The First Murderer

[DaShi]

I'm not refering to Cain. But have scientists concluded when and how living critters started turning on one another?

[Blake]

I think a guy called Darwin did some research on this topic.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

"Murder" is a human construct with no application to anything outside of homo sapiens in its modern state.

That means it can only really be attached to humanity in a form that thought like us- so you're looking at the last 30,000- 40,000 years.

[thesilentone]

The first cellular organism that learned how to eat other organisms I guess, or if you want more recent human ancestors many primates are capable of killing each other. Some chimpanzees are even cannibalistic.

[Proteus_MST]

If you define murder as killing without any natural need to do so (defense, food gathering) then you don´t need to look at the human species, as many other species, aside vfrom humans many other apes are known to do this for example (Pan troglodytes would be one speciesknown for such a behavior).

If you define it more narrowly to the killing of humans then of course, it could only be applied to Homo spec. and therefore could only be applied to a timeframe of 1.7 million years (which is roughly the timeframe when Homo habilis appeared as first specimen of the Homo family) or even to the timeframe of 200,000 years when homo sapiens appeared or more narrowly, as lazarus defined it, with the appearance of human culture around 40,000 years ago.

[DaShi]

Well, for the title, I was using murder in a loose context. The general meaning is that when did the first living thing "decide" that it would be advantageous to take out another living thing.

[Proteus_MST]

The terminus "decide" makes it difficult.

For example Lions and other predators don´t "decide" to hunt down their prey it is something their instinct tells them, it is programmed into them so to speak.

But if this doesn´t matter and you also use a very loose definition of "decide" then murdering is someting that is deep programed even in the most primitive animals, as even singular celled organisms feed on other singular celled organisms (paramecium spec. for example, which uses Bacteriae as food) which can be called murder as they have kill those bacterie for their own gain (i.e. getting food). In this case one can say that "murder" exists since the beginning of life.

If however you mean "deciding" as a conscious process, then it is much more difficult. From the species that nowadays exist the species that possess a high level of strategic thinking and therefore probably high enough to consciously decide to kill another animal for their own advantage could be especially found among apes, whales (especially the odontoceti) and birds (especially corvicidae, but there are also many psittacidae that are very intelligent, the Kea for example).
The problem however is that we don´t know much about the mental capabilities of the many many species that are now extinct, the different species of dinosaurs for example (and especially the many extinct species we don´t know yet because no fossiles have been found of them).
Therefore if by decide you mean a "conscious decision" to take another animal out, it might be difficult and closely connected to the development of the nervous system. In this case I would assume that the first "murder" took place somewhere during the mesozoic era (which went from 251 - 60 million years before our time).

[DaShi]

Bloody hell! I specifically did all of that to avoid a discussion of semantics and get to the bloody point!

[Kuciwalker]

Probably almost as soon as life started. Single-celled organisms can kill other single-celled organisms.

[Zkribbler]

It's kind of interesting, really.

There was a bunch of amoeba swimming around, eating sunlight. Then, one day, an amoeba decided "The heck with this photosynthesis. I'm gonna eat Bob."

And Bob Ameoba is swimming along thinking, "Hi Walter. My, what big teeth you have."

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by DaShi
Bloody hell! I specifically did all of that to avoid a discussion of semantics and get to the bloody point!

Not really. You specified after Cain and Abel.
By skipping them, you throw all into conjecture and speculation.

[DaShi]

I only refered to Cain in line with the reference of the title. Maybe I am too subtle.

[GePap]

Originally posted by DaShi
I only refered to Cain in line with the reference of the title. Maybe I am too subtle.

no, you used the term murder, which was the worst term to use.

You should have used kill, which would be the correct term anyways.

Murder is illegal homicide (as opposed to legal homicide, like executions)

[DaShi]

Originally posted by GePap


no, you used the term murder, which was the worst term to use.

You should have used kill, which would be the correct term anyways.

Murder is illegal homicide (as opposed to legal homicide, like executions)

Yes, I used the term murder for a reason. Yet no one seems to get it.

[Wiglaf]

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