"Page0045" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bloom Howard - The Lucifer Principle (htm))

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One gorilla group will deliberately seek out another and provoke

a conflict.  The resulting battles between gorilla tribes are furious.  One

of the bands that Fossey followed was led by a powerful silverback, an

enormous male who left a skirmish with his flesh so badly ripped that

the head of an arm bone and numerous ligaments stuck out through

the broken skin.  The old ruling male, whom Fossey called Beethoven,

had been supported in the fight by his son, Icarus.  Icarus left the battle

scene with eight massive wounds where the enemy had bitten him on

the head and arms.  The site where the conflict had raged was covered

with blood, tufts of fur, broken saplings and diarrhetic dung.14  Such is

the price of pre-human war in the Virunga mountains.

Gorillas are not the only sub-humans to cluster in groups that set

off to search for blood.  In the early '70s, Jane Goodall had lived

fourteen years among the wild chimpanzees of Tanzania's Gombe

Reserve.  She loved the  chimps for their gentle ways, so different from

the violence back home among humans.  Yes, there were simian

muggings, beatings and rage.  But the ultimate horror--war--was

absent.

Goodall published a landmark book on chimpanzee behavior--In

The Shadow of Man--a work which to some proved unequivocally that

war was a human creation.  After all, the creatures shown by genetic

and immunological research to be our nearest cousins in the animal

kingdom knew nothing of organized, wholesale violence.15

Then, three years after Goodall's book emerged, a series of

incidents occurred that horrified her.  The tribe of chimps Goodall had

been watching became quite large.  Food was harder to find.  Quarrels

broke out.  To relieve the pressure, the unit finally split into two

separate tribes.  One band stayed in the old home territory.  The other

left to carve out a new life in the forest to the south.

At first the two groups lived in relative peace.  Then the males

from the larger band began to make trips south to the patch of land

occupied by the splinter unit.  The marauders' purpose was simple: to

harass and ultimately kill the separatists.  They beat their former

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7

7

One gorilla group will deliberately seek out another and provoke

a conflict.  The resulting battles between gorilla tribes are furious.  One

of the bands that Fossey followed was led by a powerful silverback, an

enormous male who left a skirmish with his flesh so badly ripped that

the head of an arm bone and numerous ligaments stuck out through

the broken skin.  The old ruling male, whom Fossey called Beethoven,

had been supported in the fight by his son, Icarus.  Icarus left the battle

scene with eight massive wounds where the enemy had bitten him on

the head and arms.  The site where the conflict had raged was covered

with blood, tufts of fur, broken saplings and diarrhetic dung.14  Such is

the price of pre-human war in the Virunga mountains.

Gorillas are not the only sub-humans to cluster in groups that set

off to search for blood.  In the early '70s, Jane Goodall had lived

fourteen years among the wild chimpanzees of Tanzania's Gombe

Reserve.  She loved the  chimps for their gentle ways, so different from

the violence back home among humans.  Yes, there were simian

muggings, beatings and rage.  But the ultimate horror--war--was

absent.

Goodall published a landmark book on chimpanzee behavior--In

The Shadow of Man--a work which to some proved unequivocally that

war was a human creation.  After all, the creatures shown by genetic

and immunological research to be our nearest cousins in the animal

kingdom knew nothing of organized, wholesale violence.15

Then, three years after Goodall's book emerged, a series of

incidents occurred that horrified her.  The tribe of chimps Goodall had

been watching became quite large.  Food was harder to find.  Quarrels

broke out.  To relieve the pressure, the unit finally split into two

separate tribes.  One band stayed in the old home territory.  The other

left to carve out a new life in the forest to the south.

At first the two groups lived in relative peace.  Then the males

from the larger band began to make trips south to the patch of land

occupied by the splinter unit.  The marauders' purpose was simple: to

harass and ultimately kill the separatists.  They beat their former