Richard Wrangham, "Capital Punishment and the Origin of Homo Sapiens"

In comparison to other primates, in face-to-face interactions humans are very peaceful. Biological parallels between humans and domesticated animals indicate that our social tolerance emerged through a process of self-domestication beginning around 300,000 years ago. Capital punishment appears responsible. This socially approved form of deliberate killing led to genetic selection against reactive aggression, promoted the unique form of human morality, and was the prime influence on the evolution of Homo sapiens from more aggressive, earlier forms of our genus. In this lecture, Prof. Richard Wrangham, the acclaimed author of Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human and Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, will discuss his new book, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution.