Abstract
Evidence is presented that warfare has been pervasive in our past, and this warfare was so deadly and so universal that it must have resulted in significant selection for traits that made people successful in warfare. Small-scale societies or foragers were the primary form of human societies during the deep past, so almost all selection as a consequent of warfare would have taken place in a world of foragers. Evidence concerning this warfare is not readily available and needs to be carefully evaluated. The potential and pitfalls of using information on foragers in the archaeological record and information from historic accounts of living foragers is discussed, as is using chimpanzee behavior as analogue for very early humans. The failure of quixotic searching for peaceful societies as a counter to the arguments presented is also considered. The nature of forager warfare is then characterized to determine the milieu in which this warfare and selection would have taken place. A preliminary look at the evolutionary consequences of past warfare is done by addressing the nature–nurture aspect of human warfare behavior. Evidence for “innate” or deeply emotional behavior derived from warfare along with some other biological consequences of warfare is presented.
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Notes
- 1.
It is ironic that the particular case Mead makes for a peaceful society, and one that she studied, is the Mountain Arapesh of New Guinea. They were far from peaceful in the past and are a classic case of the anthropologist arriving too late to witness warfare first hand even though it had been present only a few years earlier (Roscoe 2003).
- 2.
Although some use the term Inuit for all these Arctic people, it is better to use the term Eskimo for all the circum Arctic people who are linguistically related and reserve Inuit for the Eskimo of Central Canada.
- 3.
They are believed to have had 450–500 people in the 1880s, but by 1923 only about 250 were living in the area. When the population decline began is not clear, but by the time of Rasmussen, if not before, they were well below the presumed long-term carrying capacity.
- 4.
It should be noted that the Eskimo seem to not engage in as much woman-capture as other foragers, so while we would think the scarcity of women would lead to woman-capture raids with adjacent groups, this does not seem to be the case, even for Western Eskimo groups.
- 5.
Raiding parties were about 10–15 individuals, but occasionally larger. Assuming the higher 15, and assuming a male went on 10 raids, they had better than one chance in three of obtaining a wife through raiding. Given the low risk of dying in raids, which is less than 2 % for a man going on 10 raids, the risk/reward ratio is very good.
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LeBlanc, S. (2014). Warfare and Human Nature. In: Shackelford, T., Hansen, R. (eds) The Evolution of Violence. Evolutionary Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9314-3_5
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