Warfare: Deadly and Pervasive
To anticipate much of what follows, in spite of the limitations of the data and regardless of some opinions to the contrary, I believe it is possible to formulate a good picture of warfare in the past based on archaeology, ethnology and early historical accounts of many societies.
The summation of our knowledge of warfare including forager warfare, which is considered in more detail below, is that it was extremely common and very deadly. In fact, acephalous society warfare was probably deadlier than that of more complex societies on the basis of the likelihood of an individual dying from warfare. This is a rather shocking conclusion to many.The consensus among many archaeologists and others who have investigated the issue is that death rates due to warfare were substantial in the past. Most of these deaths were due to raids and other small encounters where only a few individuals would be killed. However, such encounters were very common, and so the death tolls accumulated. While some have considered raiding, the common type of acephalous warfare, to be almost game playing with few deaths, in fact the opposite is the case. Even though the number of individuals killed in each raid was typically low, such raiding was far more significant than most realise. Raiding could be almost continuous, although it was often seasonal in some climates. One group might be raiding and being raided by multiple other groups. In such small societies, the number of deaths from such raids could become very substantial. Various scholars have tried to estimate the death rates from such raiding, including the occasional massacre.1 One of the best sets of data is from lowland South America.[56] [57] Some archaeology has also given us some useful data.[58] The somewhat shocking estimates are that between 15 and 25 per cent of males and about 5 per cent of women died from such warfare (about 9 per cent female deaths for South America).
Given these high death rates, the term ‘warfare' is appropriate because of the consequences, not the methods.Most men in these societies slept with and never went outside without their weapons. Some told early ethnographers that they had nightmares about being killed in attacks. They located their communities for defence, and they under-utilised vast portions of their territories because it was too dangerous to go there. While groups would try to defend the most productive parts of their territory, there is ample evidence that the dangerous parts had useful resources which were quickly exploited if they became safe - a state of affairs that was the case for foragers but especially true for farmers. This significantly reduced the resources consumed and would have led to deprivation or even starvation or death. Every male you met that was not a close relative or member of your local group was a potential threat. Lives in the past were those of fear, war, worry and hunger.[59]