Are Men's Angry Cavebrains to Blame for War?  Sometimes our
planet's constant wars can seem as senseless and brutish as a
bunch of Neanderthals throwing rocks at each other, and
according to one team of scientists, that's what they are: an
outgrowth of men's instinct to defend their mates and
territories against outsiders. Are you skeptical? Good.  In a
paper published in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society B, Melissa M. McDonald, Carlos David Navarrete, and Mark
Van Vugt lay out the "male warrior hypothesis," the idea that
"humans, particularly men, may possess psychological mechanisms
enabling them to form coalitions capable of planning, initiating
and executing acts of aggression on members of outgroups (with
the ultimate goal of acquiring or protecting reproductive
resources)." These mechanisms, they argue, could be at the root
of many of today's wars. By way of evidence, they offer an
overview of research into men's attitudes. They write,  Across
cultures, time and samples, self-report su