Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id RAA16338 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 10 Sep 2001 17:00:43 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3102A6CFB4@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: On the origin of .... war Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 16:26:18 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain X-Filter-Info: UoS MailScan 0.1 [D 1] Sender: fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Hi Philip & Ted,
I think one straightforward environmental reason for the presumed lack of
war prior to 12,000 (I'll come back to the definitional problem of that in a
moment), has to do with how humans lived back then.
IIRC c12,000 years ago is about the time estimates suggest farming began.
Prior to farming there were only hunter-gatherers living in relatively small
bands, so the notion of war in hunter-gatherer terms probably would mean
little more that terratorial conflicts between small groups. Great apes
occasionally go on raiding parties to neighbouring troops (some have
suggested the parallels to war in those raids), so one might imagine raids
of one group on another, but nothing of the scale of war.
A few thousand years after farming appeared pretty sizeable conglomerations
of people had begun to emerge in the first cities, and here one has both
the critical mass of people, and probably the kind of resources that people
would fight in large numbers to take/protect, and as such war.
Of course, we need to define 'war' properly, and I suppose the presumption
being made is of large scale conflict, of mass battles of hundreds/thousands
of people. It is very unlikely given the small size of hunter-gatherer
groups that such things as war occured. But again, terratorial conflicts do
occur, must have occured, and occur in other species also.
Of course some, like Graham Hancock, would argue that there was a great
global civilisation c12,000 years ago that some call Atlantis (not Hancock
though), and maybe that's why there were no wars because it was a time of
great peace, blah, blah, blah....
But of course we don't take newage ideas seriously on this list.
-- The University of Stirling is a university established in Scotland by charter at Stirling, FK9 4LA. Privileged/Confidential Information may be contained in this message. If you are not the addressee indicated in this message (or responsible for delivery of the message to such person), you may not disclose, copy or deliver this message to anyone and any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. In such case, you should destroy this message and kindly notify the sender by reply email. Please advise immediately if you or your employer do not consent to Internet email for messages of this kind. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of the University of Stirling shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by it.=============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Sep 10 2001 - 17:05:32 BST