Chapter Enhancing Peace
1. Usa Glazer, Beyond the competition of tears Black-Jewish conflict containment in a New York neighborhood, in D. Fry and K. Bj rkqvist eds. , Cultural Variation in Conflict Resolution Alternatives to Violence, 137-44 Mahwah, N.J. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997 ,- Kenneth Smail, The giving of hostages, Politics and the Life Sciences 16 1997 77-85, 82. 2. Margaret Mead, Alternatives to war, in M. Fried, M. Harris, and R. Murphy eds. , War-. The Anthropology of Armed Conflict and Aggression, 215-28...
Chapter A New Evolutionary Perspective
1. John Archer and Felicity Huntingford, Game theory models and escalation of animal fighting, in M. Potegal and J. Knutson eds. , The Dynamics of Aggression-. Biological and Social Processes in Dyads and Groups, 3-31 Hillsdale, N.J. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994 , for example 10,- Christopher Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior Cambridge Harvard University Press, 1999 Susan Riechert, Game theory and animal contests, in L. Dugatkin and H. Reeve eds. , Game Theory and...
Man the Warrior Fact or Fantasy
For more than 99 percent of the approximately two million years since the emergence of a recognizable human animal, man has been a hunter and gatherer. . . . Questions concerning territorialism, the handling of aggression, social control, property, leadership, the use of space, and many other dimensions are particularly significant in these contexts. To evaluate any of these focal aspects of human behavior without taking into consideration the socioeconomic adaptation that has characterized...
A New Evolutionary Perspective The Nomadic Forager Model
I want to bunt eland, kudu, and gemsbok, but bunting men is what gets you killed. JU 'HOANSI MAN, QUOTED BY RICHARD LEE IN THE IKUNG SAN What are the evolutionary costs and benefits of aggressive behavior Some likely costs include being injured, getting killed, harming relatives if fighting with them, losing friends, taking time and energy away from other necessary pursuits such as finding food or mating, and, among humans, getting yourself expelled from the group.1 A central point is that...
Interdependence and Cooperation
Robert Tonkinson explains that nomadic hunter-gatherer Mardu bands need each other. The Mardu are interdependent for ecological reasons and are well aware of this fact. They strive to maintain positive relations among bands. In the Western Desert, . . . there is an important underlying ecological factor, the irregularity of spread and unreliability of rainfall in a region having no permanent waters. It necessitates a strong cultural stress on the permeability of boundaries and the maintenance...
Seeking Justice The Quest for Fairness
Among the Omaha t his feast occurred when there had been a difference between two tribes and the chiefs wished to make peace. As the guests were seen approaching, all the men who had contributed gifts mounted their horses and rode out to meet the coming tribe, charging upon them as if upon an enemy. The leader bore a pipe prepared for smoking and offered it to the leader of the guests, who, after it was lighted, accepted it. The gifts were then distributed, the feast eaten, and peace concluded...
Warfare and Feuding from a CrossCultural Perspective
In a cross-cultural study of warfare, Carol and Melvin Ember presented their findings on the frequency of war in 186 societies from around the world in two ways first, for all the societies in the sample, and second, for only the societies not pacified by a colonial or national government. For the whole sample, which is called the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample SCCS , warfare was reported as absent or rare in 28 percent of the societies absent meant absent and rare meant less than once in ten...
Time for a Reality Check
Insights about behavior and society during the evolutionary past come from three sources archaeology, primate analogy, and hunter-gatherer analogy. Each method has its strengths and weaknesses. Archaeology's contributions to understanding the past are significant and obvious. Archaeology provides material evidence but unfortunately leaves out much detail. Related to warfare, we have already discussed in Chapter 5 how war leaves an archaeological trail and how the worldwide archaeological record...
Notes to Pages Chapter Setting the Record Straight
1. Richard Alexander, Darwinism and Human Affairs Seattle University of Washington Press, 1979 Richard Alexander, The Biology of Moral Systems New York Aldine de Gruyter, 1987 . 2. Julian Steward, Causal factors and processes in the evolution of pre-farming societies, in R. Lee and I. DeVore eds. , Man the Hunter, 321-34 Chicago Aldine, 1968 , 333-34,- Bruce Knauft, Violence and sociality in human evolution, Current Anthropology 32 1991 391-428, 402,-John Gowdy, Hunter-gatherers and the...
Chapter The Earliest Evidence of War
1. Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson, Demonic Males Apes and the Origin of Human Violence Boston Houghton Mifflin, 1996 , 63, 108-9,- Douglas Fry, Anthropological perspectives on aggression Sex differences and cultural variation, Aggressive Behavior 24 1998 81-95. 2. Douglas Fry, The Human Potential for Peace New York Oxford University Press, 2006 Bruce Bonta and Douglas Fry, Lessons for the rest of us Learning from peaceful societies, in M. Fitzduff and C. Stout eds. , The Psychology of...
Chapter A Macroscopic Anthropological View
1. E. A. Hoebel, Law-ways of the Comanche Indians, in P. Bohannan ed. , Law and Warfare-. Studies in the Anthropology of Conflict, 183-203 Austin University of Texas Press, 1967 , 193,- Jan Brogger, Conflict resolution and the role of the bandit in peasant society, Anthropological Quarterly 41 1968 228-40, 231. 2. Christopher Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior Cambridge Harvard University Press, 1999 . On human flexibility Agustin Fuentes, It's not all sex and...
Chapter Returning to the Evidence
1. Frank Speck, Naskapi The Savage Hunters of the Labrador Peninsula Norman University of Oklahoma Press, 1935 , 13-16. 2. Eleanor Leacock, Seventeenth-century Montagnais social relations and values, in W. Sturtevant gen. ed. , Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 6 Subarctic, 190-95 Washington, D.C. Smithsonian Institution, 1981 , 191. 3. For example, Eleanor Leacock, Women's status in egalitarian society Implications for social evolution, Current Anthropology 19 1978 247-75, 249. 4....
Restraint Among Nomadic Foragers
An examination of conflict and aggression in nomadic hunter-gatherer society, as among animal species, shows that individuals practice a great deal of restraint. Of Yahgan foragers, Martin Gusinde expresses A person will literally foam with rage. . . . Nevertheless, he can muster astonishing self-control when he realizes that he is too weak to stand against his opponent.29 The voting with one's feet approach to conflict, so widely practiced by nomadic foragers, obviously reflects restraint....
Chapter Killer Apes Cannibals and Coprolites
1. Francis Pottenger, The Fight Against Tuberculosis An Autobiography New York Henry Schuman, 1952 , 67,68,69-70, italics added. 2. Bobbi Low, An evolutionary perspective on war, in W. Zimmerman and H. Jacobson eds. , Behavior, Culture, and Conflict in World Politics, 13-55 Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press, 1993 , 13. 3. To offer a brief overview, three broad trends are apparent in the fossil record over the last several million years of human evolution a shift from walking on all fours...
Netsilik Inuit
The Netsilik Inuit are one of many groups in the Central Canadian Arctic that traditionally resided in small nomadic bands with variable membership and weak leadership. In the winter, the Netsilik harpooned seals on the frozen sea, and in the summer, they engaged in fishing and communal caribou hunts.13 They had few material possessions and did not claim exclusive rights to natural resources. Asen Balikci emphasizes that a person had the right to hunt anywhere he pleased the exclusion of others...
Making Amends Penis Touching and Intercourse
Subincision was a critical aspect of initiation into manhood in some Australian societies. In this operation, traditionally conducted with a sharp stone flake knife, the underside of a youth's penis was cut so as to split the urethra all the way to the scrotum. Once his wound healed, the male was considered an adult. Among the Aranda, a penis-touching rite was used to resolve a grievance. This type of rite demonstrated good fellowship and a lack of enmity among men from divergent groups. Each...
Exaggerating War
Wrangham and Peterson are aware that the existence of nonwarring and nonviolent societies contradict their assertions about five million years of lethal aggression, a violent male temperament, and the ubiquity of warfare and violence across time and space. Their solution to this mismatch between the anthropological evidence and their views is to deny the data. As Johan van der Dennen writes, Peaceable preindustrial people constitute a nuisance to most theories of warfare, and they are thus...
The Link Between Warfare and Social Organization
Approximately half the nonwarring cultures listed in Appendix 2 are hunter-gatherer band societies. This observation raises a question Is the presence or absence of warfare related to social organization A number of studies suggests that the answer is yes. Sociopolitical complexity and warfare do go hand in hand. After reviewing cross-cultural studies on this topic, Johan van der Dennen summarizes that one of the most consistent and robust findings is the correlation between 'primitivity' and...
Chapter Overlooked and Underappreciated
1. Douglas Fry, Conflict management in cross-cultural perspective, in F. Aureli and F. de Waal eds. , Natural Conflict Resolution, 334-51 Berkeley University of California Press, 2000 ,- Agustin Fuentes, It's not all sex and violence Integrated anthropology and the role of cooperation and social complexity in human evolution, American Anthropologist 106 2004 710-18, 716. 2. S. Gardner and H. Resnik, Violence among youth Origins and a framework for prevention, in R. Hampton, P. Jenkins, and T....
Chapter Do Nonwarring Societies Actually Exist
1. Michael Ghiglieri, The Dark Side of Man Tracing the Origins of Male Violence Reading, Mass. Perseus, 1999 , 246,- David Buss, Evolutionary Psychology The New Science of the Mind Boston Allyn and Bacon, 1999 , 298 Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson, Demonic Males Apes and the Origin of Human Violence Boston Houghton Mifflin, 1996 , 63,- see also David Buss, The Murderer Next Door Why the Mind Is Designed to Kill New York Penguin Press, 2005 , 5, 9, 11, 231, 234-35,- Steven LeBlanc with K....
Environmental Stress and the Birth of Anasazi War
The Anasazi, or Ancestral Pueblo, were the prehistoric ancestors of the current Pueblo people of the American Southwest. Jonathan Haas explains that the chronological, palaeo-environmental and archaeological records from the south-west provide a level of detail that allows us to see both the presence and absence of prehistoric warfare, and to examine closely the causes, nature and evolution of warfare on local and regional levels.18 The transition from nomadic foraging to settled farming took...
Siriono of Bolivia
Numbering about two thousand people at the time they were studied, the semi-nomadic Siriono inhabit a tropical area in Bolivia.7 They have few material possessions. Whereas good hunters have slightly higher status than average, Siriono society is basically egalitarian. Allan Holmberg reports that a form of chieftainship does exist, but the prerogatives of this office are few. Best hunter might be a better term than chief, for little attention is paid to what is said by a chief and the so-called...
Killer Apes and Cannibals
In 1925 a young anatomy professor, Raymond Dart, reported the discovery of an extraordinary fossil skull from a South African limestone quarry at Taung.3 The specimen was clearly a primate juvenile. The face and most of the lower jaw were intact, and in an extraordinary stroke of good fortune minerals had entered the brain case during fossilization and hardened to form a cast of the brain. Dart realized that the 'Taung child fossil showed both apelike and humanlike features, gave it the...
Ancient Oaxaca From Nomadic Foraging to Warring State
Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus report no evidence for group conflict among the small nomadic bands that foraged in the Valley of Oaxaca in southern Mexico between 10,000 and 4000 BP. Toward the end of this period, the transition from hunting and gathering to sedentary villages was under way. By 2800 to 2450 BP, three rival chiefly centers existed in the Valley of Oaxaca, buffered Figure 5.2 By the time of Christ, Zapotec civilization was already flourishing in the Oaxacan highlands of Mexico....
Overlooked and Underappreciated The Human Potential for Peace
In the Waur view, self-control over violent aggressive impulses, compassion for children, and acceptance of the responsibility to share material wealth are all basic attributes of human beings. EMIL1ENNE IRELAND, CEREBRAL SAVAGE Although war and other types of violence may be very noticeable, a close examination of cross-cultural data reveals that people usually deal with conflict without violence. Humans have a solid capacity for getting along with each other peacefully, preventing physical...
Assumptions Come Tumbling Down
Now Jericho was shut up inside and out because of the Israelites,- no one came out and no one went in. . . . As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpets, they raised a great shout, and the wall fell down flat,- so the people charged straight ahead into the city and captured it. Then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys. Joshua 6 1, 20-21 The famous walls of Jericho have been generally accepted...
War and Social Organization From Nomadic Bands to Modern States
The Batek abhor interpersonal violence and have generally fled from their enemies rather than fighting back. I once asked a Batek man why their ancestors had not shot the Malay slave-raiders, who plagued them until the 1920s. . .with poisoned blowpipe darts. His shocked answer was Because it would kill them KIRK ENDICOTT, PROPERTY, POWER AND CONFLICT AMONG THE BATEK OF MALAYSIA In the midst of World War II, Quincy Wright published a magnum opus called The Study of War. The two-volume work,...
Nonwarring Societies
While researching this book, I compiled a list of cultures that were nonwarring according to the foregoing definition of war see Appendix 2 .19 I looked for direct ethnographic statements to the effect that a culture lacks war, that a people do not engage in warfare, or that the members of a society respond to threats from other groups by moving elsewhere rather than fighting, and so on. The Semai of Malaysia are a good example Figure 2.1 . Nonviolence characterizes daily life. They do not war...
Paliyan of India
The Paliyan of southern India have a population of over three thousand. Some Paliyan now live in settled communities, but others remain in mobile foraging bands, usually between fifteen and thirty individuals in size. To focus on the nomadic bands that move camp every few days, the membership of a Paliyan band is always in flux.15 Peter Gardner reports that nomadic Paliyan subsist totally on the foods they forage, which consist of over one hundred species of plants and animals, with wild yams...
Juhoansi
For many years, anthropologists have referred to the Ju 'hoansi of the Kalahari Desert in Africa as the Kung, iKung, iKung San, or iKung Bushmen. Richard Lee suggests that it is more respectful to call the people by the name they use for themselves, Ju 'hoansi, which is pronounced zhu-twasi and means real people.27 Our focus here is on the traditional nomadic hunter-gathering lifestyle of the Ju 'hoansi, especially on the populations in the vicinity of Dobe and Nyae Nyae because they have been...
Bursting the WarriorsHaveMoreKids Bubble
It has become almost obligatory to mention the South American Yanomamo in any evolutionary discussion of warfare. The fact that the Yanomamo are tribal horticulturalists, not nomadic hunter- gatherers, rarely enters the picture. Napoleon Chagnon has referred to the Yanomamo as our contemporary ancestors. David Buss sees Yanomamo warfare as highlighting key themes in the evolution of human aggression. And some proponents of the man the warrior view discuss the Yanomamo in support of their...