Prehistoric Evolutions of Peace

Broadening primate instincts and social behavior into the early human realm, between our appearance as a species and our earliest prehistoric remains, several significant signs point to peace also being an advanta­geous, necessary and prevalent feature of human life and survival, even taking into account isolated evidence to the contrary.

Early human social life probably resembled that of primates, who also form long-term relationships, actively engage in bonding and form strate­gic coalitions. However, primates are mostly nomadic and use their larger teeth for protection and as safeguards against changing food sources. Homo habilis’ smaller molars are ineffective ways to threaten and masti­cate food from unpredictable sources. Such a pronounced adaptation implies that social relations and food sources had become and/or were made more stable and secure.

Some archaeologists see the earliest evidence of warfare in fortifica­tions around Jericho about 9500 years ago, probably for control over hunting-trading routes. Others see the first documented war, most likely over disputed hunting grounds, taking place in Bavaria roughly 8500 years ago, as evidenced in the Ofnet cave in Southern Germany, where decapitated skulls of women and children were found. Although lack of proof cannot in itself prove the absence of war in prehistory - as these sites show, war no doubt did exist in some form and for some time - the tremendous time lapse between the first available evidence of peace and that of war distinguished from violence is highly suggestive. The imagined warlike qualities of early humans put forth by influential social theorists such as Thomas Hobbes thus prove to be less than factual, while roman­tic theories of peace such as that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, resting on peacefulness as the defining characteristic of early human societies, turn out to be no less fanciful.

“Survival of the fittest,” an expression coined not by Darwin but Herbert Spencer, is seen by theorists of evolution today as constantly working on at least two related levels, both of which are inextricable from the evolution of peace and peacemaking among humans from prehistory to today.¹⁰ The expression commonly conveys individual organisms’ ability to compete with other organisms of the same species for mates and with individual organisms of other species as well as their own for limited resources. But the expression also refers to “super-organisms,”a term also coined by Spencer to designate groups that function as organic wholes, such as ant colonies and human societies.¹¹ Survival of the fittest in rela­tion to super-organisms means that the most competitive ones for resources on an inter-group level are those that function best on an intra­group level. Peace-related factors in optimal internal cooperation and external competitiveness include sympathy, mutual aid and social cohe­sion, as exemplified inhuman evolution. In The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin proposed that sympathy was and is what gives our species its defi­nite super-organic advantage over others. “Those communities,” he explains, “which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of off­spring.”¹² By this statement and others, Darwin opened the door to an evolutionary perspective on peaceful traits increasing the likelihood of survival.

A more recent analysis of human evolution relative to war begins by acknowledging that sympathy and mutual aid have been invaluable traits in defense and offense at all stages of humanity’s evolution in bolstering social cohesion.¹⁴ For most species, social cohesion simply signifies super- organic unity when faced with scarcity and adversity; for humans, it has the added significance of being united in principles, interests and goals. Social cohesion is an evolutionary advantageous trait insofar as it fosters day-to-day and strategic cooperation, making human groups and indi­viduals more competitive relative to other species. Sympathy, mutual aid and social cohesion are now widely recognized by biologists as primary human evolutionary peace processes under the rubric of mutualism, the principle of interdependence as a condition of individual and group sur­vival and welfare. The neologism survival of the peaceful, then, denotes that peaceful individual and group traits are more than bio-genetically advantageous; culturally, they are necessary for humanity’s survival. In other words, just as individual human beings are how the fittest genetic systems are propagated, human societies are the vehicles through which the most peaceful cultures do the same because two imperatives in addi­tion to the instinctual have jointly shaped human evolution and the evolution of peace.¹⁵

On the one hand, bio-genetic imperatives such as food and reproduc­tion maximize self-interested behavior.

Although bio-genetic imperatives have historically caused dominator social structures to spring up temporarily, cultural imperatives ensure the survival of partnership social structures in the long-run. So while peace is advantageous in the bio-genetic survival of all species, it must prevail in order for human cultures to survive. To be more precise, both bio-genetic and cultural imperatives have and will continue to play a catalytic role in the evolution of humanity and peace, without which we would not have survived as we did, if we would have at all.

The earliest mode of subsistence based on the home base social struc­ture, gathering, laid the foundations of two features integral to future peace and peacemaking: conscientiousness and language-use. With gath­ering, humans stopped eating on the spot with whoever happened to be participating in the expedition; instead, we began making premeditated decisions to take others into consideration, to be patient and self­restrained, because we consciously had secure enough relationships to make the trade-offs worthwhile. Gathering could only be effective if infor­mation was shared, which is why both linguistic communication and the larger brain size language-use requires are considered its derivations. The symbolic systems used later in peacemaking were thus not add-ons to peaceful human behavior, but extensions of it. Synthesizing scavenging and tool-making, early hunting economies were usually mixed with gath­ering. This hunter-gatherer mode of subsistence is unique to our species, represents 99 percent of our existence so far, and so may be “the single most important factor in the emergence of mankind,” as well as in the evolution of peace.²⁰ Some of the earliest evidence of hunting was found in Boxgrove, England, where about 500,000 years ago hunters trapped many large game animals between a watering hole and a cliff, where they were finally killed. Violence aside, these tactics display at least two other elements essential to ensuing peace and peacemaking: planning and orga­nization. The choice between using such tactics for food or against other humans was based on bio-genetic and cultural imperatives of survival, and our existence attests to the choice made more often.

Planning and organization were also necessary in the emergence of agricultural modes of subsistence, such as the seasonal growing of crops and the herding of domesticated animals, which only began roughly 10,000 years ago. Early agriculture advanced two other traits central to the evolution of peace: stable surpluses and the effective management they require. Regular use of coercive force becomes part of the structure of human societies only after the advent of agriculture and its cultural char­acteristics. But this statement should not be mistaken for saying that agri­culture is the origin of warfare. On the contrary, like hunter-gatherers before them, prehistoric agriculturally based societies most likely lacked the time, resources and leadership necessary to sustain or withstand extended modern warlike endeavors. By making food surpluses more stable than hunting and gathering alone, agriculture facilitated rather than impeded subsistence peace among prehistoric and modern humans. It is thus both plausible and probable that prehistoric subsistence societies were as predominantly peaceful. Standing armies and police organiza­tions only make their appearance about 5000 years ago, when irrigation and trade intensified agricultural practices. But the former would not have been possible or necessary had not the latter led to a material abundance permitting settlements tens to thousands times greater than home bases - the first cities, states and civilizations, on which more below.

Given the dearth of records of human social life in prehistoric times, the cultural profiles of certain contemporary societies may in hindsight provide the “widest window on the largest part of our species’ history,” and that of the prehistory of peace.²¹ Without projecting backwards, anthropological studies of peace substantiate the claim that simple soci­eties are or at least can be, more peaceful than complex ones and thus have a lot to teach them. One of the uncommon but astonishing features of such societies is that peaceful cultural imperatives such as altruism coupled with propitious ecological conditions have made them as close to totally non-violent as societies may probably ever be. The Tasaday of the Philippines, for example, are said to have no weapons and no words for anger, murder, war or enemy. For this reason, their way of life has been interpreted as reflecting the “elemental pacific qualities of human nature,” in Sponsel’s words.²² Of course, violence breaks out in all simple societies, but malevolence aside the intent behind its use generally tends to be to restore peace. To this end, another striking feature common among simple societies is counter-dominant behavior, by which individuals whose self­interested, bio-genetic imperatives outproportion their pro-social, cul­tural imperatives are systematically shunned and stripped of their prerogatives. Among the implication of these exemplars is that while peace as a state and peacemaking as a process can transcend cultural con­tingencies and diversities, they are also immanently within them.

To prevent the necessity of counter-dominant behavior, the encultura- tion process of the Semai, considered the best-documented case of a pacific simple society, includes children learning to become peaceful through the games they play. Rituals and ceremonies also play vital roles in keeping the balance between the benefits of partnership and drawbacks of domination. Facing their abolition by Christian missionaries in the nineteenth century, the chief of the Hokianga of New Zealand was quoted as saying that ritual feasts “have many times been the means of keeping the peace between us, and may be of service again.”²³ Early in the twen­tieth century, the Murngin of Australia continued to practice makarata, or what an anthropologist describes as “ceremonial peacemaking fights” in which aggression was condoned as a means of releasing anger and restoring peace.²⁴ When hierarchical social structures are present in pacific simple societies, practices such as the doubling of political roles and places are typically in place to counterbalance the dangers of their abuse. The widespread Polynesian practice of chiefs acting simultaneously as the agents of war and as dispensers of peace fits this model, as do concepts of sanctuary and asylum in chief-designated locations for native Hawaiian peoples, places and timeframes of absolution for transgressors. This body of anthropological research also supports Eibl-Eibesfeldt’s con­clusion to his monumental ethological study of humanity: “war, defined as strategically planned, destructive group aggression, is a product of cultural evolution. Therefore, it can be overcome culturally.”²⁵