Sapiens: a brief History of Humankind

Homo sapiens
position in the food chain. If all
that counted were raw physical abilities, Sapiens would have found themselves on
a middle rung of the ladder. But their mental and social skills placed them at the
top. It is therefore only natural that the chain of power within the species will also
be determined by mental and social abilities more than by brute force. It is
therefore hard to believe that the most in uential and most stable social hierarchy
in history is founded on men’s ability physically to coerce women.
The Scum of Society
Another theory explains that masculine dominance results not from strength but
from aggression. Millions of years of evolution have made men far more violent
than women. Women can match men as far as hatred, greed and abuse are
concerned, but when push comes to shove, the theory goes, men are more willing
to engage in raw physical violence. This is why throughout history warfare has
been a masculine prerogative.
In times of war, men’s control of the armed forces has made them the masters of
civilian society, too. They then used their control of civilian society to ght more
and more wars, and the greater the number of wars, the greater men’s control of
society. This feedback loop explains both the ubiquity of war and the ubiquity of

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patriarchy.
Recent studies of the hormonal and cognitive systems of men and women
strengthen the assumption that men indeed have more aggressive and violent
tendencies, and are therefore, on average, better suited to serve as common
soldiers. Yet granted that the common soldiers are all men, does it follow that the
ones managing the war and enjoying its fruits must also be men? That makes no
sense. It’s like assuming that because all the slaves cultivating cotton elds are
black, plantation owners will be black as well. Just as an all-black workforce
might be controlled by an all-white management, why couldn’t an all-male
soldiery be controlled by an all-female or at least partly female government? In
fact, in numerous societies throughout history, the top o cers did not work their
way up from the rank of private. Aristocrats, the wealthy and the educated were
automatically assigned officer rank and never served a day in the ranks.
When the Duke of Wellington, Napoleon’s nemesis, enlisted in the British army
at the age of eighteen, he was immediately commissioned as an o cer. He didn’t
think much of the plebeians under his command. ‘We have in the service the scum
of the earth as common soldiers,’ he wrote to a fellow aristocrat during the wars
against France. These common soldiers were usually recruited from among the
very poorest, or from ethnic minorities (such as the Irish Catholics). Their chances
of ascending the military ranks were negligible. The senior ranks were reserved
for dukes, princes and kings. But why only for dukes, and not for duchesses?
The French Empire in Africa was established and defended by the sweat and
blood of Senegalese, Algerians and working-class Frenchmen. The percentage of
well-born Frenchmen within the ranks was negligible. Yet the percentage of well-
born Frenchmen within the small elite that led the French army, ruled the empire
and enjoyed its fruits was very high. Why just Frenchmen, and not French
women?
In China there was a long tradition of subjugating the army to the civilian
bureaucracy, so mandarins who had never held a sword often ran the wars. ‘You
do not waste good iron to make nails,’ went a common Chinese saying, meaning
that really talented people join the civil bureaucracy, not the army. Why, then,
were all of these mandarins men?
One can’t reasonably argue that their physical weakness or low testosterone
levels prevented women from being successful mandarins, generals and
politicians. In order to manage a war, you surely need stamina, but not much
physical strength or aggressiveness. Wars are not a pub brawl. They are very
complex projects that require an extraordinary degree of organisation,
cooperation and appeasement. The ability to maintain peace at home, acquire
allies abroad, and understand what goes through the minds of other people
(particularly your enemies) is usually the key to victory. Hence an aggressive

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brute is often the worst choice to run a war. Much better is a cooperative person
who knows how to appease, how to manipulate and how to see things from
di erent perspectives. This is the stu empire-builders are made of. The militarily
incompetent Augustus succeeded in establishing a stable imperial regime,
achieving something that eluded both Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, who
were much better generals. Both his admiring contemporaries and modern
historians often attribute this feat to his virtue of