Interesting. I heard that somewhere in Africa, a group of gorillas (at least, I remember them being gorillas) established a completely different pecking order within the group after the alpha males fought the beta males for the chance to pick through the garbage of a nearby human settlement. Well, the alpha males fell ill and died, leaving only beta males in the tribe. After some time, the group changed its social behaviours entirely, preferring a much more peaceful, accepting order of things to the normal hierarchy of submission to the larger male. Some theorists concluded that this type of catastrophe, while particularly severe, might be the foundation upon which the difference in human cultures is developed.