On Warfare Origins
It appears that many early archaeologists assumed warfare was common. They tended to work in the recent past and with complex societies, so evidence for warfare was both common and obvious.
Notable exceptions, such as the early tendency to ignore evidence for warfare among the Maya, did exist, but they were rare.[64] There then appears to have been an interval in the history of archaeology when warfare was downplayed or ignored. Why this happened need not be considered here, but it seems that Keeley's War before Civilization[65] [66] was a wake-up call to many archaeologists, and from that time onwards there has been a plethora of attempts to consider the problem on a regional or larger scale.11 Although this refocus is more than twenty years old, the archaeological consideration of warfare is still quite patchy and often rather innocent in its approaches.One can see the question of origins as having two different meanings. On the one hand the question can be, what are the reasons for warfare? Are there some broad generalisations about why we fight? On the other hand, it can be a question that assumes there was a time in the past when there was no warfare, and we can therefore ask, when did such behaviours first appear? I believe the first meaning is valid and important, and our goal should be to try to determine what general principles are behind this worldwide phenomenon. If we as humans ever hope to eliminate warfare, then we must understand why it exists. If it has been part of our existence for millennia, then information derived from archaeology is critical to this understanding. One could easily see this as one of the great goals of archaeology: explaining why we have fought.
The second meaning of origins, which implies a worldwide peace or Garden of Eden, is, in my opinion, invalid, as it assumes a state of behaviour that we do not know existed.
At best it is a question to be addressed; a peaceful past is not a given. This is a contentious area. There has been considerable opposition to the idea that warfare is an integral part of the human past; there is even more objection to the concept that warfare had any impact on our genes.12 Most of these objections imply that it began after farming or as the result of colonialism.There is ample evidence for warfare in the deep past, and the ethnographic evidence that such scholars use to suggest otherwise is largely irrelevant
(eds.), Ancient Warfare: Archaeological Perspectives (Stroud: Allan Sutton, 1999); Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, ‘Ancient Warfare: Origins and Systems', in M. I. Midlarsky (ed.), Handbook of War Studies II (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), pp. 59-89; Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); LeBlanc, Prehistoric Warfare; LeBlanc and Register, Constant Battles; Ian Morris, War! What Is It Good For?: Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014); G.E. Rice and S. A. LeBlanc (eds.), Deadly Landscapes: Case Studies in Prehistoric Southwestern Warfare (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2001).
12 Some of the more vigorous promoters of the idea of a peaceful past are Douglas P. Fry, Beyond War: The Human Potential for Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Douglas P. Fry, ‘Life without War', Science 336 (2012), 879-84; and R. Brian Ferguson, ‘A Savage Encounter: Western Contact and the Yanomami War Complex', in R. Brian Ferguson and N. L. Whitehead (eds.), War in the Tribal Zone: Expanding States and Indigenous Warfare (Santa Fe, CA: School of American Research Press, 1992), pp. 199-227. See also David Fabbro, ‘Peaceful Societies: An Introduction', Journal of Peace Research 15.1 (1978), 67-83; AndrewLawler, ‘The Battle over Violence', Science336 (2012), 829-30; and Raymond C. Kelly, Warless Societies and the Origin of War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).
because it is invariably negative evidence such as a lack of identified fortifications, when location or vegetation might have been the major mechanism for defence; or few violent deaths when only a select few were buried in a way that preserved them, and these were very likely to be individuals not killed in warfare. Equally problematic is that just because a particular society was peaceful for some period of time (and ample examples exist), this does not justify the assumption that humans are inherently peaceful and that there once was an Eden-like world. Moreover, such thinking leads to the notion that a peaceful past is something that must be refuted by those who disagree. They feel that the burden of proof lies with those who see warfare as pervasive. Yet, this is a fallacy. Those who claim peace are under just as strong a requirement to demonstrate that peace existed as those who claim ancient warfare existed. Demonstrating peace in the past is very difficult. There are few, if any, examples of a study where all the lines of evidence that can be brought to bear on the issue have been examined and lead to the conclusion that there must have been peace. This has not been accomplished for recent ethnographic cases, much less the archaeological ones.
In short, the case for peace is not a reasoned argument but simply a position reflecting a desire for it. This issue is dealt with in some depth elsewhere,[67] but it remains an impediment to honest discussion of this important topic.
More on the topic On Warfare Origins:
- Colonial Period Maya Warfare
- Contents
- Bibliographic Essay
- Origins and Development: The Early Greek World
- Conclusion
- Settlements
- Bibliographic Essay
- Conclusion
- Although a century has passed since its outbreak, the First World War retains much of its mystery.
- Conceptual Origins