I. Introduction
Page 1
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II. Motivational Systems
Page 2
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III. An Example of Warfare
Pages 3 - 4
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IV. History of Warfare
Pages 5
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V. Warfare and Marriage
Page 6
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VI. Conclusion
Page 7
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References
Page 8
The various types of biological motivation in the primates have been studied by techniques of brain research Adams, 1979) and behavioral observations (Adams and Schoel, 1982). Although most of the important information has come from work with the stumptail macaque monkey, other supporting data come from chimpanzees and other kinds of monkeys. I have presented evidence that the types of biological motivation are remarkably similar in all mammals including those as different as the rat and the monkey (Adams, 1980).
In the stumptail macaque, as in other primates, there are at least nine motivational systems of social behavior. A motivational system, as I have described it from work in brain research and behavioral observation consists of the brain structures that are responsible for groups of behaviors that occur together under a particular type of situation, e.g., sex, aggression, fear, hunger, etc. (Adams, 1979). Since war is a social phenomenon, I will emphasize social behaviors such as sex and aggression in this paper, rather than non-social behaviors such as hunger and thirst, assuming that the former are more likely to be important for warfare.
The nine motivational systems of primate social behavior are 1) offense, 2) defense, 3) submission, 4) sex, 5) grooming, 6) display, 7) play, 8) group contact, and 9) parental behavior. The first eight have been described from a statistical analysis of the social behavior of adult male stumptail macaques (Adams and Schoel, 1982). The ninth system, parental behavior, is found only in females and wasn't observed in that experiment. The first three systems, offense, defense and submission, are three aspects of aggressive and fear behaviors. They each have different brain mechanisms and are similar throughout the mammals (Adams, 1979). In humans, they correspond to the emotions of anger, fear, and social anxiety, respectively. Sexual motivation is, of course, well known. Whether male and female sexual motivations are separate is a question that will not be considered in this paper. Grooming, another social motivation, may be divided into two systems depending upon whether the grooming is of the self or of another animal, but that question also will not be discussed here. "Display" is a system that is unique to the primates and not present in lower mammals. It corresponds to what we normally call joy, excitement, or crowd contagion. Play and group contact are especially common in young animals, but may also be found in adults in some primates, especially chimpanzees and humans. In the adult stumptail macaque we observed one behavior related to
group contact. When the adults were separated from their cagemates, they made a cooing vocalization which was answered by their cagemates from the other room, evidently a contact call. Therefore I have called this a "group contact" motivation rather than a "juvenile contact" motivation which it has been called by other scientists.
(End of chapter)
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