If men are such hierarchical creatures, how do we account for what anthropologists call "egalitarian" societies, such as the Navajo Indians, Hottentots, Mbuti pygmies, !Kung San, and Eskimos? Ranging from hunter-gatherers to horticulturalists, many small-scale societies are said to eliminate distinctions - other than those between the sexes, and between parent and child - of wealth, power, and status. The emphasis is on equality and sharing. Since it is entirely possible that our ancestors lived in this fashion for millions of years, could it be that hierarchical relations are less prototypical than assumed?
Status differences are never completely abandoned, however. Instead of having no hierarchy at all, egalitarian societies occupy one end on a spectrum of dominance styles ranging from tolerant to despotic. Dominance style refers to the amount of control that highranking individuals exercise over low-ranking ones - and vice versa. An egalitarian dominance style is produced by political leverage from below that restrains the top's power and privileges. If our species' sense of social regularity goes by the name of a sense of justice, it is precisely because we possess this equalizing tendency. We sometimes get rid of unpopular power holders, or at least criticize them and let them understand that there are limits to our obedience. Admittedly, there has been little evidence for egality during long periods of history - equity and justice are sometimes thought of as recent innovations - yet the existence of so-called egalitarian societies suggests that the tendency has been with us for quite some time.
Variation in dominance style is obvious even within such a relatively small cultural sample as Western Europe. The inhabitants of some regions have a reputation for being almost militaristically hierarchical, others for maintaining sharp class divisions, and yet others profound differences are glossed over by flat statements that all primates know dominance-subordination relationships.
To appreciate this variability we do not need to compare such distant relatives as rhesus and chimpanzees. Rhesus monkeys are despotic even when compared to some members of their own genus, such as stump-tailed macaques. Stump-tails seem to emphasize harmony over priority rights. Compared to his rhesus counterpart, a dominant stump-tail tolerates quite a bit more, including counterthreats in an argument, and drinking or feeding from the same source shoulder to shoulder with subordinates. Stump-tails also groom one another more and are among the best peacemakers after fights.
According to socioecologists, who look at the natural environment to explain social dispositions, the optimal condition for the evolution of egalitarianism is dependency on cooperation combined with the option to leave the group. The first prerequisite is not unlike the struggle of the Dutch against the ocean: there is nothing like a common enemy to promote unity and tolerance. The need for cooperation may relate to the physical environment, to predators, or to enemy groups of the own species. The second stipulation - freedom to exit - depends on predation risks outside the group and the willingness of neighboring groups to accept new members. If there exist both mutual dependency and realistic opportunities to leave, dominants had better be very "nice" to their companions lest they find themselves without anyone to dominate. The reverse is, of course, equally true: when subordinates have nowhere to go, dominants can exploit and terrorize them with impunity.
Unless, that is, subordinates have a way of joining forces: alliance formation, a characteristic of the primate order, blunts absolute power. Originally, alliances chiefly served the acquisition of dominance, as when female monkeys assisted their younger kin to ascend the social ladder. The same instrument, however, permits lower echelons to rise up against and even overthrow rulers. Such use is already visible in the chimpanzee, in whom cooperation against dominants is not nearly so unusual as in macaques and baboons. Thus, alliances evolved from a means of building and enforcing the hierarchy, to one capable of weakening it.
In egalitarian societies, men intent on commanding others are systematically thwarted in their attempts. The weapons used by their supposed inferiors are ridicule, manipulation of public opinion, and disobedience. The boastful hunter is cut down by jokes about his miserable catch, and the would-be chief who tries to order others around is openly told how amusing his pretensions are. The power of leaders is thus delineated by an alliance from below. Christopher Boehm, an American cultural anthropologist (who later took up research on chimpanzees), studied these leveling mechanisms. He found that leaders who become too proud or bossy, fail to redistribute foods and goods, or close their own deals with outsiders, quickly lose respect and support.
In extreme cases they pay with their lives. A Buraya chief who appropriates the livestock of other men and forces their wives into sexual relations risks being killed, as does a Kaupaku leader who oversteps his prerogatives. Such executions, sometimes secretly arranged, have been reported for ten of the forty-eight cultures reviewed by Boehm. The author goes so far as to speak of a "reversed hierarchy," meaning that leaders are in effect dominated by their followers. Other scientists have objected to this notion on the grounds that it ignores the fact that, however much the hierarchy is leveled, a leader is a leader nonetheless. David Erdal and Andrew Whiten explain: "Since respect is still given to leaders in particular situations, the incipient hierarchy is not really reversed but rather prevented from developing beyond those particular situations where leadership is required."
In other words, egalitarian societies permit certain men to act as leaders because it is harder to survive without any leadership at all than with a limited degree of inequality. One domain in which the need for leadership is most strongly felt is the resolution of intragroup disputes. Instead of having all community members take sides - and make matters worse - what better way to handle the situation than by investing authority in a single individual assigned to enforce the interests of the community by finding fair solutions to disagreements?
Conflict mediation from above is not limited to our species. Irwin Bernstein was the first to describe the control role of monkeys: alpha males respond aggressively to external disturbances, such as predators or other groups, but also internal disturbances, such as conflicts within the group. Smothering the latter is achieved through direct interference, often by chasing off the aggressor. There is great variation in the effectiveness of control measures, however I have known alpha males who could stop a fight by raising an eyebrow or with a single step forward, whereas others only aggravated the situation by getting involved. Competent control requires special skills, such as interceding with just the right amount of force - enough to command