How humans started their social life

Origination of humans’ social life can be traced back to primates, who gave up their solitary existence and adopted communal living to guard themselves from predators when they shifted from being nocturnal to diurnal, a new study has suggested.

University of Oxford team suggests that a common history is vital in shaping the way animals behave in a group.

The team, which took into consideration an analysis of 200 primates, has identified the transition from non-social to social living to about 52 million years ago.

Contrary to the previous researches, which suggest that primate social groups developed gradually in size over time, the new study suggests that transition happened in one step, and coincided with a move into daylight.

It also coincides with a change in family dynamics or female bonding, which emerged much later at about 16 million years ago, the BBC reported.

“If you are a small animal active at night then your best strategy to avoid predation is to be difficult to detect,” said Oxford’s Suzanne Shultz, who led the study.

“Once you switch to being active during the day, that strategy isn't very effective, so an alternative strategy to reduce the risk of being eaten is to live in social groups,” she added.

Dr Shultz thinks that the move to day-time living in ancient primates allowed animals to find food more quickly, communicate better, and travel faster through the forest.

Human societies likely descended from similar large, loosely aggregated creatures, Dr Shultz explained, but the key difference, she pointed out, is that our closest cousins’ societies do not vary within a species, while humans’ do.

“In human societies we have polgyeny... we have monogamy, and in some places we have females leaving the group they were born in, and in others males leave,” she said.

The results are published in Nature.