4 ms·

I once met a girl who among other interesting ideas was dead convinced that ancient humans were not warlike at all and that there is no archeological evidence o

I once met a girl who among other interesting ideas was dead convinced that ancient humans were not warlike at all and that there is no archeological evidence of war from a time before written records. And that the natural human instinct when meeting strange human groups is to mate, not fight. Her main argument for why that is obviously true was 'just look at all the screwing going on in youth hostels'. Having had the pleasure of growing up in a town that had, let's say, 'territoriality' as an integral part of its youth culture, I begged to differ.

Yhippa 6y ago
https://time.com/5137272/condoms-at-olympics/ https://time.com/5137272/condoms-at-olympics/
- ddalex 6y ago
  Put together one thousand of the most fit young people on the planet, what do you expect to happen ? :)
lou1306 6y ago
I guess Ötzi [1] would also beg to differ. Too bad he was brutally murdered about 5k years ago (long before written record). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi
- ddalex 6y ago
  Let's not forget that Otzi also killed at least two individuals before his death (one of the arrow heads has traces of two different types of human blood, and he managed to retrieve his arrow both times)
tpmx 6y ago
So she somehow missed the lesson from her presumably ~9+ years of schooling that the history of humanity until quite recently is that of famine and brutal war over land to produce enough calories to survive for another year. (my pet peeve: history ed in school spends too much time on details, and not enough time on the macro perspective)
jcranmer 6y ago
There actually isn't unequivocal evidence of war in the early archaeological record, although that is more to do with the definition of "war" than "humans were inherently peaceful." A plausible modern definition of war is that it is a conflict between two polities that sanctions otherwise illegitimate violence by particular people. That is, war is undertaken by government (not individuals); it requires the use of special participants (military forces); it requires a definitive, positive interaction to commence (e.g., a declaration of war); and it has rules that need to be observed. The exact contours of the definition will differ from author to author, and there are plenty of conflicts that sit in a nebulous gray area (would The Troubles constitute a war? or the Colombian conflict between the government and FARC? or gang wars?), but broadly speaking, you will see some sort of line being drawn between warfare and mere violence. Archaeology tells us that there is pretty clear physical evidence of mass violent deaths as early as the Mesolithic. However, cultural evidence of warfare is not easily established: cave paintings in the Paleolithic don't depict anything like warfare, and even in the Mesolithic, evidence for warfare in paintings is kind of thin. It's really not until the development of sedentary agriculture in the early Neolithic that we see clear evidence of warfare, and even here, the evidence can easily be interpreted in a way that suggests it wasn't a major feature before then.
- jgilias 6y ago
  Thank you for writing this! Her reasoning wasn't this deep though. It went mostly along the lines of idillic prehistoric humans solving every issue with mating until patriarchy driven civilizations came along and messed up the world.
- Shorel 6y ago
  If we compare ourselves to other primates both chimpanzees and gorillas show deadly violence with a relatively high frequency. Even bonobos are quite vicious when they are not fucking. Meaning all high status males have probably killed at least one member of their species in their lifetime. Orangutans are the odd elevated ones.
zw123456 6y ago
Just because people fought does not mean they did not also mate. I believe something like 1 in 200 people today are descended from Genghis Khan (https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/1-in-200-men-direct-descendants-of-genghis-khan https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/1-in-200-men-d...) To the victor go the spoils, which, historically, women would be considered a "spoil", not a lot of courting that one might see in a modern youth hostile.
99_00 6y ago
People seem to forget that Native Americans were stone age people before European contact.

Yhippa 6y ago

https://time.com/5137272/condoms-at-olympics/ https://time.com/5137272/condoms-at-olympics/

ddalex 6y ago
Put together one thousand of the most fit young people on the planet, what do you expect to happen ? :)

lou1306 6y ago

I guess Ötzi [1] would also beg to differ. Too bad he was brutally murdered about 5k years ago (long before written record). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi

ddalex 6y ago
Let's not forget that Otzi also killed at least two individuals before his death (one of the arrow heads has traces of two different types of human blood, and he managed to retrieve his arrow both times)

tpmx 6y ago

So she somehow missed the lesson from her presumably ~9+ years of schooling that the history of humanity until quite recently is that of famine and brutal war over land to produce enough calories to survive for another year. (my pet peeve: history ed in school spends too much time on details, and not enough time on the macro perspective)

jcranmer 6y ago

There actually isn't unequivocal evidence of war in the early archaeological record, although that is more to do with the definition of "war" than "humans were inherently peaceful." A plausible modern definition of war is that it is a conflict between two polities that sanctions otherwise illegitimate violence by particular people. That is, war is undertaken by government (not individuals); it requires the use of special participants (military forces); it requires a definitive, positive interaction to commence (e.g., a declaration of war); and it has rules that need to be observed. The exact contours of the definition will differ from author to author, and there are plenty of conflicts that sit in a nebulous gray area (would The Troubles constitute a war? or the Colombian conflict between the government and FARC? or gang wars?), but broadly speaking, you will see some sort of line being drawn between warfare and mere violence. Archaeology tells us that there is pretty clear physical evidence of mass violent deaths as early as the Mesolithic. However, cultural evidence of warfare is not easily established: cave paintings in the Paleolithic don't depict anything like warfare, and even in the Mesolithic, evidence for warfare in paintings is kind of thin. It's really not until the development of sedentary agriculture in the early Neolithic that we see clear evidence of warfare, and even here, the evidence can easily be interpreted in a way that suggests it wasn't a major feature before then.

jgilias 6y ago
Thank you for writing this! Her reasoning wasn't this deep though. It went mostly along the lines of idillic prehistoric humans solving every issue with mating until patriarchy driven civilizations came along and messed up the world.
Shorel 6y ago
If we compare ourselves to other primates both chimpanzees and gorillas show deadly violence with a relatively high frequency. Even bonobos are quite vicious when they are not fucking. Meaning all high status males have probably killed at least one member of their species in their lifetime. Orangutans are the odd elevated ones.

zw123456 6y ago

Just because people fought does not mean they did not also mate. I believe something like 1 in 200 people today are descended from Genghis Khan (https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/1-in-200-men-direct-descendants-of-genghis-khan https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/1-in-200-men-d...) To the victor go the spoils, which, historically, women would be considered a "spoil", not a lot of courting that one might see in a modern youth hostile.

99_00 6y ago

People seem to forget that Native Americans were stone age people before European contact.