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Watching that battle, my mind went immediately to Dodge Ball. Play that simulates perhaps our most natural type of group fighting.
by sethammons 19d ago
Watching that battle, my mind went immediately to Dodge Ball. Play that simulates perhaps our most natural type of group fighting.
- thaumasiotes 19d agoOur most natural type of group fighting is a bunch of guys raiding a rival settlement while everyone is asleep and killing them in their beds. Fighting always works better when only your side is doing it.
- Der_Einzige 19d agoYou watched Apocalypto recently
- estearum 19d agoMost intra-species fighting is not designed to end in murder, so this seems like a pretty bold claim. Got any research to back it up?
- hermitcrab 19d ago>Most intra-species fighting is not designed to end in murder That depends a lot on scarcity. If you are a male and you only get one chance at mating, you will probably fight to the death. If you will get plenty of other chances, then you might accept the results of a ritualised non-lethal combat (e.g. giraffes headbutting each other, rather than kicking). Its just evolution + game theory.
- amunozo 19d agoIs this backed by some anthropological real world examples, or are you just extrapolating theories?
- hermitcrab 19d agoI read it in an article that was talking about the application of game theory to biology/evolution and I believe it is well supported by evidence. But I can't remember the source.
- hermitcrab 19d ago[dead]
- HarHarVeryFunny 19d agoWhat animal species often offers males only one chance of mating ?! It's common among animal species for males to fight over females, but it's highly uncommon for them to fight to the death, because that is not evolutionary adaptive - it risks the individual as well as the genetic diversity of the group/species (and evolution is selecting for survival of the species, not the individual).
- hilariously 19d agoobligate male death happens, but usually in things like spiders after mating, so there's a few examples for you
- HarHarVeryFunny 19d agoFighting to the death and mating are not the same! There are a number of species where the female eats the male after mating - examples such as praying mantis and octopus. Both octopus males and females die after mating, the female after having protected the eggs, so it makes sense that she sometimes eats the male too (who is going to die anyway). But, examples like this are relatively rare, and for species specific reasons.
- lightedman 19d ago"What animal species often offers males only one chance of mating ?!" "Fighting to the death and mating are not the same!" Your original question and your current statement are in confliction. Pick one.
- HarHarVeryFunny 19d ago> If you are a male and you only get one chance at mating, you will probably fight to the death This is the comment I was responding to. The question was about pre-mating death matches between males, not post-mating snacking behavior of females.
- articulatepang 19d ago
- stronglikedan 19d agoYes, in the documentary The Walking Dead, when Rick's team attacked Negan's team while they were sleeping.
- cm2012 19d agoIntra-species dominance is very different from group raiding. Chimps team up to slaughter other chimps all the time. Raid style warfare was the norm for humans
- vintermann 19d agoSure, you can go in to kill everyone, and sometimes they did, but only when they were OK with almost as many of their own group dying as the enemy. There's no big technological or tactical advantage to be had in the stone age. Maybe, if you're really lucky, only one of you die for every two of theirs? (Attacking them in their beds, pah, don't you think maybe the neighboring tribe thought about that and had someone on watch?)
- cm2012 19d agoAttack in beds was very common. Sneak in canoes, kill as many as you can before the enemy regroups, canoe away as the sun comes up.
- glint 19d ago"The Cutting-Off Way: Indigenous Warfare in Eastern North America, 1500-1800" by Wayne Lee is a good read that describes a similar kind of warfare. It doesn't necessarily prove (nor does it set out to prove) that all non-industrial warfare followed this model but it does provide decent evidence for population-limited societies generally preferring deadly ambush to pitched battle.
- vintermann 19d agoWhen running away is a big part of the tactic, it's not a "kill everyone" tactic. You don't have the advantage for long. And even if you did succeed, the next tribe over could just as easily do the same to you (and they probably would, seeing what you're like), so there's a strong reason to develop norms, rules of engagement limiting this sort of thing.
- 18d ago
- brewcejener 19d ago[dead]
- duxup 18d agoI grew up in a small-ish town and when there was a construction site there was inevitably a large pile of dirt somewhere nearby. Often 10 or more feet tall. If construction wasn't occurring it would be occupied by neighborhood kids digging, building dirt bike tracks and most importantly building walls / battlements. Various neighborhood kids would take the dirt fort and try to hold it against the other neighborhood kids who came and ... everyone threw "dirt clods" at each other. A few rules like "no rocks" were understood. Otherwise the battle resumed every day the workers weren't working on the dirt pile... it was glorious. Win or lose you returned home each day dirty as could be, and very happy you did your duty that day alongside your friends from the neighborhood. That is a long way of saying that sometimes I see some strange "tribal" stuff that seems weird to me, and actually no I kinda get it.