Re: On the origin of .... war

From: William Benzon (bbenzon@mindspring.com)
Date: Mon Sep 10 2001 - 18:03:07 BST

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    Subject: Re: On the origin of .... war
    From: William Benzon <bbenzon@mindspring.com>
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    on 9/10/01 11:26 AM, Vincent Campbell at v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk wrote:

    [snip]

    >
    > 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.

    Keeley (1996) does this and concludes that preliterate cultures war and are
    quite violent, with very high rates of death and the hands of other people.
    But, being very small-scale societies, they couldn't field large armies or
    sustain conflict over the course of weeks and months or even years.

    Keeley, l. H. (1996). War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful
    Savage. New York, Oxford University Press.

    -- 
    

    William L. Benzon 708 Jersey Avenue, Apt. 2A Jersey City, NJ 07302 201 217-1010

    "you won't get a wild heroic ride to heaven on pretty little sounds"--george ives

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