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For most of human history, people lived in small tribes and waged incessant tribal warfare over women, land, and resources. Trying to cast prehistoric humanity
by douche 10y ago
For most of human history, people lived in small tribes and waged incessant tribal warfare over women, land, and resources. Trying to cast prehistoric humanity as some golden age of peace and harmony is disingenuous. And we know for a fact that in the historical era, mankind has been at war virtually every year since the Sumerians started pressing glyphs into clay or the Chinese scratched runes on ox bones.
- Houshalter 10y agoI don't think there is a lot of evidence to support that. Ive read that war was mostly a product of agriculture, which led to famines and stores of food easy to steal. But regardless, when hunter gatherers did go to war, they fought other tribes. Internal conflict is much less common. In a group where everyone knows each other and depends on each other for survival, war makes no sense. Groups of humans that didnt cooperate within a tribe would have died out long ago. Such an environment will hopefully have plenty of resources. At least of food and water and other necessities. Which also reduces the motivation for war and conflict.
- jcranmer 10y agoThere's very little evidence of war (defined loosely as an organized conflict between two polities) before the development of agriculture and civilization. It's worth noting that, in ancient Sumer, whereas most advancements start from the south and go north, defensive walls originate at the north and go south. The best evidence for Paleolithic warfare--which is to say pretty much the only--is a single apparent cemetery (at the tail end of the Paleolithic) where about half the people died with signs of violent trauma.