Warfare and Human Evolution
If warfare was common for very long periods over much of the globe, did it lead to selection for traits that resulted in warfare success? That there could have been Darwinian selection among humans for being good at warfare is
Warfare, pp.
437-68. See also Peter Turchin, ‘Warfare and the Evolution of Social Complexity: A Multilevel-Selection Approach', Structure and Dynamics 4.3 (2010).16 David D. Zhang et al., ‘Climate Change and War Frequency in Eastern China over the Last Millennium', Human Ecology 35 (2007), 403-14.
17 H. Nuzhet Dalfes, G. Kukla and H. Weiss (eds.), Third Millennium BC Climate Change and Old World Collapse (Berlin: Springer, 1997).
18 Patricia M. Lambert, ‘The Osteological Evidence for Indigenous Warfare in North America', in Richard J. Chadon and Ruben G. Mendoza (eds.), North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007), pp. 202-21; LeBlanc, Prehistoric Warfare; George R. Milner, ‘Warfare in Prehistoric and Early Historic Eastern North America', Journal of Archaeological Research 7.2 (1999), 105-51; Herbert D. G. Maschner, ‘The Evolution of Northwest Coast Warfare', in Martin and Frayer (eds.), Troubled Times, pp. 267-302.
19 Douglas J. Kennett et al., ‘Development and Disintegration of Maya Political Systems in Response to Climate Change', Science 338 (2012), 788-91.
20 Dwight W. Read and Steven A. LeBlanc, ‘Population Growth, Carrying Capacity, and Conflict', Current Anthropology 44.1 (2003), 59-86. highly unpalatable to many. Many such knee-jerk objections to there being a genetic component to human warfare are based on a simplistic and naive understanding of how genes and evolution work. There is often confusion between propensities and deterministic outcomes; that is, males may be prone to violence, but that does not mean all males are violent. While a couple of genes have been proposed as being related to violent behaviour, one even having the unfortunate label of the ‘warrior' gene, one would expect any genetic factors to involve multiple genes interacting in complex ways, as most behavioural traits do. Nevertheless, arguments relying on warfare in the archaeological record as their basis have been made. Thus, the archaeological record for warfare is of wide and important relevance, and we need to both get it right and make our findings widely and easily available.[70]
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