Social Animal

It was much better for God to create humanity from one individual than from several, Augustine argues (City of God, 12.21). 

Noting the difference between the creation of animals from the ground and the creation of Eve from Adam, Augustine notes, “as to the other animals, He created some solitary, and naturally seeking lonely places—as the eagles, kites, lions, wolves, and such like; others gregarious, which herd together, and prefer to live in company—as pigeons, starlings, stags, and little fallow deer, and the like: but neither class did He cause to be propagated from individuals, but called into being several at once.”

Man’s creation fits his nature as a being “between the angelic and bestial,” destined to “pass into the company of the angels, and obtain, without the intervention of death, a blessed and endless immortality.” 

Thus, “God created only one single man, not, certainly, that he might be a solitary, bereft of all society, but that by this means the unity of society and the bond of concord might be more effectually commended to him, men being bound together not only by similarity of nature, but by family affection. And indeed He did not even create the woman that was to be given him as his wife, as he created the man, but created her out of the man, that the whole human race might derive from one man.”

Socio-biological to understand human society from the societies of even the most gregarious animals are fundamentally in error, because human sociality is not just different, but of a different order than, animal solidarity.