Historical anthropologist challenges conventional wisdom about human nature and violence. By April M. Short
War and all of its brutality is attention-grabbing and memorable. Recollections of war and conquests tend to stick around and take up the spotlight in historical records. However, a war-centered narrative paints an incomplete picture of human history—and human nature. While there is a popular opinion in the anthropological community that war is an evolutionary, inborn tendency of humans, there is also pushback to that theory. There is a growing argument for a human history that predates war altogether and further points out that war is not innate to human nature, but instead, is a social and cultural development that begins at certain points around the globe.
However, once war takes place, it tends to spread, explains
historical anthropologist R. Brian Ferguson, who has spent more than 40 years
researching the origins of war. Ferguson, a professor of anthropology at
Rutgers University, notes that war is not the same thing as interpersonal
violence or homicide. War implies organized, armed conflict and killing
sanctioned by society and carried out by members of one group against members
of another group. Ferguson argues that current evidence suggests that war was
not always present but began as a result of societal changes—with evidence of
war's origins appearing at widely varying timestamps in different locations
around the world. He estimates that the earliest signs of war appear between
10,000 B.C., or 12,000 years ago.
"But in some areas of the world you don't see any signs
of war develop until much more recently," he says, noting that in both the
U.S. Southwest and Great Plains there is no evidence of war until around 2,000
years ago…
https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/human-nature-and-violence/
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