Altruism is a lie.In the wild, animals will often help members of their social groups in times of distress, defending them against predators or releasing them from traps, snares, or other types of confinement. There is no general consensus over whether such helping behavior is truly empathic, or whether it might be driven by a more selfish motivation.
...The research also states, "While a pig was trapped, potential helpers spent more time looking at the window of the test compartment than they spent looking at the window of the empty compartment, and the proportion of time spent looking at the test compartment window was the strongest predictor of helping. However, the majority of trapped pigs produced vocal and locomotor distress signals that should have been readily detectable without looking through the window, and the helpers' behavior is also consistent with more selfish explanations."
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-piggies-neighbors.html
People work for mutual self-interest without government, religion, or ideology based on a shared identity as a culture.In a study published in Nature Water, the archaeological team describe a network of ceramic water pipes and drainage ditches at the Chinese walled site of Pingliangtai dating back 4,000 years to a time known as the Longshan period. The network shows cooperation among the community to build and maintain the drainage system, though no evidence of a centralized power or authority.
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-china-anc ... munal.html