Eh? Since when haven't other animals been violent?
Excessive violence is a human thing, that's certain, but we only do it because for two main reasons:
1) We want more stuff!
People just can't stick to what they have, gotta have more, more,
more. So what if it causes others misery? It's not us.
2) It's fun!
We like seeing others suffer. Gives us the feeling of power, like we have some significance in our lives. (Read: compensation.)
From these we can derive the third and possibly most frequent reason people kill people:
Someone told them to. Whether it's God or government or the voices in one's head, how many times a person has just decided: "Shit, I'll go pop some caps in some asses"? Quite a few, but nowhere near the amount of ordered frags.
So if violence defines humanity, we're superior to animals because...
we're dicks with small dicks.God, I hope not. But maybe that's what separates some of us here from animals. With me, well, I'll go with the diversities in cultures, languages and sciences. And as for violence being the main driving force for science? BS, laziness prevails a hundred to none.
Why would better weapons have been developed if not for the sake of easiness? Shooting someone is easier - not to mention safer - than stabbing them, stabbing is safer than beating them. Bombing them with a nuke is easier and in the beginning a lot safer than actually bothering going to war at all.
Of the "main" inventions in human history, another example could be the wheel. Look at how lazy the guy (or girl, for those of you who don't value some healthy chauvinistic bias) who developed that was! Instead of wanting to carry stuff a mile or two on his back like other decent people of the time did, what did this guy/girl do? S/he made a wagon and pushed his/her stuff in it!
I was going to deduce from this that laziness is what separates us from animals, but that's not true:
Sloths beat humans easily in that subject. But what does separate us is the extent we're willing to go relax and be lazy and because we've strived to be more and more lazy for such a long time, we've created a society that's forgotten its original function and even though it still, subconciously, aims for that goal, the people in it have forgotten the essentials of it. Most probably the cavemen friends of the wheel-man/woman scorned him/her because s/he was lazy, just because they didn't appreciate the evolutionary and cultural value that individual had brought out to them.
So chill. My own thread so I'm allowed to side-track a bit. Violence is just one mean of reaching the aforementioned destination that can nay be reached, and a pretty childish one at such, because
there are no real reasons to hurt one another. It's all in your head and if it in fact is there, well, have fun in the shallow end.
[/rant]