# Is war part of human nature, or an invention?



## Nerds_feather (Jul 24, 2013)

This makes for fascinating reading. Apparently the archeological evidence suggests that warfare is about 10,000 years old--old, to be sure, but not "eternal" (in human-historical terms).


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## thaddeus6th (Jul 24, 2013)

I don't have time to read that now, but will later.

I think Machiavelli's view was right. Humans always want more, but resources are necessarily limited. This leads to conflict, and is a natural (if deeply unpleasant) aspect of humanity.


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## Nerds_feather (Jul 24, 2013)

thaddeus6th said:


> I don't have time to read that now, but will later.
> 
> I think Machiavelli's view was right. Humans always want more, but resources are necessarily limited. This leads to conflict, and is a natural (if deeply unpleasant) aspect of humanity.



That's the view the article argues against--after all, if it's "natural," then it has to go back to the beginning and also be relatively widespread throughout time. Evidence, the article says, suggests otherwise. That isn't to say it *didn't* happen >10,000 years ago, but just that there's very little evidence in the bones of it happening--compared with lots of evidence for it <10,000 years ago. That probably means it wasn't widespread until 10,000 years ago. 

The 10,000 year mark is an interesting one, as it's the time when humans switched from hunter-gatherer mode to sedentary farming and larger-scale habitation. The implication would be that warfare is either a function of large-scale social organization or physically organized settlements (or both).


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## paranoid marvin (Jul 24, 2013)

'War' started when one man wanted what another wouldn't give him. It's not 'war' that is our nature, it is desire.


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## Dave (Jul 24, 2013)

I can't open that site without joining it.


Nerds_feather said:


> The 10,000 year mark is an interesting one, as it's the time when humans switched from hunter-gatherer mode to sedentary farming and larger-scale habitation. The implication would be that warfare is either a function of large-scale social organization or physically organized settlements (or both).


Some humans became farmers and settled, but others were still hunter-gatherers and there were migrations of the hunter-gatherers into the territory of the farmers over time, possibly caused by the environmental pressures of floods, plagues and famine. We are tribal creatures and we will do anything to support our own flesh and blood. That would support a learned theory.

What about the Neanderthals though? European Homo Sapiens Sapiens have some Neanderthal genes but those are thought to have come from female Neanderthals. The males are thought to have been wiped out, which tends to support violence. Such violence, on such a massive scale, at a much earlier point in time, would surely show Homo Sapiens were already war-mongers.


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## Nerds_feather (Jul 24, 2013)

*Dave* - Agree on the first point. It's easy to see how the transition to sedentary life, in a world where others are still nomadic, would provoke conflict. I know in remote parts of Indonesia and Brazil there are a lot of negative (albeit low-level) interactions between farmers and hunter-gatherers along those lines. Plus there would be conflicts among different sets of farmers over the best farmland--different from conflicts over hunting grounds, since farming necessitates a longer time commitment.  

As for the second, though, I'd add that there's scant archeological evidence that the Neaderthals were wiped out by violence--that's just one theory. There are others--disease is one; being out-competed (in the context of an ice age) is another; absorbed by interbreeding is a third; a bit of all of the above is an option as well. There's very little actual evidence to support any of these theories, so they are just educated guesswork. 

If what the author of this piece argues is true, then it would cast aspersion on the Neaderthals-done-in-by-violence theory, though of course it wouldn't banish it from the realm of possibility either!


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## thaddeus6th (Jul 25, 2013)

Hmm. On the nomadic/sedentary theory, I'd argue that staying put merely allowed resources to be built up which meant that those who wanted to seize them had more motivation and opportunity to do so. If you're on the move as a hunter-gatherer tribe it's harder to build up significant wealth because your lifestyle is all about subsistence.


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## Dave (Jul 25, 2013)

I agree about it being educated guesswork, but there is genetic evidence that the Neanderthal genes we still have came only from the female side. That means that Homo Sapien men took Neanderthal wives, but that Neanderthal Men did not produce any children. How else can you explain this? Disease or natural disaster would most likely affect both males and females the same.


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## svalbard (Jul 25, 2013)

I will have to go and find the link, but I read a paper on a find of hundreds of used stone arrow heads across an ridge top (could have being a hil fort) somewhere in England. The scattering of arrow heads and other weapons like stone axe heads were attributed to a large scale violent engagement in the area. It was a intersting read and gave an insight into the stuggle for territory that contolled valuable resources.


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## Gordian Knot (Jul 25, 2013)

My thinking is along what Thaddeus said. Hunter/gatherer groups spent a significant part of their life on simply surviving. They didn't have a lot of time or energy left over for battles.

At the same time though, the population density was significantly smaller during the HG era was it not? There could have been less fighting because there was no need to; i.e. sufficient resources to go around for everyone.


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## Ursa major (Jul 25, 2013)

I find it hard to believe that today's humans are significantly different from people, say, 20,000 years ago. So if it's true that warfare started only 10,000 years ago, the difference must be, as some have already suggested, opportunity (with regard to what could be obtained and in having the means to do it).

As to the article... It seems to be an opportunity for the author to attack "Deep Rooters" (whoever they are), and point out that "Inventors" (whoever they are) have archaeological evidence on there side. But as with much archaeological evidence, a lot is left to conjecture, imagination and guesswork. And in analysing a world without writing (which does at least mean that we can't be lied to by the writers ), there's simply no way to discover why things happened when they did, not when the reasons are buried in the long-vanished psyches of those involved.



As an aside, the article seems to be a good illustration of humans' eagerness to "defeat" an opponent, on whatever "battlefield" is available and with whatever "weapons" are to hand. The article provides no proof (and doesn't even consider it necessary to provide it) that the thinking behind this sort of behaviour only came into existence 10,000 - or 13,000 - years ago. Without that, the article is just so much hot air.

Note that I don't agree with the supposed sentiments of Deep Rooters - supposed, because no Deep Rooter is available to refute the attributed belief that "warfare is rampant amongst almost all hunters and gatherers (as well as those cunning and aggressive chimpanzees)" - but we do know that humans are more varied in their responses to let us believe that they would always follow the same path, whether to violence or to peaceful coexistence. But the latter seems to be the implied belief of the article's author of the study's authors, at least before 10,000 years ago. It makes me wonder whether one of the more powerful attributes of (some) humans is to see everything in black and white terms, and to ignore the spectrum of human behaviour right there in front of their eyes.


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## Venusian Broon (Jul 25, 2013)

Gordian Knot said:


> At the same time though, the population density was significantly smaller during the HG era was it not? There could have been less fighting because there was no need to; i.e. sufficient resources to go around for everyone.


 
This was along the lines of what I was thinking - most of the globe can't really support large numbers of Hunter-Gatherers. There are special places, such as South Australia, Western Canadian coast etc... where food is so abundant all year round that HG's really prospered and high densities of people flourished. For the rest of the world, most of the time, HG's were following scattered seasonal food sources. 




Thus the nature of HG life (I'm guessing) may have made conflict very detrimental:

Why get into fight when you can just avoid each other and go to seperate areas, (although you may be competing for same local food source but...)
...it may actually have been in your best interests to cooperate and maximise hunting efficiency. i.e. why hunt for a few deer, when you might have the combined man power to scare a whole herd off a cliff?
Remaining injury free seems to me to be crucial if you're a HG - why increase the risk of getting a disability that makes you unable to hunt. And by fighting another human/group - what is the possible reward for potentially losing your ability to live?
I know the evidence is a bit weak, but it appears to me that there is a long tradition of meeting up in special places* - who knows exactly why - but it seems everyone met up for positive reasons: finding mates, exchanging and trading, perhaps religious rites, perhaps to just have a party. We are after all social creatures and mostly fun loving!
War seems, at least to me, to appear when land started to become 'owned'. 


==============================================

* Much more evidence of this in early Neolithic where farming is more or less dominant - but I think you can point to places like Gobekli Tepe as a more ancient predecessor of the Stonehenges of this world


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## AnyaKimlin (Jul 25, 2013)

I think war began with the first case of a brother saying "I wanna play with that rock your holding."  And the other siblings took side.  War became more large scale as more people took each side and it became more deadly as we learned to fire things from a distance.

In terms of archaeology I think it is something we cannot know from the record and it needs us to turn to anthropology and watching people for the answers.   Children begin fighting early on and they try to recruit others whether that be mum or dad or bigger sibling.  My children are pretty sibling rivalry free but we still have moments when I see it happen.


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## Nerds_feather (Jul 25, 2013)

*Ursa*--As I understand it, the argument in favor of the Learned Theory is based on a lack of evidence for warfare >10,000 years ago--even after fairly exhaustive search for it. That proof might emerge, but without it, there's just an assumption that it must exist (and construction of theories upon that assumption). What I took from this article is simply that we can't just assume that war is "human nature" and instead have to consider that warfare might be something humans learned to do around the time of the switch to agriculture. (That doesn't mean it necessarily *was* learned and not ingrained, just that there's a compelling reason to believe it might be.)

If we were to assume that was the case, for the sake of argument, and try to build a theory as to why warfare might emerge/spread around 10,000 years ago, here are some plausible reasons (some mentioned by others already):

*Sedentary agriculture creates dependency on land, stimulates conflicts over access to the "best" land
*Drought, flooding and other environmental issues can produce scarcity, but without the option to move on to other pastures, humans may be enticed to supplement by taking
*Sedentary agriculture leads to an accumulation of "things of value," enticing others to take them
*Sedentary agriculture requires humans to stay in one place and develop "regular" habits, creating greater "opportunity" for raids
*Sedentary agriculture might require the emergence of a warrior caste to defend lands
*Sedentary agriculture requires some form of inheritance law, which might stimulate conflict among siblings and/or produce landless sons seeking to expand 
*Sedentary agriculture stimulates population density, which as we know can be generative of conflict
*Sedentary agriculture leads to greater social organization, which leads to political organization--which may be the most important factor of all for understanding a growth in warfare


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## Brian G Turner (Jul 25, 2013)

I've got to admit, I did find the piece more of a polemic than an actual structured argument with facts. 



Nerds_feather said:


> If what the author of this piece argues is true, then it would cast aspersion on the Neaderthals-done-in-by-violence theory, though of course it wouldn't banish it from the realm of possibility either!



This theory seems to be dropping out of favour. The argument of some degree of interbreeding certainly seems to be growing in favour. It's hard not to be sympathetic to that after reading _Clan of the Cave Bear_. 



Nerds_feather said:


> If we were to assume that was the case, for the sake of argument, and try to build a theory as to why warfare might emerge/spread around 10,000 years ago, here are some plausible reasons (some mentioned by others already):



You make a better argument than in the article. 

However, IMO the problem is that warfare is being redefined to suit the argument.

What is warfare? Is is an organised violent confrontation between two different societies? 

If so, arguments relating to the differences of pastoral vs nomadic living seem to be making the point that attacks between different social groups was likely to be _more _violent.

In other words, it doesn't make the case that violence did not occur before, simply that pastoral living increased the likelihood of it. After all, if you built your future survival around your crops, then you were less likely to be able to flee any confrontation - you would have to stand and fight.

Meanwhile, nomadic groups who encountered such rich sources of food may be more likely to seek to take from it.

There are a lot of examples in recorded history where a centre of civilisation has been attacked by nomadic groups - not least the Sumerians, and Macedon when Phillip was rising to power. Heck, weren't the Mongols also nomads?

In other words, the process of civilisation through the development of pastoral societies increased the likelihood of confrontations we might call 'war'. And because of the larger populations of settled people, it would look more like "war" as we know it.

Our human biology makes it clear we are a predatory ape, and our history shows a predilection of violence occurring between different peoples. I would find it truly astonishing to suggest our species forsook violence until we started farming.


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## Ursa major (Jul 25, 2013)

In reading the following, note that the article defines warfare as "a lethal attack by two or more people in one group against another group". Arguing that this didn't occur before 10,000 years ago is, in my opinion, laughable. But if we take this definition on board, it allows plenty of wiggle room for those arguing that the article's author, at least, is standing on pretty weak ground.



Nerds_feather said:


> *Ursa*--As I understand it, the argument in favor of the Learned Theory is based on a lack of evidence for warfare >10,000 years ago--even after fairly exhaustive search for it. That proof might emerge, but without it, there's just an assumption that it must exist (and construction of theories upon that assumption).


No-one here, certainly not me, is arguing that the one piece of evidence mentioned in the article - that there is little or no evidence of warfare (whatever its definition) prior to 10000 years ago - is false. In writing my post, I assumed it was true. But the article is a polemic (of which there is much evidence towards the end of the article), against a point of view of which I was previously unaware (i.e. the Deep Rooters, who have managed to evade my admittedly feeble attempts to discover their digital lair).



Nerds_feather said:


> What I took from this article is simply that we can't just assume that war is "human nature" and instead have to consider that warfare might be something humans learned to do around the time of the switch to agriculture. (That doesn't mean it necessarily *was* learned and not ingrained, just that there's a compelling reason to believe it might be.)


But what is this compelling reason? It isn't even stated, let alone argued. And as there's no argument for it, the evidence for it is entirely absent. The best the author comes up with is an absence of fortifications. But where would marginal people hunting and gathering get the resources and time to build these? And where would they build them if their lifestyle is not one of being settled? (And who would man them?) Agriculture freed resources and time and made living in the same place both possible and a necessity. It's little wonder that warfare, as we might understand it, emerged around the same time. Neither required a change in human nature.

But I think the posts above have hinted at another possibility (which may or may not be correct). Not only that hunters and gatherers had only what they could carry, and this was mostly perishable (in terms of what was hunted, at least); not only that they did not have a fixed location at which they might be attacked; not only that they feared injury, for that might lead to death (of the individual and of those he or she was supporting).

Such people would have three choices when faced with aggressors:

They could run, but would be slowed down by their possessions, particularly if this was a large carcass (or the parts thereof).
They could stand and fight, at the risk of injury.
They could run, leaving behind whatever the aggressors wanted.
It seems to me that most attractive of these is the third, for it diverts the aggressors, who would want to secure their gain. (And because the aggressors' tactic is to make threats - and thus avoid both injuries and having to hunt for themselves - they'd let the hunters flee and, later find more prey, which could also be stolen.

If those being preyed on (the "hyenas") kept more or less to a fixed location (i.e. the area in which they hunted and from which they gathered), the aggressors would simple take over the group, expecting the others to provide for them.

None of this aggressive behaviour I've mentioned would leave significant evidence of warfare behind. In most cases, there'd be no fighting. The aggressors would be like the lions that steal the hyenas' prey.

Now it seems to me that this knocked-up, hole-full pre-agriculture theory of mine is more in tune with the behaviour of humans (some aggressive, some cowed, all of them working out their choices and choosing the best ones for themselves) than a theory that seems to require humanity to learn a new way of thinking (which was somehow lost during the time we lived in the Garden of Eden , when we ceased behaving as other animals do).



Nerds_feather said:


> If we were to assume that was the case, for the sake of argument, and try to build a theory as to why warfare might emerge/spread around 10,000 years ago, here are some plausible reasons (some mentioned by others already):
> 
> *Sedentary agriculture creates dependency on land, stimulates conflicts over access to the "best" land
> *Drought, flooding and other environmental issues can produce scarcity, but without the option to move on to other pastures, humans may be enticed to supplement by taking
> ...


It's a shame the article didn't mention these. But then it's a polemic, of the sort we're all too familiar with from "news"papers on this side of the Pond. It's sad that Scientific American has, in this instance, descended to the all-too-low level of the UK press. 

.


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## Nerds_feather (Jul 25, 2013)

Yes, the article was polemical, but I feel fairly well-positioned to parse that--especially since my takeaway is just that something broadly assumed (and which I had personally assumed) may be problematic. 

I do assume the piece is part of some broader discussion in the scientific world. I can't claim to know that much about the scientific claims, but it appears as if the conflict is rooted in two areas:

1. Does organized violence among chimpanzees suggest that organized violence is part of (upper) primate nature?

2. Does a lack of archeological evidence of organized violence involving 2 or more individuals  >10,000 years ago mean it didn't happen, didn't happen all that often or does it just mean that we haven't found the right evidence yet?

But I can accept that problematization without dismissing the Deep Rooter idea (especially without seeing a counter-argument...yet). When the author starts talking about nomadic peoples today, that's where it starts to get problematic for me. I'm in on the minimal claim, but not convinced as to the broader one. 

As far as I'm concerned, it's more interesting as a springboard for conversation and for thinking about the possibility of organized violence being something learned and, as I suggested, related to the revolution in social and economic organization that occurred around 10,000 years ago.


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## Nerds_feather (Jul 25, 2013)

Also, whether the author of the article said so or not, I think it's important to note that organized violence--if it did emerge 10,000 years ago--probably did so slowly.


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## Bowler1 (Jul 25, 2013)

Venusian Broon said:


> [/LIST]War seems, at least to me, to appear when land started to become 'owned'.



Not so much owned, as something vital to survive. This would justify tribal warfare.

Real warfare, armies etc. is a civilised invention. We fight to protect, or most of us anyway, there are exceptions as there is in all things. We protect family, land, resources and what we need to live. We fight to protect our nation, our way of life, this is where it gets very complicated, as society is a complicated concept. Deep down however, we're still just apes, protecting our young, food and even status in the group.

When pushed, we fight, it's our nature.


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## Venusian Broon (Jul 26, 2013)

By the powers of cosmic sychronicity, I find myself reading the book: _Organizing Bronze Age Societies_ a book that details the results of three digs in different places of Europe: Denmark, Hungary and Sicily*. And it has some interesting views on warriors etc... that have relevance to this thread. And as it's written by archeologists and specalists who investigate and think about these subjects all the time, rather than myself - who very (very) occasionally ponders such matters, I put more weight in these views! I include some direct quotes below (bolded text is my emphasis) Gold stars to those that read it all: 

_"We imagined that he (_a Scandinavian warrior_) travelled abroad to trade his personal amber and animals and those of his chief. In return, he brought home the precious objects of foreign origin for his chief and himself. *His role as warrior on this journey would have been essential to protect the wealth he carried.*"_

_"We imagine this house as that of either a warrior or charioteer, member of a *new warrior elite *__in the Middle Bronze Age cultures of Hungary...undoubtedly charged with protecting their people *and overseeing an emergent trade economy along the Danube...*"_

_"Ethno-historical evidence of warrior cultures supports an interpretation of *warriors and traders on the move*. Warriors often formed special group identities...defined by special behaviour amd etiquette. This could be employed both for recruiting war bands and for travelling to more distant chiefs to earn fame and foreign prestige goods, as documented among Japanese samurai and as a recurring theme in the literature on warriors and warfare."_

_"The political economy appears usually to have been based on the control over specific economic bottlenecks, most commonly involving surplus mobilisation of food used to support labour (staple finance) and prestige goods (wealth finance) such as swords used to develop relationships of power...to create a weath-financed political economy depended on control over the movement of special goods (_i.e. trade_)...With the increasing use of metal, things changed...metal had fewer sources (_than stone_) and those sources were at greater distances...The creation of a warrior elite, armed with new bronze weapons, could then have asserted a more exclusive control over the land _(note - the chief's land - not anyone elses!),_ and the gifting of weapons and objects of bodily display created opportunities to build elaborate networks of dependency and alliance...*Generally, the systems of staple and wealth finance were joined, creating a highly dynamic and creative political strategy*"_

_"Through the Bronze Age and into the the Iron Age, the construction of farmsteads and settlements, barrows and cemeteries, and increasingly defined agrarian landscapes...surely involved *overlapping and contested* property rights..."_

finally - (apologies, no doubt you're thinking 'thank god' )

_"Politics and warfare go together - leaders justify their positions through defence of the groups and the building of defences defines social groups as coporate units."_

Just a few takeaways from all that:

It seems to me that they are arguing that a warrior caste could only emerged because of the surplus food that the agrarian societies were producing, but interestingly they were initimately tied up in long-distance trade in prestigous materials. After all they were going long distances over land and sea with the surplus wealth of their communities to obtain valuables and important materials such as metals.

Furthermore, as others have pointed out, it seems to suggest that organised warfare (and related activities, such as building defences) could be seen to emerge from the growing political strategies that chiefs and 'big men' of their societies could employ to increase their power and standing. 

Perhaps politics and warfare were born at the same time. (Or as Clausewitz said "War is the continuation of politics by other means".)

Anyway some food for thought

===============================================
* It's a bit academic and dry, so I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone else, unless academic tomes on archeology is their cup of tea also.


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## Ursa major (Jul 26, 2013)

That seems to make sense, including the Clausewitz quote (for if politics is the extension of control - and, perhaps, decision making** - beyond the individual to the group, warfare is the parallel extension of the application of aggression from the individual to the body politic***).


Note that the scenario I mentioned earlier is really about robbery and banditry rather than politics or warfare; it only fitted the definition of warfare on the poor definition ("two or more of one group attacking another group") used in the article.



** - Perhaps only to a small group of advisors, in limited form.

*** - Or, at least, to a subgroup within it, the warrior caste referred to.


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## Venusian Broon (Jul 26, 2013)

Ursa major said:


> Note that the scenario I mentioned earlier is really about robbery and banditry rather than politics or warfare; it only fitted the definition of warfare on the poor definition ("two or more of one group attacking another group") used in the article.


 
Yes I think you hit the nail on the head regarding the definition, it's a poor one. I for one refuse to believe that aggression between humans has just popped into existence in the past 10,000 years for Homo Sapiens. However calling an encounter between two bullies and one poor target is stretching definitions way past breaking point to it label as warfare (IMO).

That we don't have much in the way of evidence of opportunistic banditry, pre-meditated murder or just extended 'bar brawls' for whatever reasons, could be down to the fact that human density was so low* that such occurences and opportunities were fleeting and very rare. Therefore so is the evidence. 

===================================================
*After all, there is speculation that after the Toba eruption 73,000 years ago - the total human population of the Earth was somewhere between 3,000-15,000 individual - or about 1 human per 10,000-50,000 sq km of land.


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## svalbard (Jul 26, 2013)

Maybe the question should be *Is violence a part of human nature? *If this is the case, which imo it is, then I would put forward that war is the natural evolutionary step. This, and again it is only my opinion, would make war a part of human nature.


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## Nerds_feather (Jul 26, 2013)

Venusian Broon said:


> _"Politics and warfare go together - leaders justify their positions through defence of the groups and the building of defences defines social groups as coporate units."_
> 
> Just a few takeaways from all that:
> 
> ...



This is sort of where I'm at as well. What's the point of politics when you have nothing to organize? What's the point of raiding when no one owns anything? 

I could imagine conflicts arising over use of specific hunting grounds or caves, but I'd also imagine that pre-farming humanity was more concerned with the actual hunting, and since warfare is *usually* over material goods and/or land, that there wasn't all that much utility in warfare. That calculus starts to change once humans began accumulating things of worth, creating permanent settlements and developing political institutions.


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## Gordian Knot (Jul 26, 2013)

Cutting things really down to the bottom line, even if we could prove one way of the other whether violence and wars only began 10,000 years ago; of what relevance is that information?

Fact is we know that for the last 10,000 years humanity has been a violent, warlike species. And it's not like we are moving away from that in modern times. We remain a violent, warlike species and I do not see that changing any time in the foreseeable future.


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## Nerds_feather (Jul 26, 2013)

Gordian Knot said:


> Cutting things really down to the bottom line, even if we could prove one way of the other whether violence and wars only began 10,000 years ago; of what relevance is that information?
> 
> Fact is we know that for the last 10,000 years humanity has been a violent, warlike species. And it's not like we are moving away from that in modern times. We remain a violent, warlike species and I do not see that changing any time in the foreseeable future.



It potentially speaks to _why_ humans are warlike. That seems fairly important to me.


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## Brian G Turner (Jul 26, 2013)

I would definitely recommend a reading of _The Naked Ape_ by Desmond Morris. Originally written in the late 1960's it aimed to study the human animal and its origins from a strictly behavioural point of view. While there are assumptions and extrapolations within that book, it does cover a lot of interesting ground regarding our predatory and early social development.


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## svalbard (Jul 27, 2013)

Nerds_feather said:


> It potentially speaks to _why_ humans are warlike. That seems fairly important to me.


 
Survival. Whilst the power of our brain is one of the main reasons we ended up the dominant species on the planet, it was the violent application of that brain power which in part enabled us to succeed. How else could a weaker, slower species survive against the likes of the dinosaurs Our intelligence allowed us to organize family units into large hunting parties to bring down bigger prey. All this before we began the agricultural revolution.

It is only a short step from organized hunts against the Mammoth to organized battles against other clans.


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## Southern Geologist (Jul 28, 2013)

Nerds_feather said:


> The 10,000 year mark is an interesting one, as it's the time when humans switched from hunter-gatherer mode to sedentary farming and larger-scale habitation. The implication would be that warfare is either a function of large-scale social organization or physically organized settlements (or both).



For some reason this information doesn't surprise me in the least.  I do think that such a discovery brings up a narrower but more interesting question than "Is it natural or an invention?" which would be, "Is it natural [READ: inevitable] within the context of large-scale social organization?"

Frankly, that seems to be the question that is of most concern to us on a practical level, too.  I doubt that people would willingly go back to hunter-gatherer mode en masse if the determination is made that doing that would end war, so we have to find another solution (if we want one).


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## JoanDrake (Jul 30, 2013)

Southern Geologist said:


> For some reason this information doesn't surprise me in the least.  I do think that such a discovery brings up a narrower but more interesting question than "Is it natural or an invention?" which would be, "Is it natural [READ: inevitable] within the context of large-scale social organization?"
> 
> Frankly, that seems to be the question that is of most concern to us on a practical level, too.  I doubt that people would willingly go back to hunter-gatherer mode en masse if the determination is made that doing that would end war, so we have to find another solution (if we want one).


 
Jared Diamond comes to just about this conclusion in "The Worst Mistake In the History of the Human Race", and I think you're right. Most people can't help but agree with Diamond's reasoning, and disagree strongly with the conclusion. In my case it's because I like having hot water, nice food, and not being either dead from typhoid or in the belly of some catamount my nearsightedness had me mistake for my mother. Brazilian natives "work" about 2 hours a day and lay around so stoned they giggle about cockroaches running up their noses for the rest. I guess we wouldn't have war if we were all meth addicts.

Then again it's possible we're already beyond war. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, all could have ended in a few minutes with the touch of a button. Instead we sent thousands to die and nearly bankrupted ourselves in what amounted to an elaborate game. Now all that remains is for us to realize the true idiocy of this model. 

I could say rotsa ruck on that happening but then I remember what Carl Sagan pointed out. 200 years ago, human slavery was a widely accepted institution that had existed since time began. It still does, and is probably quantitatively bigger than ever before, but that's just because there's so many more people, not because a greater percentage of them are slaves. Slavery is not practiced openly anywhere now, at least in the vast majority of the world.

Might not war go the same way, becoming a criminal enterprise, hidden in the shadows (say, might be a story there)

Or maybe it will transform, become something else. I'm still waiting to hear about the first drone shooting down another


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## paranoid marvin (Jul 30, 2013)

Our biggest mistake? Biting that apple!


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