
A Pacific Culture Among Wild Baboons: Its Emergence and Transmission (2004) - mstats
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020106
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wrongc0ntinent
Sapolsky is a brilliant teacher. Lots of his lectures on youtube, all worth
watching.

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ccvannorman
TL;DR: A bunch of aggressive male baboons died in an accident many generations
ago and the group was better for it due to the culture and genes that passed
on as a result.

A good argument for Eugenics if ever there was one -- I tend to be against it
in principal, but sometimes I look at the war and devastation in this world
caused primarily by aggressive greedy men (and occasionally women), but I like
to think there are better solutions, especially because it opens the door to
people being sterilized for stupid reasons like scoring low on an IQ test or
getting on the wrong side of some politician [1] (interestingly, Eugenics is
still 100% legal in the United States [1])

[1] [http://www.npr.org/2016/02/26/468297940/imbeciles-
explores-l...](http://www.npr.org/2016/02/26/468297940/imbeciles-explores-
legacy-of-eugenics-in-america)

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duskwuff
It's not genetic; it's entirely a cultural change. (Hence the title of the
article!) This is specifically addressed in the text:

> A decade after the deaths of the more aggressive males in the troop, Forest
> Troop preserved a distinct social milieu accompanied by distinct
> physiological correlates. _Critically, as noted, no adult males in F93–96
> had been troop members at the end of the tuberculosis outbreak. Instead,
> these males had subsequently transferred in as adolescents, adopting the
> local social style._

