![]() ![]() The experiences of the Yanomami peoples in Venezuela illustrate some of these points. This explains why the indigenous peoples of later prehistory, and those indigenous peoples observed from the time of Columbus to today, have lived through much more war than their distant ancestors. forward generated much more war-not just resistance to colonial powers, but between peoples as they were pushed onto others’ lands, enlisted in colonial rivalries, sent out as slave raiders, or given new goods to fight over or weapons with which to fight. ![]() European colonial expansion from 1500 A.D. Ancient states encouraged more militarism along their “barbarian” boundaries and trade routes. War was frequent across Anatolia by around 5,500 B.C., central Europe by 4,300 B.C., and northern China by 2,500 B.C. As these factors became more common around the world, so did war. So what does explain the advent of war? Archeological explanations include larger regional populations that increased competition more anchored living that prevented people from moving away from conflict social structures such as clans that provided flexible frameworks for splitting into “us” and “them” the emergence of a distinct political elite with its own interests trade in goods that provided something to fight over and ecological reverses such as droughts or large-game extinction. Inbred xenophobia and other biological explanations do not explain why war happens. ![]() Cases, such as hostilities between Australian tribes or New Guinea clans, reveal that divides between “us” and “them” are flexible and fluid until forged by death, and sometimes not even then. Rather it is conflict that makes group loyalties. But it is not group loyalty that makes the conflict. Of course in war there must be a division between “us” and “them,” otherwise one would not know whom to shoot. Ethnography further undermines this position. Humanity’s peaceable deep past contradicts the common notion that war is the result of human nature or an evolved impulse to bond with our own kind and kill members of other groups. In later archaeological remains, signs of war appear, spread, and over time become much more common. Yet in the early archaeological record of many regions, there are no traces of war, even in places where we have good recovery of the skeletons and settlements that would have revealed war if it had occurred. At the end of prehistory-before ancient states arose and began to write, or before literate explorers arrived among non-state peoples-signs of war were plentiful. The existence of so many warlike peoples has fed speculation about human nature for centuries. Among some peoples it is not rare for 25 percent of adult men to end their lives in combat. Still, well over 90 percent of known peoples have made war, some frequently and quite brutally. Many have sophisticated value and institutional systems that prevent organized violence. Dozens of peoples never sent out groups of men with the intent to kill others. Certainly there is a lot of war in the ethnographic record, though it is far from universal. Anthropologists who study warfare disagree about how much war there is, how far back it goes, and why it happens. ![]()
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