Robert Sapolsky has a short but interesting discussion of what leads to the development of warrior-class cultures and what makes them so common in his book "Mon

Robert Sapolsky has a short but interesting discussion of what leads to the development of warrior-class cultures and what makes them so common in his book "Monkeyluv and Other Essays on our Lives as Animals". The chapter is "The Cultural Desert." My brief, gross over simplification is that the local ecology is the driving factor: the warrior cultures (more thar-ish and more monotheistic) develop in deserts, while polytheistic, somewhat more egalitarian cultures develop in rain forests. He says "ours is a planet dominated by the cultural descendants of the desert dwellers. And "most evidence suggests that the rain-forst mindset is more of a hosthouse attribute, less hardy when uprooted." I'm not doing him justice. The essay, and the rest of the book, is classic Sapolsky: well-written, entertaining, and fascinating.