442 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1960 



The social insects have achieved uniformity of behavior in the work- 

 ers of the colony by limiting the reproductive function to one fertile 

 female; in human societies each member is potentially reproductive, 

 so we have in every community all kinds of individuals — good, bad, 

 and indifferent. Crime therefore has always plagued human society 

 (ever since Cain slew Abel), and no police force can suppress it. 

 The production of antisocial members in human societies is an un- 

 avoidable byproduct of freedom of the individual. So today we 

 have not only thieves and murderers, but crooks of many kinds in 

 business, in politics, in the professions, in labor unions, and in the 

 general populace. Since many in this class are outside the law, or 

 successfully evade it, they may prosper better than the honest citizen. 

 Hence they are not eliminated by natural selection, as would be unfit 

 members of any nonsocial species of animal. Though individual lib- 

 erty is our most cherished inlieritance, it is also the root of much of 

 our trouble. 



In our favor it must be pointed out that it is freedom of the indi- 

 vidual that has led to the advancement of the human race as a whole. 

 We are individualists by inheritance from progenitors that were soli- 

 tary animals, and even a dictator with the most rutliless methods of 

 control cannot make all members of the tribe willing conformists to a 

 system that would abolish individual liberties. By contrast, the social 

 bees with their immutable instincts and absolute regimentation have 

 probably been the same since before man became man, and they are 

 destined to continue as they are as long as they exist. 



It is certain that reason did not produce the first human societies. 

 The history of man as known from human fossil remains goes back 

 for nearly a million years. Species of men lived all through the ice 

 ages of the geologic period Imown as the Pleistocene, and included 

 several so-called apemen as well as species of Homo^ among which 

 were the ancestors of modern man. Comparative anatomy shows un- 

 questionably that we are somehow related to the monkeys and apes, 

 though not directly to any modern species of these animals. There 

 can be little doubt that we inherited our fingers, our abbreviated tail- 

 bones, and the ability to stand upright from some apelike progenitor. 

 The anthropologists have picked on a fossil ape of the Miocene, named 

 Proconsul^ as the nearest approach of any ape to man. 



If our prehuman progenitors were apelike creatures, it seems rea- 

 sonable to suppose that our form of society had its origin in some 

 behavior characteristic of the apes. The only social groups known 

 among modern apes are families consisting of a dominant male and 

 several submissive females, together with their j'oung. So it is theo- 

 rized that the firet apemen that left the trees brought their females 

 with them and established their harems on the ground. Anthropolo- 



