“Let us consider man.” Wilson wrote in the opening of the last chapter of ‘Sociobiology, “as though we were zoologists from another planet competing a catalogue of social species on Earth. Human beings are primates living in big societies. They descend from hominids who probably evolved reciprocal altruism and food sharing. Barter, exchange and favors became a crucial part of early human society, just as did deception and subterfuge. Males and females had specific roles in these early societies, the males killing game and the females rising children and gathering plants. Sexual selection Wilson speculated, must have helped drive human evolution. “Aggressiveness was constrained and old forms of primate dominance replaced by complex social skills,” he wrote. “Young males found it profitable to fit into the group, controlling their sexuality and aggression and awaiting their turn at leadership.”

By trying to turn psychology into evolutionary biology, Wilson created a sensation. “Sociobiology” became a best-seller and inspired a front page article in ‘The New York Times’. Human behavior, the newspaper declared, “may be much a product of evolution as is the structure of the hand or the size of the brain.” . . . Page 273 Except: Evolution - Triumph of an Idea : Author Carl Zimmer

On August 1, 1977, ‘Sociobiology’ was on the cover of ‘Time’. On November 22 I received the National Medal of Science from President Carter for my contribution to the new discipline. Two months later, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Washington, demonstrators seized the stage as I was about to give a lecture, dumped a pitcher of ice water on my head, and chanted, “Wilson, you’re all wet!” The ice water episode may be the only occasion in recent American history on which a scientist was physically attacked, however mildly, simply for the expression of an idea. How could an entomologist with a penchant for solitude provoke a tumult of this proportion? ~ 775 ~ "Naturalist" Author E.O. Wilson