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It seems it must be interpretation of the article rather than the position held by academia. Most of our earliest known cities had walls, suggesting that defens

It seems it must be interpretation of the article rather than the position held by academia. Most of our earliest known cities had walls, suggesting that defensive fortifications were essentially a requirement for any large concentration of resources (cities) to exist. And we also know that wooden palisades were a common feature amongst North American indigenous villages, indicating that hunter gather societies thought a lot about defense.

throwaway4aday 3y ago
Napoleon Chagnon would beg to differ, he spent decades fighting the ingrained notion that hunter gatherers were inherently peaceful. Despite his first hand experience and evidence from modern day tribes still living in primitive conditions he faced a huge amount of resistance from the scientific community and barely gained recognition for his work a few years before his death at the age of 81. He still gets a lot of posthumous flak from people who refuse to believe that humans inherently use violence as a tool when not restricted by modern morals and societal structures even though that should be plainly evident from literally all of human history right up to this very second. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Chagnon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Chagnon
wharvle 3y ago
I gather it was a trendy view in certain sectors of academia for some time, and possibly in parts of pop culture. In about '04 or '05 one of my poli sci classes assigned War Before Civilization: the Myth of the Peaceful Savage (OUP, 1996, Keeley) and the professor spent much time debunking the notion of the peaceful savage or a time before war, but already then, almost two decades ago, it seemed like a weird thing to focus on because none of the students were aware this was a myth that needed debunking because we hadn't encountered it until that class. I assume it seemed important to the professor because some little academic war (ha, ha) over the issue had wrapped up in the recent past.

throwaway4aday 3y ago

Napoleon Chagnon would beg to differ, he spent decades fighting the ingrained notion that hunter gatherers were inherently peaceful. Despite his first hand experience and evidence from modern day tribes still living in primitive conditions he faced a huge amount of resistance from the scientific community and barely gained recognition for his work a few years before his death at the age of 81. He still gets a lot of posthumous flak from people who refuse to believe that humans inherently use violence as a tool when not restricted by modern morals and societal structures even though that should be plainly evident from literally all of human history right up to this very second. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Chagnon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Chagnon

wharvle 3y ago

I gather it was a trendy view in certain sectors of academia for some time, and possibly in parts of pop culture. In about '04 or '05 one of my poli sci classes assigned War Before Civilization: the Myth of the Peaceful Savage (OUP, 1996, Keeley) and the professor spent much time debunking the notion of the peaceful savage or a time before war, but already then, almost two decades ago, it seemed like a weird thing to focus on because none of the students were aware this was a myth that needed debunking because we hadn't encountered it until that class. I assume it seemed important to the professor because some little academic war (ha, ha) over the issue had wrapped up in the recent past.