Humans have a problem with violence. Like the air that we breathe, we live so immersed in violence that we often forget it is there.
The ongoing debate about whether or not violence is part of human nature dates back to arguments of Thomas Hobbs (1651), Anthony Ashley Cooper (1699) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1755).
An understanding what drives human violence is important if our goal is to reduce violence in the future. We are addressing the question of whether or not humans have evolved to be aggressive by asking if our musculo-skeletal system is specialized for fighting. The killer ape hypothesis would be falsified if it could be demonstrated that the anatomical characters that distinguish hominins from the other great apes do not enhance fighting performance.
OUR STUDIES
Carrier, D. R. (2004). The running-fighting dichotomy and the evolution of aggression in hominids. In, From Biped to Strider: The Emergence of Modern Human Walking, Running, and Resourch Transport. (J. Meldrum and C. Hilton eds.) Kluwer/Plenum Press: New York. Full text of the article in PDF
Carrier, D. R. (2007). The short legs of great apes: evidence for aggressive behavior in australopithecines. Evolution 61, 596-605. Full text of this article in PDF
Carrier, D. R. (2011). The advantage of standing up to fight and the evolution of habitual bipedalism in hominins. PLoS ONE 6(5): e19630. Full text of this article in PDF
Carrier, D. R., C. Anders, and N. Schilling. (2011). The musculoskeletal system of humans is not tuned to maximize the economy of locomotion. PNAS 108, 18631-18636. Full text of this article in PDF
Morgan, M. H. and D. R. Carrier. (2013). Protective buttressing of the human fist and the evolution of hominin hands.Journal of Experimental Biology 216, 236-244. Full text of this article in PDF
Carrier, D. R. and M. H. Morgan. (2013). Response to ‘Human fist evolution: a critique’.Journal of Experimental Biology 216, 2360-2360. Full text of this article in PDF
Carrier, D. R. and M. H. Morgan. (2015). Protective buttressing of the hominin face. Biological Reviews 90, 330-346. Full text of this article in PDF
Horns, J., R. Jung and D. R. Carrier. (2015). In vitro strain in human metacarpal bones during striking: testing the pugilism hypothesis of hominin hand evolution. Journal of Experimental Biology 218, 3215-3221. Full text of this article in PDF
Carrier, D. R., N. Schilling and C. Anders. (2015). Muscle activation during maximal effort tasks: evidence of the selective forces that shaped the musculoskeletal system of humans. Biology open bio-014381. Full text of this article in PDF
Carrier, D. R. and C. Cunningham. (2017). The effect of foot posture on capacity to apply free moments to the ground: implications for fighting performance in great apes. Biology Open 6, 269-277. Full text of this article in PDF
SELECTED STUDIES ON THIS TOPIC BY OTHER AUTHORS
Mayhew, J. L. and Salm, P. C. (1990). Gender differences in anaerobic power tests. European journal of applied physiology and occupational physiology 60, 133-138.
Lassek, W. D. and Gaulin, S. J. (2009). Costs and benefits of fat-free muscle mass in men: relationship to mating success, dietary requirements, and native immunity. Evolution and Human Behavior 30, 322-328.
Sell, A., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J., Sznycer, D., von Rueden, C. and Gurven, M. (2009). Human adaptations for the visual assessment of strength and fighting ability from the body and face. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 276, 575-584.
Puts, D. A. (2010). Beauty and the beast: Mechanisms of sexual selection in humans. Evolution and Human Behavior 31, 157-175.
Price, M. E., Dunn, J., Hopkins, S. and Kang, J. (2012). Anthropometric correlates of human anger. Evolution and Human Behavior 33, 174-18
Sell, A., Hone, L. S. and Pound, N. (2012). The importance of physical strength to human males. Human Nature 23, 30-44.
Sell, A., Cosmides, L. and Tooby, J. (2014). The human anger face evolved to enhance cues of strength. Evolution and Human Behavior 35, 425-429.
Puts, D. A., Bailey, D. H. and Reno, P. L. (2015). Contest competition in men. The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology.