Proving communal warfare among hunter-gatherers: The quasi-rousseauan error

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#21

Have you seen this new PBS show “The First Peoples” (http://www.pbs.org/first-peoples/episodes/)? What I could grasp in relation to violence is that there were no issues among the same group, for example in the first immigrations from northern asia to the american continent. But when later immigrations met older immigrants, they found evidence of conflicts, if not total annihilation of the older ones by hand of the newer ones (I think the older ones were the first ones ap. 15k years ago, and the newer ones 8k years ago).

But in another episode (africa’s first people) they show a peaceful “meeting” of african people moving north and neanderthals moving south. I don’t know why they were so sure about peaceful meetings (maybe interbreedings, lack of evidence of conflict, etc)

Could the general rule to a conflict be to have at least two ethnic groups meet, with an unfair balance of power (paleolithic weapons, skills, body size, headcount) between them, and resources under the control of the weakest? I see this happening every time in human history, and maybe pre-history.

Could it be reasonable to hypthesize that what drived early human migrations were displacements for loosing territorial/resource conflicts with stronger groups that stayed in place? The bering strait migrations were all steps into colder and harder climates before finding a way south after crossing to america, what else could have driven such efforts? If it happened, that peaceful groups escaped conflictive ones, it makes sense that they had peaceful meetings when they met, or at least, they were equally strong/weak and a peaceful meeting was the smartest choice.

Last… anyone know if there ever were a case, or evidence of, a group that outpowered another one, wich was in posession of resources needed by the first, but did not engage them and took another course of action but to take it by force?

Thanks a lot!

#22

I am curious as to why nobody in this discussion mentioned the evidence of communal violence among the Australian Aborigines detailed in this essay. It seems to be the most convincing evidence of warfare among hunter-gatherers that was not influenced by delayed-return societies. Personally, I don’t feel that the question of warfare among hunter-gatherers is so crucial. The question is only crucial if you hold an idealistic vision of “the primitive” that drives your opposition to civilization. I believe that communal violence/warfare was probably common among many, if not most, prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies. What’s crucial is that we develop practices that prevent or minimize homicide, feuding and communal violence in the future. As the essay concludes…

The potential for both war and peace is embedded in us. The diverse human behavioral toolkit comprises a variety of major tools, geared for violent conflict, peaceful competition, and cooperation, as well as avoidance. Although activated interchangeably and conjointly in response to overall environmental and socio-cultural conditions, these behavioral strategies are not purely learned cultural forms. This naïve nature-nurture dichotomy overlooks the heavy and complex biological machinery that is necessary for the working of each of these behavioral strategies and the interplay between them. Certainly, these deep evolution-shaped patterns are variably calibrated to particular conditions through social learning. However, the reason why they are there, very close under our skin and readily activated, is that they were all very handy during our long evolutionary past. They all proved highly advantageous, thereby becoming part and parcel of our biological equipment. Indeed, among hunter-gatherers, as later in history, all these behavioral strategies, both violent and peaceful, were interchangeably and variably employed.

#23

I recall at least a couple lines of critiques of various Australian ethnographies. @primalwar, do any spring to mind that might save me from doing additional research?

#24

Attempting to limit the relevance of the entire line of inquiry seems myopic. I’m not sure what “crucial” is intended to mean, but it seems to lead the preceding conversation astray. I think the question is important and relevant, regardless of its perceived cruciality. It’s important and relevant when cultural narratives are dominated by Hobbesian notions of the superiority of the present – of life in the Leviathan. And even you, a self-described anarchist, open the door to this…

That perspective is a control orientation, and it’s use to justify and normalize control – again, since Hobbes. The normalization project is what Pinker is up to in The Better Angels of Our Nature, and what Obama was up to in his [cough] Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:

War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease – the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences.

So if we’re to toss around the question’s cruciality, particularly if we’re setting up a strict dichotomy, we have to also have to question its cruciality to the side using it to promote the necessity of control as a means to reduce war.

#25

Attempting to limit the relevance of the entire line of inquiry seems myopic. I’m not sure what “crucial” is intended to mean, but it seems to lead the preceding conversation astray. I think the question is important and relevant, regardless of its perceived cruciality. It’s important and relevant when cultural narratives are dominated by Hobbesian notions of the superiority of the present – of life in the Leviathan. And even you, a self-described anarchist, open the door to this…

Crucial is intended to mean that the question of warfare among hunter-gatherers seems to be decisive for those who idealize the primitive past. I agree that question is relevant and important, but not so important that I’m willing to perform all kinds of intellectual gymnastics to arrive at the answer I desire.

That perspective is a control orientation, and it’s use to justify and normalize control – again, since Hobbes.

That sounds a lot like a slippery slope argument. I am not trying to justify or normalize coercive, authoritarian domination if that’s what you mean by control. I am implying that there need to be practices in place to foster dispute and conflict resolution. There should also be mores that proscribe aggression. Also, if by “control” you mean any form of social control, it seems that, so long as humans are social or gregarious animals, there will always be some degree of social control. Shaming and shunning are powerful ways to back the proscription against the initiation of aggression without the use of coercive institutions.

The normalization project is what Pinker is up to in The Better Angels of Our Nature, and what Obama was up to in his [cough] Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:

War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease – the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences.

So if we’re to toss around the question’s cruciality, particularly if we’re setting up a strict dichotomy, we have to also have to question its cruciality to the side using it to promote the necessity of control as a means to reduce war.

I have personally already questioned the importance of the Hobbesian worldview to the side using it to justify formal social control and centralized government. I believe it is crucial to the Hobbesians because it would seem to justify the formal social control that gives them a sense of security or gives them the power to control their fellows through the initiation of force.

#26

Nice recent review by John Horgan, including:

“…anthropologists Jonathan Haas and Matthew Piscitelli have carried out an exhaustive review of hominid remains over 10,000 years old, including more than 2,900 skeletons from over 400 different sites. Excluding the Jebel Sahaba skeletons, Haas and Piscitelli found only four skeletons bearing signs of violence.”

Hm… 0.138% of old hominin skeletal remains showing signs of violent death doesn’t seem like enough to justify beginning a conversation about ancestral war, let alone making the evolutionary roots of war a conclusion.

But that’s only one of several arguments Horgan provided against the savagery meme.

But… but… muh Yanomamiiiiiiii… iii… iiii…

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#27

First time signing in here in ages, so sorry for the necrobump on this.
Australian Aborigines are often grouped as nomadic immediate return hunter-gatherers, but the situation is far more complicated than that. The religious-social culture throughout aboriginal Australia was extremely connected. So while you had most societies living along IR HG lines, the societies in the tropical regions and along the coastal areas were far more along DR lines and stored fish.
That their culture was largely more related to DR societies, including ritualized violence, is directly related to those DR ties, but also their proximity to Papua New Guinea where warring horticulturalists were the norm (and IR HGs would take up warfare themselves in retaliation against warring horticultural neighbors). But to add to this, there is extensive data relating to Aboriginal contact by the mid-1600s with Macassan sea cucumber fishers who they distilled a ton of their culture from (drinking, smoking, and patriarchal values to name a few). All of which became a part of aboriginal identity throughout the violence of contact and conquest.
If anything, they are a better example of how the IR/DR critique works and often overlooked. Even Woodburn was scratching his head over it when he wrote ‘Egalitarian Societies’ in 1980.

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