Nice folks, Australopithecus

Oh, you Rousseauvians, always trying to deny the Fall and Original Sin.

Prehistoric people were cooperators, not fighters. That's the new theory proposed in two recent books and at a talk last month during an annual scientific meeting. The theory is part of a movement to debunk a long-running scientific bias that early humans were warlike.

"It developed from a basic Judeo-Christian ideology of man being inherently evil, aggressive, and a natural killer," said Robert W. Sussman, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis. "In fact, when you really examine the fossil and living nonhuman primate evidence, that is just not the case."

Agustin Fuentes, a researcher at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, agrees with Sussman. "Humanity evolved much more by helping each other rather than by fighting with each other," he said. "We shaped the environment and changed how other organisms interacted with it."...

"Many of us Westerners share a view of human nature that humans are naturally warlike," Fry said. "This view helps perpetuate a self-fulfilling prophecy."