There seems to be lots of confusion on the history of war, so let me try to clarify. Most confusion comes from seeking a one-way trend, as in “is there more or less war than in ancient times?” Problem is: overall, warfare increased, then decreased.
Between 1998 and 2009, John Mitani witnessed 18 murders firsthand, and found circumstantial evidence for three more. But no police were ever called, for these killers were all chimpanzees, from the Ngogo community in Uganda’s Kibale National Park.Groups of chimps, mostly male, will mount lengthy aggressive campaigns against individuals from other groups, attacking them en masse and beating them to death. After the chimps picked off their neighbours, they eventually took over their territory. It seems that chimps kill for land.The vast majority of these murders were carried out by groups of Ngogo males on patrol. These patrols are stern, single-file affairs. Males march along the borders of their territories, scanning for other chimps and neither feeding nor socialising. They monitor the northeastern part of their territory with particular fervour and indeed, 13 of their 21 kills took place here.Of these victims, 4 were adult males and 9 were youngsters. That may seem like a small number, but for chimps, these are severe losses. They were even higher (by around 5 to 17 times) than the death rates due to violence between groups of human hunter-gatherers.And because of their aggressive tactics, they have increased the size of their territory by some 22%, expanding into the northeast area that their neighbours once called home. With murder came new real estate to colonise.
Two drunken Indian fishermen washed up on North Sentinel Island a few years ago, which is inhabited by an Andamanese tribe that has resisted all contact. They were immediately killed by the natives.
Alex: percentages matter, at least from the point of view of an individual. If the number, N, of casualties tends to infinity but the fraction f tends to zero, then eventually the probability of you dying in a war becomes less than the probability of you dying of hiccups.
"Yes, most of the “tribal” societies that anthropologists study have high rates of war. But most of these are intermediate forms between very distant ancestors and very modern societies, with many relatively modern features. So high rates of war in such tribes does not imply that our very distant ancestors had such high rates."
Most seem to think it does. We still have uncontacted tribes out there - and so the level of "modernisation" of tribes goes down pretty low. We can still see their body paint and weaponry from the air.
The most intense war scenario was herders attacking farmers. Herders were hard to attack because they could just retreat with their herds, and could concentrate their forces. Farmers, in contrast, could not move or concentrate and so were easy targets. Farmers formed the largest scale political organizations to defend against herder attacks.
The trend toward non-violence is even more remarkable given the enormously increased capacity for desctruction - at least at the level of the nation-state.
After all, the problem with making war on farmers is that you still have to work the field
Right again. England had lots of war among the highest ranks through the 1640s, but it had remarkably little effect on the lower ranks, other than whom they paid rents to and whom they looked up to.
Right. Hollywood Western movies frequently illustrated the differences between herdsman (cowboys) and farmers. The cowboys lived in a Hobbesian world, but by the end of the movie, the good sheriff had made the place safe for farmers. He rides off into the Western sunset to find a place still Hobbesian enough to need him.
"However, these figures should be viewed skeptically as the decline of 36 million was in registered population, due to the breakdown of the census system."
War is hell on farming. But isn't it more common in herding societies (not the same as hunter-gatherers or foragers) than farming societies?
After all, the problem with making war on farmers is that you still have to work the field, and all that war is likely to destroy crops. Sure, you can come by at harvest time, but it still seems most efficient to leave the farmers alive but establish suzerainty or otherwise get the crops via taxation.
On the other hand, in a herding society, one's entire possessions are always at risk to a cattle raid or some such. At literally any time in the year, you can steal away all that someone has, in a way that you can't seize and take away land.
That's why Nisbett and Cohen say they found a link between traditional herding societies and violence.
Perhaps you weren't distinguishing farming from herding?
Chimpanzees murder for land
Between 1998 and 2009, John Mitani witnessed 18 murders firsthand, and found circumstantial evidence for three more. But no police were ever called, for these killers were all chimpanzees, from the Ngogo community in Uganda’s Kibale National Park.Groups of chimps, mostly male, will mount lengthy aggressive campaigns against individuals from other groups, attacking them en masse and beating them to death. After the chimps picked off their neighbours, they eventually took over their territory. It seems that chimps kill for land.The vast majority of these murders were carried out by groups of Ngogo males on patrol. These patrols are stern, single-file affairs. Males march along the borders of their territories, scanning for other chimps and neither feeding nor socialising. They monitor the northeastern part of their territory with particular fervour and indeed, 13 of their 21 kills took place here.Of these victims, 4 were adult males and 9 were youngsters. That may seem like a small number, but for chimps, these are severe losses. They were even higher (by around 5 to 17 times) than the death rates due to violence between groups of human hunter-gatherers.And because of their aggressive tactics, they have increased the size of their territory by some 22%, expanding into the northeast area that their neighbours once called home. With murder came new real estate to colonise.
Two drunken Indian fishermen washed up on North Sentinel Island a few years ago, which is inhabited by an Andamanese tribe that has resisted all contact. They were immediately killed by the natives.
Alex: percentages matter, at least from the point of view of an individual. If the number, N, of casualties tends to infinity but the fraction f tends to zero, then eventually the probability of you dying in a war becomes less than the probability of you dying of hiccups.
This is the origin of Peter Turchin's cliodynamics model of empire formation.
http://www.eeb.uconn.edu/pe...
Neither body paint nor bows necessarily imply a high rate of warfare. Bows are not specialized weapons for killing people.
"Yes, most of the “tribal” societies that anthropologists study have high rates of war. But most of these are intermediate forms between very distant ancestors and very modern societies, with many relatively modern features. So high rates of war in such tribes does not imply that our very distant ancestors had such high rates."
Most seem to think it does. We still have uncontacted tribes out there - and so the level of "modernisation" of tribes goes down pretty low. We can still see their body paint and weaponry from the air.
Franz Oppenheimer pointed to that as the origin of the State.
The most intense war scenario was herders attacking farmers. Herders were hard to attack because they could just retreat with their herds, and could concentrate their forces. Farmers, in contrast, could not move or concentrate and so were easy targets. Farmers formed the largest scale political organizations to defend against herder attacks.
The trend toward non-violence is even more remarkable given the enormously increased capacity for desctruction - at least at the level of the nation-state.
After all, the problem with making war on farmers is that you still have to work the field
Right again. England had lots of war among the highest ranks through the 1640s, but it had remarkably little effect on the lower ranks, other than whom they paid rents to and whom they looked up to.
Right. Hollywood Western movies frequently illustrated the differences between herdsman (cowboys) and farmers. The cowboys lived in a Hobbesian world, but by the end of the movie, the good sheriff had made the place safe for farmers. He rides off into the Western sunset to find a place still Hobbesian enough to need him.
From that article:
"However, these figures should be viewed skeptically as the decline of 36 million was in registered population, due to the breakdown of the census system."
War is most distinctly, a farmer’s hell.
War is hell on farming. But isn't it more common in herding societies (not the same as hunter-gatherers or foragers) than farming societies?
After all, the problem with making war on farmers is that you still have to work the field, and all that war is likely to destroy crops. Sure, you can come by at harvest time, but it still seems most efficient to leave the farmers alive but establish suzerainty or otherwise get the crops via taxation.
On the other hand, in a herding society, one's entire possessions are always at risk to a cattle raid or some such. At literally any time in the year, you can steal away all that someone has, in a way that you can't seize and take away land.
That's why Nisbett and Cohen say they found a link between traditional herding societies and violence.
Perhaps you weren't distinguishing farming from herding?
Great point.
I think "devastating" implies percentages matter more, at least more than the specific alternative of raw number of human lives lost.
It's not obvious that percentages matter here more than the raw number of human lives lost.