the dominant animal finding itself on a pile of gold. The Bonobo had all the food it could ever dream of and didn’t have to share any of it with its simian cousins, which is why the Bonobo is pacifist, cooperative, and friendly. Bonobo on Bonobo crime is largely unheard of, and at the very least doesn’t happen on the war-like scale displayed by the Chimpanzees.
The Bonobo did not become violent because it didn’t have to, so evolution points were spent into being collaborative and communal with members of its own kind; aggression and dominance had no biological benefit in this great ape paradise.
However, the violent nature of the Chimpanzee, which primatologist Jane Goodall discovered to her horror, cannot be overstated. Chimpanzees are the only mammal (except for a certain relative of theirs) to actively plan, coordinate, execute, and celebrate a genocide of its fellow species. The Geneva Convention is violated on a daily basis.
Both the Chimpanzees and the Bonobos are acting on instinct, from a DNA blueprint carved and perfected over a million years, all because some water eroded rock in the Congo. Innate nature is of course innate, but it is moulded around the existing environment an organism finds themselves in. The theory of evolution does not state that the strongest survive, but those more willing to adapt, which is why any aggressive temperaments of the Bonobos were snuffed out, and cordial Chimpanzees were killed early on.
Many evolutionary biologists adore comparing the violent urges of the Chimpanzee to that of humanity, with some arguing that man’s warring nature can never be dampened because we find it in abundance in those closest to us. This analysis is partially correct.
There are striking similarities, but they formed from different starting points. We did not evolve from Chimpanzees, rather we originate from a common ancestor, with the splitting of the family tree occurring a few million years before the formation of the Congo River.
Though we, and our predecessors in the Homo Genus, were fighting for survival in harsh environments with limited resources, from scorching deserts to frigid ice ages, which lead us to conflict, both with ourselves and other primate and non-primate species.
When we place any organism under the microscope (once again, including ourselves), we like to think that nature is immutable. While it is unchanging to a degree, it is highly bendable and, should the need arise, easily breakable. We won’t spawn gills or sprout feathers unless given millions of years (should the need arrive), but our behaviour can certainly change almost overnight.
As stated above, the champions of evolution are those who can adapt to survive and bequeath their genes to the next generation – actively obeying the laws etched into primordial DNA is not a priority. When academics declare reality a social construct, they are half correct. There is innate nature, but this innate nature exists because of and in agreement with the umbrella of the environment that surrounds it.
When environments, social waves, and civilisation as we know it crumble beneath our feet, history shows that human nature is as manoeuvrable as clay, and fragile as glass. Human nature be damned.