VIOLENCE. Society, history and indeed our jails, tell the graphic truth about humanity's perpetual bent on aggression. It is a streak that continues to bleed its presence despite our ever-evolving intellect and technological advancements. War, murder, rape, battery, domestic violence, even verbal abuse - its forms mutate but continue to thrive no matter what the environment or date on our evolutionary time line.

A new book recently released in Australia trawls our ancestral past in an effort to explain our tendency to commit violent acts. 'Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence' introduces the animal kingdom once more into this equation, but this time around - in a convincingly informed and enthralling narrative - authors Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson reveal startling new evidence that closely links Homo Sapien violent behaviour to that of our closest primates, the chimpanzee.

With the recently confirmed genetic evidence that chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than to gorillas, the research and speculation that surrounds the almost surreal tales of the authors' forest treks, should not be so easily dismissed.

The gender issue is also a crucial one for 'Demonic Males'. As its title suggests, this is a book that supports what most believe and few deny; that aggression is mostly perpetrated by the male members of our race. Its study is based on chimpanzees and their 'recently discovered' sister primates, the bonobos. And it is the latter group that has given the edge to the 'male aggressive' stance of 'Demonic Males'

For primotologists, the bonobos were non-existent until 1928. What they had classified as pygmy chimps, were in fact, an entirely different species. And not only that, after studying their behavioural patterns, it was discovered that within the bonobos communities, females were the dominant sex. Add to that the extremely low rate of violence, and authors Wrangham and Peterson naturally started to question the impact of male dominance - and the sex's violent tendencies - on human society.

"The bonobos are a wonderful species," says Wrangham. "I have been writing about them for some time because they are so fascinating. Chimpanzees occasionally have tremendous outbursts of violence rather like humans do, either things a bit like war or males battering their females and they generally have bad relationships. If they want to they can even rape their females. The bonobos however, are far less violent and the big difference is that whereas in chimpanzee life males are - all of them - socially dominant to females, with the bonobos - even though the males are still physically bigger - females rule the roost. They have taken power."

Embracing the animal kingdom - specifically the chimpanzees - in its primal form has been Wrangham's life passion. Studying the species since the early 1970s, the American-based professor of anthropology at Harvard University prepares his life around his frequent trips to the Ugandan forests. Like 'Demonic Males', Wrangham's tales of his time spent watching the chimps in the wild reek of the exotic smell of tepid foliage and the blistering sounds of primal screams.

Co-author, Dale Peterson, who lectures in English, is also a keen amateur primotologist and has travelled widely in Africa to follow and witness various species of primates. "When I go into the forests," says Wrangham, "and am back with the chimps that I know, I feel incredibly lucky. I feel as if I am in a sort of time machine looking back at our early ancestry. And chimpanzees are a very peculiar species because they are a sort of half animal, half human. Y'know, it shows in their eyes. In their behaviour. They're a creature of great intelligence. It's just a magical experience being with them. "And the fact that chimpanzees are genetically closer to humans than they are to gorillas is extraordinary. I took a lot of convincing on that one. I thought initially that the genetic results must be wrong and yet they have just been elaborated and examined so carefully now that there seems to be no doubt whatsoever. So we're in this astonishing position of looking at chimpanzees and gorillas - which are both big, black, hairy things that

like to eat fruit and leaves and are so similar to each other that a large chimpanzee is regularly confused with a small gorilla - and yet humans are more closely related to chimps than chimps are to gorillas.

"So the result of that study, those observations combined with what we know of the fossils and the way these animals look, it all tells us that humans are derived from something which looks very much like a chimpanzee in the relatively recent past."

Says 'Demonic Males': "That chimpanzees and humans kill members of neighbouring groups of their own species is, we have seen, a startling exception to the normal rule for animals. Add our close genetic relationship to these apes and we face the possibility that intergroup aggression in our two species has a common origin."

It echoes Darwin's theories of evolution that embrace the notion that life on earth evolved - gradually - over millions of years from a few common ancestors. Could our aggressive nature be a throwback from our ancient ancestors? And what of the bonobos? With such a fervent feminist environment ushering us into the new millennia, the existence of this less violent, female-dominated community raises many social questions

"It's amazing that humans just happen to have these two sister species - the chimpanzee and the bonobos - that tell us so much about our evolutionary past," says Wrangham. "And they show almost as complete opposites of the human condition as one can imagine. On the one hand you have chimpanzees representing our worst sides - for at times they do have this capacity for the kind of violence that bedevils the human species - and on the other hand, you have the bonobos which is almost as peaceful a species as any that we know of on this earth."

Says 'Demonic Males': "Around 5 million years ago, our chimpanzee-like ancestor became a woodland ape and spawned a family of descendant species. Around 2 million years ago, the early signs of humanness emerged. Climbing adaptations fell away. Erect bipedalism became more refined. Teeth, mouth, and jaw became smaller. The brain became larger. Changes to mouth and brain continued at a varying pace until modern humans evolved 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. But not until after agriculture began, a mere 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, did human societies begin to unveil their habits clearly. Evidence of real war comes soon after that unveiling." Warfare and violent crimes within communities: both have had, and continue to have, detrimental effects on humanity and most likely, its evolution. Both genders certainly contribute to these aggressive tendencies, but it is the male species that statistically are the main perpetrators. Take violent crime within communities for example.

'Demonic Males' states: "In the U.S. ... a man is about nine times as likely as a woman to commit murder, seventy-eight times as likely to commit forcible rape, ten times as likely to commit armed robbery, and almost six and a half times as likely to commit aggravated assault. Altogether, American men are almost eight times as likely as women to commit violent crime."

More statistics follow. "Is the frequency of male violence merely an artefact of male strength?" In an effort to answer this question, 'Demonic Males' cites survey results of same-sex murders. Including more than three-dozen human communities - from more than 15 countries - both western and tribal, 13th to 14th century England and 19th century America - results show that "same-sex murder ... committed by a man, not a woman, ranges from 92 percent to 100 percent."

"The great question is," says Wrangham, "if women really had power as a sex, rather than as individuals within a male power-base - like Margaret Thatcher - if they really had power as a sex, would they actually behave much better than men? And the thesis in the book is they probably would, but there are, of course, people willing to dispute that. That women would be just as bad as men.

"There's also the question as to whether there are genetic differences between men and women which would lead to different kinds of problem solving. You know, conflict will always occur, of course, in any kind of human situation, but if decisions were being made to serve women's interests rather than men's interests, then I think it's reasonable to argue that there would be a lower propensity for using violence than we see nowadays. And that's certainly the message you get from the animal kingdom in general."

Wrangham views the male-dominated power-base of politics as a major contributor to the continual advantage men have in human society. He also warns that all men are capable of this 'demonic violence' "no matter how nice they are" and believes that 'Demonic Males' is essentially a "feminist venture".

"In the book we discuss just a little bit of the course of the history of feminism which has been moving from an attempt to define itself and to better the power of women which was unwilling to sort of take a very realistic view of the origins of sex difference, towards this much more interesting stance, where men's and women's interests are seen as sort of embedded in our evolutionary past. The greater realism that's coming out of, particularly, this school of evolutionary feminism seems to me to have a much greater capacity in the long term for changing people's views."

For the moment, the female issue dominates Wrangham's new writing venture. While his field research begins to explore the relationship between chimpanzee testosterone levels and aggression - which he will ultimately compare to humans - it is his writing that will address his questions about the female species.

"I've been rather fascinated to think about what the sort of equivalent is to the 'demonic males' if you're going to think of females," he concludes, "because it's not angelic for all sorts of reasons. What I'm thinking of is this: there is something which is very exaggerated in the human species compared to most animals. For males it's what I call 'male demonism', and there's an equivalent characteristic for human females, so I've started work on 'Erotic Females' because I think that the human species is dramatically eroticised compared to most. I think it's the natural selection acting on females that is responsible and, of course, it has huge effects on society."

DEMONIC MALES: APES AND THE ORIGINS OF HUMAN VIOLENCE by Richard Wrangham & Dale Peterson is available in Australia through Allen & Unwin. RRP: $19.95