What is essential to humankind? Recent scholarship presents a surprising answer: Friendship. This is the thesis of Dutch historian Rutger Bregman in Humankind and American professor of Evolutionary Anthropology Brian Hare in his book Survival Of The Friendliest.
Homo Sapiens are not the strongest or the smartest or the sliest of the primates. We are simply the friendliest. What more? Domestication is a process of breeding other animals for nothing more than friendliness and affability. Dogs are a good example. But they are not the only ones. The books present the research of Russian scientists Dmitry Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut who bred foxes for their amiability towards the researchers and about forty generations later were born the foxes that barked like dogs and licked researchers’ hands.
As for humans, we domesticated ourselves. Bregman describes homo sapiens as the “homo-puppies” of the primate world who “snuggled together to survive” the ice age. We did not individually outdo other primates in the evolutionary struggle. We succeeded because we stuck together.
However, the importance of friendship cannot be exhausted by a scientific explanation. The question remains political. Literary works and psychological studies have warned us against painting a rosy picture of human nature.
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