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According to Chance and Jolly, in their work Social Groups of Monkeys, Apes and Men, there are two major catagories of primate behavior societies - acentric and centripetal. Acentric societies are those which are considered to be loosely structured. You might say they're individualistic. The centripetal societies are the ones which are noticeably highly structured. They are centered around one or more of what are called alpha-male leaders. The factor which makes the difference between the two societies is how the respective members react to danger. When they dare venture out into the open, acentrics are always remaining on the alert. They continually keep looking around their enviroment. They want to make sure that, in some manner, there would be a way open to either retreat or depart up into branches if available - in any case scattering much like the sparks of a roman candle, somewhere into safety. Centripetals, on the other hand,do it quite differently - they take the opposite viewpoint. Instead of spending their time paying attention to the enviroment around them [probably sensing that to scatter will only make, most likely, for a number of relatively easy prey], they instead keep checking on where they are in relationship to the alph-male. And, whenever they perceive that they are in any danger, they crowd around him - in other words, the solidarity approach.
Since Homo sapiens, however, descended from the ape primates, not monkeys, thequestion becomes as how are the apes classified? The question is raised, in part,because apes do not quite act like either group, socially speaking.
Now, there are two criteria for determining the classification: 1) is there a leading male, or the sign of a ranking order among the males? and 2) when there is perceived danger, do the members scatter or clump? Surprisingly, thew signs are not nearly as clear as, say, the baboons which Ardrey had such a fascination for. None the less, the answer does turn out that, yes, the apes are centripetal - but only loosely so.
But - that is not all. The social structuring goes further than this. In figuring out how the centripetal society works, the essential key in establishing the highness in the ranking order is the ability to command attention from the group. As Chance and Jolly also found out, there are two ways this can be done. One is called the agonic mode. The other is called the hedonic mode. An obvious example of the extreme of the agonic mode is Ardrey's baboons, where the issue of dominance is verociously attained by biting and threat displays utilizing the baboon's large canines. However, from a developmental standpoint, there is a problem in this - the brains remain quite undistinguished, and there would as such be no kind of subversive herecies daring to penetrate it. And this would be so much so that it would most unlikely ever be that the brain would become more distinguishable.
The apes, from which our forebearers came, followed a different path. They discovered the hedonic mode. Ape are more advanced than monkeys because they have learned something most important - you don't have to bite someone in order to get that one's attention. You can "show-off", become conspicuous, find something interesting. In other words, the issue of dominance is achieved thru attracting attention. There is a benefit in this - the efforts in doing this forces much greater usage of the brain in seeking out other different and newer attention attractions.
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