BOOK REVIEW ESSAY:

Otterbein, Keith F. (2004) How War Began. College Station: Texas A&M Press.
ISBN: 1-58544-330-1, xv + 292 pages.

Fry, Douglas P. (2006) The Human Potential for Peace: An anthropological

challenge to assumptions about war and violence. New York: Oxford University
Press. ISBN 0-19-518178-6, xvii + 365 pages.

Gat, Azar (2006) War in Human Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN
0-19-926213-6, xv + 822 pages.

by J.M.G. van der Dennen (University of Groningen, the Netherlands)

Introduction

Keith F. Otterbein is a professor of anthropology at the University of Buffalo, State

University of New York, and a director of the Human Relations Area Files. He has
written three books and numerous articles on warfare and feuding in preliterate
(hunting-and-gathering and tribal) societies.

Douglas P. Fry is a docent in the Developmental Psychology Program at Åbo

Akademi University in Finland and an adjunct research scientist in the Bureau of
Applied Research in Anthropology at the University of Arizona. He has written
extensively on aggression, conflict, and conflict resolution from various theoretical
perspectives. He is coeditor, with Graham Kemp, of Keeping the Peace: Conflict
Resolution and Peaceful Societies around the World (2004) and coeditor, with Kaj
Björkqvist, of Cultural Variation in Conflict Resolution: Alternatives to Violence
(1997).

Azar Gat is Ezer Weitzman Professor of National Security in the Department of

Political Science at Tel Aviv University. He has published widely in the field of
military history and strategy, including A History of Military Thought: From the
Enlightenment to the Cold War (2001), and has held research and teaching positions
at Freiburg, Oxford, Yale, Ohio State and Georgetown Universities.

HOW WAR BEGAN

Otterbein’s main argument is that warfare had two separate origins and developed
along two different paths. The hunting of large game animals was critical to the
development of the first path. Early hunters working as a group in pursuit of game
sometimes engaged in attacks upon members of competing groups of hunters; they
devised a mode of warfare based upon ambushes and lines. Hunting and warfare went
hand-in-hand. More people were competing for the game with better weapons and
hunting tactics. Once the extinction of many large animals began, the early hunters
turned to small game procurement and developed a greater reliance upon gathering
wild plant food. The frequency of warfare declined, and, Otterbein believes, it did so
rapidly.

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At the origin of the second path were foragers who did little hunting but depended
largely upon gathering for subsistence, became sedentary, and then domesticated
plants. But the first people to domesticate plants did not have war, and they did not
have war because they had ceased to be hunters of large game. Intergroup aggression
was absent among these early agriculturalists. The first states developed only in these
regions, but once city-states arose, a mode of warfare based upon battles and siege
operations sprang forth. The first people to develop states did not have war until they
had centralized political systems. Thus, warfare cannot be the cause of pristine state
formation (pp. 10-11, 13, 15).

Otterbein has formerly already (2000) distinguished between hawks and doves.
Hawks are those scholars who argue that war existed in early human history; doves
are those scholars who argue that war arose only when states developed (This is in
reality the umptiest variant of the Hobbes-Rousseau controversy, without Otterbein
mentioning it). “I am in both the hawk and dove camp. My argument for sporadic
early warfare and intense warfare in the late Upper Paleolithic places me with the
hawks. My argument for long periods of peace among settled gatherers and early
agriculturalists places me with the doves… I believe that my synthesis takes the
essence of each approach and combines the two into a satisfying theory” (p. xiii).
This joining of the two perspectives, that early hunters engaged in warfare, while
early agriculturalists did not, is, Otterbein believes, a synthesis worthy of serious
consideration. It resolves the dispute between the hawks and doves by bringing the
two perspectives together (p. 220).
Not everybody is happy with Otterbein’s proposed synthesis: In a brief review Keeley
(2006: 261) writes: “This book’s dual theses violate Occam’s Razor… Otterbein’s
dual-origin hypothesis is contrary to the known facts of world prehistory”.

The lengthy discussion of hunting in How War Began suggests four possible reasons
why hunting and warfare are related: Hunters have weapons that are likely to be
suitable for use in warfare; hunting itself involves searching for and killing prey; if
seeking prey involves the coordinated activities of hunters, a quasi-military
organization has been created; and hunters, particularly hunters of large herd animals,
may range over a vast region and come in contact with other peoples who also range
over a part of the territory and do not wish to share it. The first three reasons stem
directly from Otterbein’s earlier research on the evolution of war, where he focused
on weapons, tactics, and military organizations.
Thus, Otterbein claims, based on his previous macroquantitative research, that hunter-
gatherer bands that practice the hunting of large animals are more likely to engage in
warfare frequently (p. 89).
Thoden van Velzen & van Wetering (1960) argued that a fraternal interest group,
which is a power group of related males, resorts to aggression when there is a threat to
the interests of one of its members; in societies with power groups, any act of violence
will be followed by another act of violence, thereby eliciting a chain reaction. In the
ethnographic record, a custom known as patrilocal marital residence, which results in
wives living in their husbands’ local groups, results in related males residing near
each other. This situation is the genesis of fraternal interest groups. The individual
who is a member of a fraternal interest group acts with the assurance that his group of
kinsmen is ready to support him and his interests through thick and thin. Thus, any
individual act of violence can lead to conflict between fraternal interest groups, and
much aggression within the society can be attributed to the power groups and their

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struggles for power. “Fraternal interest groups, weapons, and hunting form a complex
– given its ancient origin it can be called the eternal triangle” (p. 62).

A summary of what was learned about the evolution of the pristine state, according to
Otterbein, looks as follows:
1. At the village level there are kinship groups with leaders, one of whom is the
village headmen. There is no war. There are no military organizations.
2. At the minimal chiefdom level, Stage I, the village headman becomes a chief.
There is still no war.
3. At the typical chiefdom level, Stage II, major changes occur: stratification based on
wealth; conflicts between the chief and other village leaders may turn violent;
assassinations and raids upon domiciles take place. War between chiefdoms, however,
does not occur.
4. At the maximal chiefdom or inchoate early state level, Stage III, the chief becomes
a despot. Human sacrifice of rivals, lower class members, and, later, war captives is
likely to occur in a public setting as a way to emphasize the power of the emergent
state and its ruler. Armies led by the chief and composed of his followers and other
members of the upper class constitute a formidable fighting force. Wars against
neighboring maximal chiefdoms take place. This situation is the second origin of war.
Once conquests begin, a typical early state arises.
5. At the typical early state level, Stage IV, the chief becomes a king. The king heads
a military aristocracy. Lower class males are conscripted into the military
organization. The large armies engage in battles with opposing sides facing each
other. A new basic pattern of warfare develops that is based upon line battles and
siege operations. These wars between culturally similar peoples, may continue for
years before one kingdom is able to rush the other. The final outcome is likely to be
an even larger kingdom. The typical early state grows in terms of both territorial size
and population. Eventually war chariots and an integrated tactical force, consisting of
infantry, cavalry, and artillery, appear. The king now embarks on campaigns to
conquer non-state peoples of other cultures.
6. At the mature state level, the monarchy continues, but despotism no longer
characterizes internal relationships. A well-developed bureaucracy controls the affairs
of the kingdom. A judicial system with laws develops. Conquered peoples, as well as
culturally different people choosing to live under the state’s protection, transform the
polity into an empire. Alliances for trade and war may be formed with other states and
empires. Wars between combined armies characterize the mature state level in
sociopolitical evolution.
Otterbein illustrates these six stages by case studies of four pristine states, the Zapotec
(Meso-America), the Chavin/Moche (South-America), Uruk/Sumer (Mesopotamia),
and Hsia/Shang (China). Otterbein does not consider Nubia and Egypt to be pristine
states, unlike Cioffi-Revilla (1996, 2000), who defends the so-called ‘pleogenesis’ or
multiple-invention theory of the origin of war, which states that war has been
‘invented’ independently in these ‘protobellic’ areas.
Otterbein thus identifies an evolutionary sequence that goes from no war, to internal
conflict, to combat between elite warriors, to battles between massed infantry – a
sequence that pertains only to the development of pristine states.
Once the idea of statehood developed, the idea could diffuse within the region to
agricultural villagers and herding peoples. If those villagers and herders had the
potential to produce a surplus, they would likely become states – secondary states. If
not, they would become tribes. This is another idiosyncratic and unorthodox

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Otterbeinian idea: tribes are not an intermediate sociocultural-evolutionary level
between band-level societies and chiefdoms/states, as is the conventional wisdom, but
tribes are, in Otterbein’s universe, essentially failed states. Tribes do not conquer each
other and become chiefdoms, nor do tribes become states.
The cardinal characteristic of the early state is coercion (which manifests itself in
taxation, conscription, and obedience to authority in a hierarchical command
structure), which lies at the base of early state warfare.

Among early agriculturalists, Otterbein claims, war was absent – indeed, it had to be
absent: “Agriculture and village life are inextricably linked – one cannot exist without
the other. In their earliest development they went hand-in-hand; village life produced
crops and crops produced village life. Warfare had to be absent for both to occur;
ambushes, raids, and battles would have disrupted the settled way of life necessary for
the origin of agriculture and the later development of the state” (p. 91). “Warfare
along the Nile River before 10,000 B.C.E. prevented the process of domestication
from starting in that region” (p. 94). “The absence of warfare is a prerequisite for both
domestication of plants and, later, for the development of centralized political
systems… warfare cannot be the impetus for statehood… The mantra that ‘war make
states and states make war’ is rejected, although the second half of the statement he
accepts as correct (p. 96-97). In the Near East, the settlement of Abu Hureyra,
occupied from 9500 to 5000 B.C.E. is a wonderful example – nearly five thousand
years of continuous occupation and no warfare (p. 222).

The basic pattern of ambushes and lines, Otterbein claims, has a logic that has not
been recognized by most scholars who have studied the warfare of nonliterate
peoples. Historians in particular have focused on line battles, noted the low casualty
rates, and concluded that ‘primitive’ warfare is ritual. They have overlooked the
importance of ambushes; in many tribal societies, and band societies as well, heavy
casualties occur in ambushes. One frequently finds uncentralized political systems
with the basic pattern of warfare: ambushes, often in conjunction with raids, yielding
high casualties, and line battles, yielding low casualties. Line battles appear to be a
testing of strength, whereas the ambush is the tactic chosen to inflict great casualties
or to destroy an enemy village (p. 202).

“The basic pattern of ambushes and lines has a logic that has not been recognized by
most scholars who have studied the warfare of nonliterate peoples. Historians in
particular have focused on line battles, noted the low casualty rates, and concluded
that primitive warfare is ritual” (p. 202).
I take it that the historians in particular that Otterbein refers to are military historians
Dyer (1985) and Keegan (1993), who, together with Ehrenreich (1997) and others, are
indeed co-responsible for disseminating the notion that warfare in nonliterate societies
was a harmless, non-bloody, highly ritualized, affair.
I don’t know who these “most scholars” are but Corning (2003), Eibl-Eibesfeldt
(1975), Falger (1994), Gat (2000), Keeley (1996), Low (1993, 2000), Meyer (1981),
Thayer (2004), Wrangham (1999), and most other scholars of warfare in nonliterate
societies (including myself) are fully aware that raiding, sneak attacks and ambushes
in these societies were/are utterly lethal and disgustingly bloody affairs; often
indiscriminate massacres with genocidal intent.

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How War Began challenges several established notions, first, the notion that there was
no warfare before the Neolithic period. Second, the notion that early agriculturalists,
including the first residents of Jericho, engaged in warfare. Third, the notion that
military conquests led to the first states. There were no conquests until there were
states. States led to war; war did not lead to states (p. 220).

THE HUMAN POTENTIAL FOR PEACE

In The Human Potential for Peace, Fry shows how anthropology – with its expansive
time frame and comparative orientation – can provide unique insights into the nature
of war and the potential for peace. Challenging the traditional view that humans are
by nature primarily violent and warlike, Fry argues that along with the capacity for
aggression humans also possess a strong ability to prevent, limit, and resolve conflicts
without violence. Raising philosophy of science issues, the author shows that cultural
beliefs asserting the inevitability of violence and war can bias our interpretations,
affect our views of ourselves, and may even blind us to the possibility of achieving
security without war. Fry draws on data from cultural anthropology, archaeology, and
sociology as well as from behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology to construct a
biosocial argument that challenges a host of commonly held assumptions. In showing
that conflict resolution exists across cultures and by documenting the existence of
numerous peaceful societies, the book demonstrates that dealing with conflict without
violence is not merely a utopian dream. The Human Potential for Peace also explores
several highly publicized and interesting controversies, including Derek Freeman’s
critique of Margaret Mead’s writings on Samoan warfare; Napoleon Chagnon’s
claims about the Yanomamö that unokais (men who have participated in a killing)
average more than three times the number of wives and more than three times the
number of children than non-unokais of the same age; and ongoing evolutionary
debates about whether hunter-gatherers are peaceful or warlike.

Some authors propose that even the simplest cultures, nomadic hunting-and-gathering
(foraging) bands are warlike. Keeley (1996: 30-31), for example, writes, “There is
nothing inherently peaceful about hunting-gathering or band society”. Wrangham &
Peterson (1996: 75) assert that “no truly peaceful foraging people has ever been found
or described in detail”. As a theme spanning such arguments, not only is warfare
viewed as pervasive across cultures, but it also is seen as an extremely ancient
practice.
In his The Human Potential for Peace, Fry proposes an idea that at first may seem
improbable, namely, that the view that humans are fundamentally warlike stems much
more from the cultural beliefs of the writers than from “phenomena observed in the
physical world” – from data, in other words (p. 2).
For example, Wright (1942) observed that some societies in his large cross-cultural
sample were nonwarring but, nonetheless, classified the whole sample within four
categories called political war, economic war, social war, and defensive war.
Consequently, the nonwarring societies were labeled as engaging in at least defensive
war, because there simply were no alternatives like peaceful or nonwarring in the
classificatory scheme. This is analogous to labeling everybody as being sick, for
instance, as critically ill, chronically ill, periodically ill, or undiagnosed, with no
category for healthy. Such labels subtly imply that illness is the natural state of
affairs. Wright’s war classification scheme is merely one example of research that
seems to reflect a belief bias in Western culture that war is natural.

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Fry reasons that visualizing a peacefulness-warlikeness continuum is useful for
several reasons. It suggest that dichotomizing between peaceful and belligerent
cultures is an oversimplified distortion. Another point is that the peacefulness-
warlikeness of a given society is not immutably fixed through time. Shifts toward
violence and shifts toward peacefulness occur over years, generations, and centuries.
The fact that a culture has a high level of physical violence today does not preclude a
change toward peacefulness in the future. For example, Carole and Clay Robarchek
describe how the Waorani of Ecuador managed to decrease their initially high rate of
homicide by over 90 percent in just a few years. “The killing stopped because the
Waorani themselves made a conscious decision to end it” (Robarchek & Robarchek,
1996: 72).

The Paucity of Warfare among the Australian Aborigines

In Aboriginal times in Australia, lethal violence took the form of murder, vengeance
killings, and feud (more accurately called individual self-redress in most cases). Some
deaths also occurred in the administration of Aboriginal law: during juridical fights,
duels, and the punishment or execution of wrongdoers. However, lethal intergroup
violence that could be considered warfare was truly the exception to the well-
established peace system of the Australian Aborigines (Fry, 2006: 147). This
observation is confirmed by a great number of sources who have intimately studied
the Australians (Westermarck, 1910: vi; Wheeler, 1910: 149; Spencer & Gillen, 1927:
27-28; Davie, 1929: 52; Murdock, 1934: 45; R. Berndt, 1965: 202; Meggitt, 1965:
245-246; Hoebel, 1967: 306; Birdsell, 1971: 341; Service, 1966: 103; 1971: 18; C.
Berndt, 1978: 159; Tonkinson 1978: 118, 127; 2004; Hart & Pilling, 1979: 85; N.
Williams: 1987: 31, 39; Horton, 1994: 1153; Berndt & Berndt, 1996: 362; among
others).
In fact, loosely applying martial vocabulary like “war” and “battle” to individual self-
redress, feuds, punishment of wrongdoers, and even regulated fights, which serve as a
form of conflict resolution, occurs with some regularity in the literature on Australia
and elsewhere (e.g., Gat, 2000: 27). For example, Warner tallied up violent deaths
among the Murngin, lumping together those that resulted from individual fights,
group fights, revenge homicides, and even capital punishment. Compounding the
confusion, Warner titled his chapter “Warfare” and therein stated that “there are six
distinct varieties of warfare among the Murngin” (Warner, 1969: 155; italics added).
Such labeling muddles the issue, for as Ronald and Catherine Berndt point out about
Warner’s six types, “Not all can be termed warfare” (Berndt & Berndt, 1996: 358). In
accordance with Williams’ assessment that Murngin violence is actually blood
revenge, Warner reports that the majority of the killings stemmed from revenge
seeking (Williams, 1987; Warner, 1969: 148). One of Warner’s six types of so-called
warfare, the makarata, actually is, in his own words, “a ceremonial peacemaking
fight” (Warner, 1969: 155). According to Warner’s observations over a 20-year
period, no deaths resulted from makarata ceremonies (Warner, 1969: 155-156). It is
very confusing to call a nonlethal peacemaking ceremony “warfare” (Fry, 2006: 148-
149).
Only one type of Murngin fighting, called the gaingar, actually resembles warfare.
Tactically, men from different clans face off and throw spears to kill. Seeking revenge
for previous unavenged killings is a major motivation for this “spear fight to end spear
fights.” Over the 20-year period investigated by Warner, two gaingar fights took
place, which resulted in a combined total of 29 deaths. The Murngin gaingar, whether

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labeled war or feud, represents perhaps the bloodiest exception to the typical
Australian Aborigine pattern characterized by a dearth of lethal intergroup encounters
(p. 149).
From this body of data on Australian Aborigine societies, an overall conclusion is
clear. With very occasional exceptions, disputes that might at first seem to be between
communities in fact turn out to be personal grievances between individuals living in
different communities. Sometimes such grievances lead to revenge against particular
individuals or their close kin, thus constituting personal self-redress, which if
reciprocated amounts to feuding, not war between communities. Events that could be
considered warfare are extremely few and far between in the ethnographic record of
Aboriginal Australia, and in some exceptional cases may have been prompted by
territorial loss and other changes caused by the arrival of Europeans (Birdsell, 1971:
341; Fry, 2006: 151).

War-laden Scenarios of the Past

Ghiglieri (1999) assumes that warfare is ancient (“wars are older than humanity
itself’), that warfare is natural (“Wars erupt naturally everywhere humans are
present”), and that warfare has been critical in human evolution (“War vies with sex
for the distinction of being the most significant process in human evolution”)
(Ghiglieri, 1999: 161, 163, 162).
In this and similar scenarios of prehistoric life, war is assumed to result from selection
pressures operating over a long expanse of evolutionary time. A careful analysis of
these works, which Fry (2006: 164) refers to collectively as the Pervasive Intergroup
Hostility Model, reveals interconnected assumptions about the human past. War is
extremely ancient. Intergroup relations tended to be hostile in the past. Group
membership was largely fixed – the exception being that women were captured from
neighboring groups as a goal of war. The males in a group were genetically related to
one another, perhaps as members of a patrilineage. Related males readily bonded and
cooperated with each other in warfare. Effective male bonding and cooperation in war
paid off in terms of increased reproductive success for males engaging in these
behaviors. Critical resources were scarce. War was waged to acquire scarce resources,
territory, and women. Leadership and warrior behaviors correlated with reproductive
success and thus were evolutionarily favored.
This evolutionary scenario might prima face seem reasonable. Despite the apparent
plausibility of this scenario, Fry (p. 164) proposes that the assumptions underlying the
Pervasive Intergroup Hostility Model are unrealistic and simply untenable.
Do data on the simple nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle support the cluster of
assumptions that during human evolution, hostile, tightly knit, closed groups of
related males regularly made war on neighboring groups over scarce resources,
including territory and women? To separate the issues for analysis, are ethnographic
data on forager bands supportive of the following assumptions about the past? (1)
Groups consisted of male-bonded patrilineages in common residence. (2) Groups
were tight-knit and bounded. (3) Intergroup hostility and warfare were prevalent. (4)
Chronic resource scarcity caused wars. (5) More specifically, wars were waged over
territory and to abduct women. (6) Military virtues and leadership were valued and
prevalent (p. 166).

 The Patrilineal-Patrilocal Assumption

Groups of related males, linked via a common ancestral male into a patrilineage and
living together in what anthropologists refer to as patrilocality, are by no means

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universal features of nomadic hunter-gatherer bands. Reviewing the issue in 1983,
Alan Barnard concludes that “new generations of scholars gave the coup de grace to
the patrilocal model. All over the world, societies of small community size were
shown to be neither essentially virilocal nor patrilineal in any sense” (Barnard, 1983:
196). Contradicting the assumption of the Pervasive Intergroup Hostility Model,
bilateral descent is most typical, which means that kinship to mother’s and father’s
relatives are on equal terms. Furthermore, rather than male relatives clustering
together in patrilocal residence, a great deal of flexibility exists among nomadic
hunter-gatherers regarding residence patterns (pp. 167-168).

 The Assumption of the Tight-Knit Bounded Group

Fry (pp. 168-169) concludes that to assume that ancestral human groups were tight-
knit kin groups closed off from other such groups is extremely unrealistic in light of
the evidence from simple nomadic foragers in various parts of the world. The overall
pattern among nomadic foragers of flux and flexibility in group composition is
extremely well documented and unambiguous.

 The Assumption of Pervasively Hostile Interband Relations

Undoubtedly, relations between certain foraging bands were hostile on occasion in the
evolutionary past. The important question, however, is whether or not assuming
pervasive, or even typical, intergroup hostility and warfare is really justified.
Observations of nomadic hunter-gatherers suggest that typical patterns of interband
interaction can aptly be characterized as benign coexistence or friendly contact, with
pervasive intergroup hostility and warfare being relatively rare (pp. 169-171).

 The Assumption of Warring over Scarce Resources

This assumption actually entails a subset of other assumptions, all of which are open
to debate. First, we can question assumptions about the nature and value of material
goods. Second, related to natural resources, we can raise issues about presumed
shortages in ancestral environments. Third, we can question the assumption that
humans would be inclined to cope with resource scarcity via war. An examination of
the patterns within ethnographic material on simple hunter-gatherers calls all these
assumptions into question. Finally, we can ask whether assuming conditions of
scarcity to have existed in the human evolutionary past makes sense given the earth’s
meager population for most of prehistory (pp. 174-175).

 The Assumption of Warring over Land

The assumption that territorial warfare was the chronic condition among hunter-
gatherers over past millennia ignores the variability and complexity of how hunter-
gatherer bands interact regarding resources and land (p. 179).

 The Assumption of Warring over Women

What about the proposition that women were the scarce resources over which men of
prehistoric bands warred? In some simple nomadic hunter-gatherer societies, men do
fight over women from time to time. However, most ethnographic accounts of such
disputes are not variations on a Helen of Troy theme: Disputes over women invariably
involve particular men and particular women, but rarely entire bands warring with
other bands. These types of individual grudges may or may not lead to interpersonal
violence, but they rarely lead to anything resembling war between entire nomadic
bands. The relevant point is that in some nomadic forager societies, individual men

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may fight over a woman, but groups of men tend not to march off to war over women
(pp. 179-180).
Of relevance to this topic, the simplest foraging societies tend to have high levels of
gender egalitarianism (Endicott, 1999). To simply assume that women are the spoils
of men’s battles – to “use them reproductively,” as Ghiglieri (1999: 197) puts it –
hardly takes female autonomy and decision-making into account.
The ethnographically recurring pattern of hunter-gatherer gender equality calls into
question the assumption that forager women are “war trophies,” typically subjected to
capture by groups of warring men. Of course it would be absurd to suggest that no
nomadic hunter-gatherer woman has ever been violently abducted (e.g., Honigmann,
1954: 95 on the Kaska; Osgood, 1958: 63-65 on the Ingalik). On the other hand, the
ethnographic data do not support a generalization that waging war to abduct women is
in any way typical or pervasive among egalitarian nomadic forager societies (Fry,
2006: 181).

 The Assumption of Leadership

Nomadic hunter-gatherer societies are characterized by egalitarian values, high levels
of personal autonomy, and the lack of formal leaders. The data contradict assertions
that members of nomadic foraging bands have martial values, reward military
leadership, or emphasize warrior skills. Assumptions that in the evolutionary past,
military success correlated with reproductive success or that natural selection selected
for leadership abilities (e.g., Ghiglieri, 1999: 196; Low, 1993: 35, 40) are simply not
substantiated by data on nomadic forager societies. Cooper’s statement about the Ona
applies generally to simple nomadic hunter-gatherers: “No man recognized
authoritative headship of or accepted orders from any other” (Cooper, 1946: 116).
Boehm, who has read extensively in the cross-cultural literature, doesn’t beat around
the bush: “Egalitarian foragers uniformly eschew strong, authoritative leadership”
(Boehm, 1999: 208). Clearly, the assumption that leadership, military or otherwise, is
important in an egalitarian forager context is a very poor one (Fry, 2006: 181).

Unokais do not average over three times the off-spring and two-and-a-half times the
wives as do non-unokais. Fry’s calculations show that the combined effects of age and
headmanship are substantial. Even the most conservative calculation (age alone) cuts
the originally reported unokai advantage by 56 percent, whereas the most liberal (yet
plausible) calculation combining corrections for age and headman effects totally
eliminates any unokai advantage. Furthermore, using a sedentary, horticultural, tribal
society structured in terms of patrilineages as a model for ancestral human society is
problematic. Third, findings from one study on one society have only limited
generalizability (Fry, 2006: 198).

Fry (2006: 199) holds that the proposal that warfare has been designed by natural
selection is extremely dubious. The idea that war has evolved to enhance male
reproductive success confuses adaptation with fortuitous effect and also muddles the
social institution of warfare with interpersonal aggression.
In Fry’s view, a reasonable case can be made that some forms of aggressive behavior
have evolved in humans as facultative adaptations, but that is still a far cry from the
assertion that warfare is an evolutionary adaptation. Furthermore, switching back and
forth between aggression and war, as if these types of behavior constitute a unified
concept, further muddles the already murky waters swirling around evolutionary
discussions of warfare (p. 238).

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WAR IN HUMAN CIVILIZATION
This is an ambitious book. It sets out to find the most fundamental questions relating
to the ‘riddle of war’. Why do people engage in the deadly and destructive activity of
fighting? Is it rooted in human nature or is it a late cultural invention? What is the
relationship to major developments in world history such as the emergence of
agriculture, the rise of the state, the birth of civilization, and the advance of modernity
and democracy? Is war spreading itself ever wider, or is it in decline? Combining
diverse disciplines – such as biology (animal behavior or ethology), evolutionary
theory, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, archaeology, history, historical
sociology, and political science – and ranging from the origins of our species to the
current threat of unconventional terror, Gat shows that large-scale deadly fighting has
always been with us, pursued for the attainment of the very same objects that underlie
human desire in general. Tracing war’s development across epochs and around the
globe, he generates a wealth of insights into all major aspects of humankind’s
remarkable journey through the ages (from cover text and preface).

What Gat ambitiously seeks to provide is some kind of “deep structure” (analogous to
Chomsky’s linguistic deep structure and universal grammar) underlying the
performance of warlike enterprises in hominid/human history. This deep structure is
provided by the evolved human motivational complex, which was shaped by
evolution (in the Darwinian sense as adaptation by means of natural selection) first
and foremost by competition for resources and reproductive success: “The
interconnected competition over resources and reproduction is the root cause of conflict
and fighting in humans, as in all other animal species. Other causes and expressions of
fighting in nature, and the motivational and emotional mechanisms associated with them,
are a derivative of, and subordinate to, these primary causes, and originally evolved this
way in humans as well” (p. 87). The motivational complex includes the quest for power
and glory (or more or less equivalents rank, status, honor, esteem, prestige),
acquisitiveness (territory, women, resources, commodities), revenge, cannibalism,
bloodlust, etc., but also fear of other groups and the quest for security. It is important to
understand that there is a deep rationality underlying our innate evolution-shaped
responses. Part and parcel of this evolved motivational complex is “deadly
aggression”, which functions here as a shorthand for fighting, killing, feuding,
warfare, etc. This “deadly aggression” is treated as a unitary propensity, even though
“there is no evidence that a widespread unitary aggressive instinct exists” as the
founding father of sociobiology, Edward Wilson wrote (1978: 103). There is no
fundamental distinction between homicide and warfare in Gat’s universe. There is no
clue for readers that Gat is even aware that ‘war’ is conceived by most scholars as a
collective, intergroup, intercommunity or intercoalitional activity with at least a
modicum of organization and intragroup cooperation. It is hard to tell whether Gat is
really convinced that all violence (interpersonal as well as intergroup) is a
manifestation of “deadly aggression” or that it is merely an excuse for not having to
make analytical distinctions and clear categories.

Fighting and killing take place both within and between tribes. This is more
complex than the simple ingroup co-operation/outgroup rivalry suggested by
Spencer and Sumner. Our distinction between ‘blood feuds’ and ‘warfare’,
‘homicide’ and ‘war killing’ is in fact largely arbitrary, reflecting our point of

10
 view as members of more or less orderly societies. Typically, as Franz Boas
noted among the eastern, Great Plains, and north-west American Indians, ‘the
term “war” includes not only fights between tribes or clans but also deeds of
individuals who set out to kill a member or members of another group’. The
phenomenon with which we are dealing is deadly aggression, explained by the
same evolutionary rationale (p. 46; italics added).

Furthermore, “as aggression is only one possible, and highly dangerous, tactic, rather
than a primary need, the emotional mechanisms that regulate it are sharply
antithetical, ready to turn it on and off. On the ‘on’ side, the primary motives and
drives that trigger aggression are emotionally underpinned not merely by feelings
such as fear and animosity; the fighting activity itself is stimulated by individual and
communal thrill, enjoyment in the competitive exercise of spiritual and physical
faculties, and even cruelty, bloodlust, and killing ecstasy. These are all emotional
mechanisms intended to fuel and sustain aggression. Equally, however, On the other,
‘off’, side, aggression is emotionally suppressed and deterred by fear, spiritual and
physical fatigue, compassion, abhorrence of violence, and revulsion of bloodshed. It
seems almost redundant to point out that there are also tremendous emotional stimuli
for co-operation and peaceful behaviour. These antithetical emotional arrays, each
triggered to support a conflicting stimulus, to and against aggression, are the reason
why throughout the ages artists, thinkers, and ordinary folk of all sorts have claimed
with conviction that people rejoice in war, whereas others have held with equal self-
persuasion that people regard it as an unmitigated disaster. Both sentiments have been
there, more or less active, depending on the circumstances. Singing the praises of war
and decrying its horrors have both been common human responses.
Returning to our original question: is violent and deadly aggression, then, innate in
human nature, is it ‘in our genes’, and, if so, in what way? The answer is that it is, but
only as a skill, potential, propensity, or predisposition” (Gat, 2006: 39).

I was the first (after Davie, 1929) to make a systematic inventory and comparative
analysis of war motives in foraging (hunter-gatherer) and horti/agricultural societies
within a neo-Darwinian evolutionary framework (Van der Dennen, 1995 -
incorporating work by Mühlmann (1940), Turney-High (1949), Meyer (1981) and others
– so I have no problem at all to accept Gat’s evolutionarily-shaped, interconnected
nexus of human motivations (the motivational complex) underlying warfare, though I
suspect many non-evolutionarily-informed readers will.

The book contains much recycled material from earlier publications, though adapted
for non-professional readers. It is hardly possible to summarize a book of more than
800 pages, with a myriad excursions in all directions, and a hypertrophied section of
notes. The ambition and scope of the book may be glimpsed from the Table of
Contents:

Preface: The Riddle of War.

PART 1. Warfare in the First Two Million Years: Environment, Genes, and Culture.
1. Introduction: The ‘Human State of Nature’.
2. Peaceful or War-like: Did Hunter-Gatherers Fight?
3. Why Fighting? The Evolutionary Perspective.
4. Motivation: Food and Sex.
5. Motivation: The Web of Desire.

11
6. ‘Primitive Warfare’: How Was It Done?
7. Conclusion: Fighting in the Evolutionary State of Nature.

PART 2. Agriculture, Civilization, and War

8. Introduction: Evolving Cultural Complexity.
9. Tribal Warfare in Agraria and Pastoralia.
10. Armed Force in the Emergence of the State.
11. The Eurasian Spearhead: East, West, and the Steppe.
12: Conclusion: War, the Leviathan, and the Pleasures and Miseries of Civilization.

PART 3: Modernity: The Dual Face of Janus.

13. Introduction: The Explosion of Wealth and Power.
14. Guns and Markets: The new European States and a Global World.
15. Unbound and Bound Prometheus: Machine Age War.
16. Affluent Liberal Democracies, Ultimate Weapons, and the World.
17. Conclusions: Unravelling the Riddle of War.

This book provides some high-quality insights and observations, such as the explanation
of the psychology of the security dilemma (pp. 98-99), the treatment of ethnocentrism-
cum-xenophobia as an evolved, and universal, adaptation (“Ethnocentrism is an innate
predisposition to divide the world sharply between the superior ethnic ‘us’ and all
‘others’” (p. 50)), and his (almost counter-intuitive) observation that “ethnicity made
states, and states made ethnicity” (p. 358).

Gat acknowledges that his ambitious project is a veritable tour de force: “With war
being connected to everything else and everything else being connected to war,
explaining war and tracing its development in relation to human development in general
almost amount to a theory and history of everything” (p. ix).
“The broad interdisciplinary perspective that guides this book is intended to create a
whole that is larger than the sum of its parts, because the book is not a survey of existing
knowledge, or merely a synthesis, let alone a textbook, but is designed as a fully fledged
research book throughout. As much as it builds on and enormously profits from the
wealth of scholarly literature in the various disciplines, the book takes issue with many
extant studies and theses on almost every point with which it deals” (p. x).
The shadow side of this ambitious approach soon becomes apparent: pretentious
megalomania and irritating arrogance.
The history of human warfare is reduced to a debating club with Gat himself as the
omniscient revealer of the ‘real’ ulterior truth – although he sometimes acknowledges
that other authors came tantalizingly close to the solution of the problem. “Contrary to
widespread assumptions…”, “Contrary to a widely held view…”, “Contrary to a
prevailing view”, “Contrary to fashionable theories…”, “a much debated topic…”,
“extensive scholarly debate” and similar polemics are strewn throughout the book with a
generous hand.

Typical statements, reiterating vague references to ‘nature’, and “switching back and
forth between aggression and war, as if these types of behavior constitute a unified
concept, further muddl[ling] the already murky waters swirling around evolutionary
discussions of warfare” in the words of Fry (2006: 238), are the following:
● “Leading authorities have estimated that the rate of intraspecific killing among humans
is similar and in some cases greatly inferior to that of other animal species” (p. 10).

12
● “To repeat the point, deadly aggression is a major, evolution-shaped, innate
potential that, given the right conditions, has always been easily triggered” (p. 41).
● “All this suggests that average human violent mortality rates among adults in the state
of nature may have been in the order of 15 per cent (25 per cent of the men)” (p. 131).
● “As with other animal species, humans regularly fought among themselves in the state
of nature. Thus, it was not the advent of agriculture or civilization that inaugurated
warfare” (p. 134).
● “Fundamentally, the solution of the ‘enigma of war’ is that no such enigma exists.
Violent competition, alias conflict – including intraspecific conflict – is the rule
throughout nature” (p. 663).
● “Group fighting exists among many social animals – there is nothing uniquely human
about it” (p. 664).
● “Thus, as this book claims, fundamentally wars have been fought for the attainment of
the same objects of human desire that underlie the human motivational system in general
– only by violent means, through the use of force” (Gat, 2006: 669).

Gat utilizes some simple tricks and rhetorical devices (in this context the term ruses de
guerre seems appropriate) to get his message across. These are (1) selective quoting and
ignoring the counter-evidence; (2) presenting the extremes as the normal situation; and
(3) the pars-pro-toto technique. A good example of ignoring all sources that contradict
his conviction is the alleged warlikeness of hunter-gatherers. How is it possible that Gat
mentions specifically the Australian Aborigines (and Tasmanians) as paragons of
belligerent hunter-gatherers, while virtually all other sources contradict this? (vide
supra) This is a perfect example of selective quoting and pars-pro-toto technique
combined.
An example of presenting the extremes as the normal situation is provided by the high
casualty figures of warfare in ‘primitive’ societies (following Keeley) – in the region of
25 %, according to Gat (pp. 131, 663-664), which corresponds, again according to Gat,
to normal rates of intraspecific killing among animals in nature, but which are, in fact,
the extremes of the total sample and ignore the bulk of the evidence. In hundreds of
hunter-gatherer and simple horticulturalists these figures are much lower. Quincy Wright
is praised by Gat but ignored for his data on hunter-gatherers.
The figure of 25 % lethality from all sources of violence is first presented by Livingstone
(1968: 8-11) in his investigation of the effects of warfare on the biology of the human
species. It was subsequently favorably quoted by Symons (1979: 145) and uncritically
parroted ever since (especially by popular evolutionary psychology writers such as Buss
and Pinker). The figure was already extreme to begin with, based as it was on reports
from war-infested areas such as Amazonia and Highland New Guinea.

Also ignored is the contemporary theorizing on, and macroquantitative evidence on

geographic contiguity, international system polarity, power distribution and transition,
balance of power, alliances, deterrence, trade interdependence, etc. On the other hand,
the “democratic peace” thesis is treated ad nauseam. The post-World War II
transformation of international wars into transnational ‘uncivil’ wars and intractable low-
level conflicts is equally neglected. Finally, Gat does not make a difference between
offensive and defensive warfare.

War in Human Civilization is marred by many foibles, not the least of which is the
casual way war is equated with aggression, and the easy switching between the
concepts of (deadly) aggression, fighting, and warfare, and a general lack of a clear

13
distinction between interindividual and intergroup violence (It is like asserting that it
is largely arbitrary to distinguish oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, and ponds because they
are all manifestations of water). What, for instance, does Gat mean, when he asserts
that deadly violence is ubiquitous in nature (“Among social animals, as with small-
scale human societies, group fighting and killing regularly take place”)?. If he means
that interindividual violence (such as infanticide, siblicide, fratricide, cannibalism,
rape, and lethal male fighting over mating opportunities) is commonplace in animals,
he is, at least partly, right. To give only a few examples: In two Serengeti lion prides
studied extensively by Schaller (1972), the cub mortality rate was at least 67 %.
Schaller lists violence by adult lions as one of the primary causes of cub death along
with abandonment, predation, and starvation. Also Bertram (1975) reports a mortality
of 80 % among lion cubs in the Serengeti, partly due to cub killing by adult males
after having taken over the pride. According to the reliable investigation by
Wilkinson & Shank (1976), an estimated 5 to 10 percent of musk ox (Ovibos
moschatus) bulls on north-central Banks Island (Canada) were killed during the 1973
rut. These figures are fairly representative.
If Gat means, however, that lethal collective (i.e., intergroup, intercommunity,
intercoalitional) violence is commonplace in nature, he is plainly wrong. Lethal raiding-
type warfare is confined to humans and chimpanzees, while the non-human equivalent
of battle-type warfare has been documented in a number of mainly primate and social
carnivore species, but this violence is hardly lethal, and it is principally the females who
do the fighting (vide infra). It is quite possible that the non-lethality of this type of
animal ‘warfare’ is ‘caused’ by the fact that the main participants are females. The non-
human equivalent of warfare is conspicuously absent in the majority of mammalian
species (Van der Dennen, 1995).
Gat with his “state of nature” misses the point entirely. The point is not whether animals
are capable of killing conspecifics (they are), but why some animal species (or
subspecies) are capable to cooperate in coalitions in order to compete violently with
other coalitions or groups as a collective entity, and approximate the nonhuman
equivalent of warfare (as lethal intergroup conflict). And why only one (sub)species
evolved a male lethal raiding-type, and why all the other species evolved a female-
dominated battle-type of warfare. Questions which I addressed in my Origin of War, and
which Gat seems totally unaware of.
Gat glosses over all analytical distinctions, while Otterbein and Fry emphasize at least
the distinctions between feud and war.

Finally, a danger of the Grand Perspective taken by Gat is that the role of
contingencies and improbable events in world history is downplayed or even
neglected. The Grand Perspective favors a view of history as the inevitable, organic
unfolding of some intrinsically designed drama. To give just one example: What
triggered the British industrial revolution, the British industrial supremacy for nearly
50 years, and the greatest empire the world has ever seen, was the conquest of Bengal
and the subjection and economic serfdom of the Oriental world, which enabled
enormous treasures and fortunes to be brought home to England to finance the rising
industrial age. This causality was clearly captured by Adams (1921: 305, 317): “It is
not too much to say that the destiny of Europe hinged upon the conquest of Bengal…
Possibly since the world began, no investment has yielded the profit reaped from the
Indian plunder”. This conquest started with Clive’s famous victory in the Battle of
Plassey on June 23, 1757, a highly improbable event. Fuller (1970: II, 16) writes in
his Decisive Battles: “the astonishing improbability of a victory gained by an army of

14
3,000 (less than one-third of them European) with ten guns over an army of 50,000
with fifty-three guns”.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Controversies
The study of ‘primitive’ war is riddled with controversies. There is no consensus even
about the definition of war. There is no consensus about whether feuding should be
included or excluded. There is no consensus about whether raiding (as opposed to
pitched battle) should be included or excluded (some students even argue that raiding
is not ‘real’ warfare). A narrow conception of biology as “genes and hormones”
precludes evolutionary thinking about war, or the hominid/human propensities
underlying it: Keeley (1996), for example, seems to be blissfully ignorant of ultimate
questions, considering only proximate factors and then finds that biology is
‘irrelevant’. A narrow conception of ‘culture’ (as opposed to ‘nature’) precludes
integration of disciplines: anything cultural cannot be natural and vice versa. This
seems to be the position of many cultural anthropologists such as Ferguson (1990). In
this vision evolutionary explanations are mainly absurd. There are different views on
the origin of war, and on what motives or causes are considered ‘valid’ for its
explanation. There is no agreement on whether “ritual warfare” is a real phenomenon
or not. Finally, students are divided of what constitutes (historical) evidence: in the
narrow interpretation warfare is only about 10,000 years old or even less (Ferguson,
1984, 1990; Keeley, 1996; Cioffi-Revilla, 1996, 2000; Kelly, 2000); in the broad
interpretation warfare may be 5 million years old or possibly even older (van der
Dennen, 1995; Wrangham, 1999).
It is difficult to assess Otterbein’s position in this minefield. Take ritual war; in one
place (pp. 34-38), Otterbein seems to demolish the concept of ritual war, only to
reintroduce it elsewhere (pp. 83 and 202) as signifying a “test of strength”. Take the
origin of war; at one place (p. 42) he seems to endorse Wrangham’s synapomorphy or
shared derived trait in the common ancestor of chimpanzees and hominids (5 to 8
million years ago) – “Localized groups of related males are fraternal interest groups,
and fraternal interest groups were the first military organizations. If this equation is
correct, the roots of war do not lie 100,000 years in the past, but five million years
ago” (p. 42) – and at another place (p. 219) he claims that war originated with Homo
habilis (some 2 million years ago).

Otterbein, Fry, and Gat totally neglect the primate intergroup violence data I gathered
(Van der Dennen, 1995: 143-214; see also Cheney, 1987) to establish beyond
reasonable doubt that some 50 species of terrestrial (ground-dwelling), group-
territorial primates and some other mammals, especially social carnivores, are
perfectly capable of the kind of warfare (or its non-human equivalent) which
Otterbein designates as ‘line’ (i.e., battle- or combat-type warfare). This means that
the non-human equivalent of battle-type warfare may be a primate adaptation, or may
even have evolved in at least a number of mammals generally, many million years
ago (see diagram) – ignoring the battles of epic proportions in social Hymenoptera
(ants and termites) because of their totally different evolutionary trajectory. Until
now, only 2 (possibly 3) species have been documented to practice raiding-type
warfare: humans (Homo sapiens sapiens), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) (Goodall,
1986; Goodall et al., 1979; van der Dennen, 1995; Wrangham, 1999; Wilson &

15
Wrangham, 2003), and (possibly) spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi yucatanensis)
(Aureli et al., 2006). The latter’s raiding behavior has only recently been documented
and is as yet non-lethal. Raiding-type warfare is practiced only, or virtually
exclusively, by the males of the species.
Battle-type warfare (or its non-human equivalent), on the other hand, occurs in many
primate species and some other group-territorial mammals, such as social carnivores.
These battles result mainly from chance encounters by primate groups at the borders
of their territories (or home ranges). Turney-High (1949) has illuminated the
‘biomechanics’ of the line which develops more or less automatically when two
groups meet in an agonistic encounter and every individual organism strives to have
its vulnerable flanks protected by its neighbors. In social carnivores and “female
bonded” (or female philopatric) primate species, female participation in these – more
noisy than bloody – battles commonly exceeds male participation (This observation
has gone unnoticed; van der Dennen, 1995, is the only one who tried to explain this
profound sex difference in raiding versus battle-type warfare participation).
Unfortunately, my book was almost immediately eclipsed by Keeley’s (1996) opus
magnum.

Otterbein, as well as Gat, also totally neglects my research on ‘peaceful’ (or rather
‘relatively unwarlike’) peoples (I devoted more than 100 pages to this research).
Otterbein is rather inconsistent, if not contradictory, in his counting of peaceful
societies. On p. 218 he states “Many nonliterate societies are violent and many are
not”, even though on p. 81 he states that in his cross-cultural study of warfare in a
randomly chosen sample of 50 societies, he found only four such societies: the Toda,
Tikopia, Copper Eskimo, and Dorobo.

Three important questions are differentially answered by these three authors: (1) How
old is war?; (2) Do peaceful societies actually exist?; and (3) Were/are specifically
hunter-gatherers warlike?

Discussion: Hunting and Warfare?

In my work The Origin of War (1995), I already noticed Otterbein’s outlier
(exceptional) position regarding hunting and warfare in hunter-gatherer societies. All
other scholars have reasoned, backed up by empirical evidence, that hunter-gatherers
are the least warlike of all socio-political and subsistence technology categories. It is
probably not a coincidence that the only quantitative researchers Gat (p. 16) refers to as
evidence that hunter-gatherers are warlike are the Embers and Otterbein. It is an example
of his ignoring-of-counterevidence tactic. Just as his discussion of the Australians and
Tasmanians uses the pars-pro-toto technique as well as the ignoring tactic. Tasmanians
are a wrong example. Contemporary sources all agree that the Tasmanian societies were
dislocated and ‘corrupted’ by white intrusion (e.g., Van der Bij, 1929).

Ecological-evolutionary theory (EET), originally developed by Lenski & Lenski

(1978), and Nolan (2003) maintains that subsistence technology is the most important
single factor affecting the organization of and interaction among human societies. The
major types of preindustrial societies it identifies based on their dominant mode of
subsistence are, in order of increasing technological power: hunting and gathering,
horticultural (gardening), and agrarian (farming). Hunter-gatherers are expected to
have a relatively low rate of warfare – not because they are especially nonviolent or
peaceful, as numerous accounts have shown to be wrong (e.g., Sumner & Keller,

16
1927; Davie, 1929; Ember, 1978; Knauft, 1987; Keeley, 1996), but because their
intermittent and limited food surpluses and their nomadic lifestyle cannot sustain
frequent or prolonged warfare: Men can either hunt or fight; they cannot do both.
Feuding or warring families or groups, therefore, generally find it more advantageous
to separate from one another than to engage in continuous or frequent war. As Keeley
(1996) and others point out, however, when they do fight, casualty rates can be quite
high, and “primitive” war can be quite cruel by modern standards.
Horticulturalists are expected to have higher rates of warfare than foragers, especially
if they have developed the technology to make metal tools and weapons. The
incidence of warfare is expected to remain high among agriculturalists because
conquest of territory and the peasants who cultivate it is the primary mechanism by
which elites can increase their power and wealth. Moreover, their more productive
food-producing technology can support much larger armies for much longer periods
of time, and their more developed communication and transportation technologies
would allow more wide-ranging campaigns and permit a geometric increase in the
geographical expanse and the population size of the empires they could build.
Warfare would likely follow regular cycles of increase and decline in such systems,
during phases of empire-building, maintenance, and collapse. Thus, overall, their
frequency of warfare is expected to be very high, especially in comparison with
hunters and gatherers and simple horticulturalists (Nolan, 2003: 20-22).

The synchronic quantitative evidence does not support Otterbein’s contention that
hunting and warfare went hand in hand. For example, Leavitt (1977) found war absent
or rare in 73% of hunting and gathering societies (n=22), 41% of simple horticultural
(n=22), and 17% of advanced horticultural societies (n=29).
Using frequency-of-warfare data reported by Leavitt (1977), Lenski & Lenski
(1978:164) found a clear pattern of increasing warfare associated with reliance on
horticulture and the development of metallurgy. Nolan (2003), using Ember &
Ember’s warfare data, found warfare rare or absent in 39% of hunting and gathering
societies (n = 23), 30% in simple horticultural (n = 27), 14% in advanced horticultural
(n = 35), and 17% in agrarian societies (n = 30).
Hobhouse, Wheeler & Ginsberg (1915; cf. Hobhouse, 1956) conducted the first more
or less sophisticated statistical research on a large sample of ‘primitive’ societies, and
concluded that, although war was not the normal condition of ‘primitive’ societies, the
opposite view that “in a world of primitives all would be peace” is equally
unwarranted. Although belligerence increased with social organization in general, that
does not mean that most primitive cultures lived in a paradisiac condition of perpetual
peace and blissful harmony.
In 1929, a Dutchman, Van der Bij, wrote a dissertation on the origin and initial
development of war. On the basis of his findings (quite in accordance with the results
of Hobhouse et al.) that the more ‘simple’ the people the more peaceful it tended to
be, Van der Bij concluded that in the initial phase of human evolution war did not
play any significant role, and most probably was lacking altogether. Only in a more
advanced phase or stage of human evolution did war emerge. Because it was written
in Dutch, this study has been completely overlooked by the research community.
Wright ([1942] 1965: 66) distinguished four levels of ‘primitive’ sociopolitical
organization: primary (clan), secondary (village), tertiary (tribe), and quaternary
(tribal federation), which eventually gave place to the city-state and nation-state. “In
general”, Wright stated, “the first are the least and the latter the most warlike”.

17
Using essentially the same database as Hobhouse et al., Wright ([1942] 1965: 66) also
found that in terms of cultural level, “It seems clear that the collectors, lower hunters,
and lower agriculturists are the least warlike, the higher hunters and higher
agriculturists are more warlike, while the highest agriculturalists and the pastorals are
the most warlike of all”. Thus, the more ‘primitive’ the people, the less warlike it
tends to be (p. 68).
Another early cross-cultural, quantitative study of war was conducted by Simmons in
1937. However, this work, too, has been completely overlooked by the research
literature, and was only recently rediscovered by Rudmin (1990). Simmons coded 71
societies for 109 variables, including “prevalence of warfare”. Rudmin cluster-
analyzed the variables significantly correlated with warfare in Simmons’ sample, and
found three distinct clusters. The second cluster found by Rudmin might be labelled
“agricultural social ecology”. In accordance with Hobhouse et al. and Wright,
Simmons concluded that agriculturalists, as opposed to hunter-gatherers, were
warlike. It would seem, he reasoned, that agriculture requires the permanent,
exclusive use of land. Therefore acquisition and defense of land becomes an essential
aspect of the agricultural social ecology. Agricultural societies also produce the
surpluses that release some members of society from productive tasks to perform
militaristic tasks.
In a trivariate reanalysis of Wright’s data, Broch & Galtung (1966) were able to
ascertain that as societies expand and get a fixed territorial base, they become more
dangerous to each other. The percentage of cultures engaging in economic and
political warfare increased in an almost monotonic fashion with increasing levels of
civilization.
Suspecting some common factor underlying much of the correlation, Broch &
Galtung devised an “index of primitivity”, based on culture and socio-political
organization. They carefully ruled out the possibility of a spurious correlation, and
concluded that “within the framework provided by these variables and the range
provided by those societies, belligerence is a concomitant of increasing civilization”
(1966: 37; italics in original). These data, like Wright’s, are synchronic rather than
diachronic, yet they strongly suggest that there is a process involved, in the sense that
increasing civilization would lead to increasing belligerence.
Subsequently, Ember & Ember (1997: 5) reached the cautious conclusion that
“foragers in the ethnographic record had warfare fairly often on average, but they do
seem to have had less than nonforagers”.
In a study of 84 ‘primitive’ tribes, using a different data base, Eckhardt (1975, 1982)
concluded that peace is ‘natural’ and war is ‘civilized’: the more developed and
settled agricultural tribes engaged in more acts of killing, mutilating, and torturing the
enemy than did the more primitive nomadic tribes.
Wrangham, Wilson & Muller (2006) present a table with annual mortality rates from
intergroup violence in human subsistence societies, comparing the deaths/100,000/year
from lethal violence in a number of hunter-gatherers and farmers. The hunter-gatherers
comprise the Agta, Andamanese, Canadian Eskimo, Dobe !Kung, Ginjingali, Modoc,
Murngin, Piegan (Blackfoot), Semai, Tiwi, Yahgan, and Yurok. The farmers comprise
the Auyana, Bokondini Dani, Buin, Chippewa, Dugum Dani, Fijians, Gebusi, Grand
Valley Dani, Hewa, Kalinga, Kato, Kunimaipa, Mae Enga, Manga, Mohave, Mtetwa
(Zulu), Tauade, Tauna Awa, Telefolmin, and Yanomamö. The median of the hunter-
gatherers (n = 12) is 164 deaths/100,000/year, while the median of the farmers (n = 20)
is 595 deaths/100,000/year.

18
A Comparison of Simple and Complex Hunter-Gatherers
Murdock (1967, 1981) has published coded information on hundreds of societies.
This Standard Cross-Cultural Summary contains 35 hunter-gatherer societies. By
examining other Murdock codes, these hunter-gatherer societies can be divided into
three subgroups. Simple hunter-gatherers are those societies rated as nomadic or semi-
nomadic, lacking domestic animals including horses, and lacking class distinctions.
Complex hunter-gatherers are those rated as not being nomadic or as having social
class distinctions. Equestrian hunter-gatherers, those societies relying on horses for
hunting, are a third type of society of very recent origin. These ratings yield 21 simple
hunter-gatherer societies, nine complex hunter-gatherer societies, and five equestrian
hunter-gatherer societies. It is possible also to use ethnographic information for each
society to classify it as warring or non-warring.
The essential finding is that all the complex hunter-gatherers and all the equestrian
hunter-gatherers make war; whereas a majority of the simple hunter-gatherers do not.
It appears that both social complexity and adoption of the horse greatly increase the
chance of warfare (Fry, 2006: 105). See Table 1.

Discussion: Warfare and Feuding from a Cross-Cultural Perspective

According to Textor’s (1967) A Cross-Cultural Summary, in a sample of 45 societies,
“warfare is prevalent” in 34 and “not prevalent” in the remaining nine. Drawing on
data reported in a separate study of 32 societies, Textor lists eight societies where
“warfare is common or chronic” and 24 where “warfare is rare or infrequent. Whereas
these findings suggest that some societies are much less warlike than others, they do
not clearly address the question as to whether war is always present or not. Do all
cultures have war?
In a sample of 50 cultures, Otterbein (1968) found that 36 percent infrequently or
never engaged in internal war. Regarding external war, Otterbein rated each culture in
two ways, for the frequency with which they attacked communities from other
cultures and for the frequency with which they were attacked by communities of other
cultures; 48 percent of the sample were attacked infrequently or never and 40 percent
attacked other cultures infrequently or never.
If we examine the three warfare subcategories in relation to each other, we find that
10 percent (5 of 50) of the societies infrequently or never engage in any internal or
external war (either attacking or being attacked). Next, if we ask how many of these
societies fit the ‘never’ part of the rating, the answer is that war is absent from 4
societies of these 50 – in other words, from eight percent of the sample (Fry, 2006:
86-87).
Clearly, the vast majority of Otterbein’s sample engaged in either internal or external
warfare, but a few of the societies did not engage in any type of war. However, before
reaching a conclusion that about eight percent of societies lack war, a methodological
complication should be mentioned. The manner in which this sample was assembled –
with the goal of studying war – would seem to favor the inclusion of warring cultures.
This is the case because Otterbein rejected many potential societies before arriving at
the final sample of 50. One of the criteria among several that he used for dropping
societies from the sample was if data on war were lacking. “In all, 61 societies were
dropped from the sample... and 24 because data on military organization, tactics, and
the causes of war were not in the sources” (1970: 11).
One plausible reason that information on war would be lacking from ethnographic
sources is that war actually is absent or rare in the culture and therefore there are no
details to portray.

19
In his extensive overview, Indians of North America, Driver (1969: 310) concludes
that whereas feuding sometimes existed, “most of the peoples of the Arctic, Great
Basin, Northeast Mexico, and probably Baja California lacked true warfare before
European contact”. Moreover, Driver summarizes that for the North American Sub-
Arctic region, Northwest Coast, Plateau Region of the Northwest, California, and the
Southwest, whereas some societies in these immense regions did make war, “at the
same time, all these areas included some peoples with little in the way of violence,
raids, or feuds, and no hostilities pretentious enough to be labeled war” (1969: 312).
Jorgensen and his collaborators surveyed 172 societies of western North America and
conclude:

One of the most obvious and interesting aspects of the cultures of western
North America’s Indians at the time of contact with Europeans was that so few
societies actually engaged in persistent offensive warfare, or even raiding, yet
the prospects of armed altercations deeply influenced the internal
organizations and external relations of these aboriginal societies (Jorgensen,
1980: 241).

In general, the southern Athapascans were not particularly warlike (Elsasser, 1978).
Although warfare on a large scale was rare, murder or trespassing frequently led to brief
conflicts among the Cahto (Kato) and Sinkyone, Yuki, Huchnom, Wailaki, or Northern
Pomo, with loyalties often shifting from war to war. Mortalities were usually low
(Kroeber, 1928; Myers, 1978). Yokuts and Monache societies apparently were generally
peaceable ones with their peoples showing little enthusiasm for armed conflict
(McCorkle, 1978).

In contrast to Otterbein and many other anthropologists, Ember & Ember (1992),
defined ‘war’ so broadly as to encompass feuding and revenge killings if undertaken
by more than one person. Counting feuding and revenge killings directed at particular
individuals as “warfare events” increases the number of societies that are reported to
practice “war,” by this expansive definition, and similarly this tallying procedure
inflates estimates as to how often this so-called war is reported to occur within
particular societies. For example, the “war” that the Embers report as occurring
“every year” for the Andamanese and slightly more often than “once in every 3 to 10
years” for the Yahgan is mostly based on instances of blood revenge and feuding
between disgruntled individuals, perhaps aided by their kin (Radcliffe-Brown, 1922:
84; Gusinde, 1937: 885, 893; Cooper, 1946: 95). In other words, what the Embers call
warfare frequency for the Andaman Islanders and Yahgan more precisely represents a
frequency estimate for brawls, homicides, and revenge killings combined.
This assessment suggests that the Embers’ “war” frequency ratings for both these
societies, and perhaps some others in their sample, are based on some combination of
revenge homicide, feuding, and nonlethal brawls, but not actually on warfare as
usually conceived.
This discussion illustrates the importance of clearly specifying the manner in which
war is being defined. The overall conclusion about the absence and rarity of “war”
based on the Ember and Ember study can be stated as follows. “Even when ‘war’ is
defined so broadly as to include individual instances of blood revenge and feuding, it
is still “absent or rare “ in 9 percent to 28 percent of the societies in a large cross-
cultural representative sample of societies, depending on whether one includes only
“unpacified” societies or all the societies in the sample” (Fry, 2006: 89).

20
From the Hobhouse, Wheeler & Ginsberg sample, Wright (1942) was able to rate the
vast majority of the societies, 590 in all, regarding warfare. Thirty societies (5 percent
of the total) were found to have no war – that is, the literature revealed no evidence of
warfare, no military organization, and no special weapons. Another 346 societies (59
percent of the sample) were rated “to be unwarlike or to engage only in mild warfare,”
provided that “no indication was found of fighting for definite economic or political
purposes in the more specialized literature.” Combining the no war and unwarlike
categories shows that nearly two-thirds of the total sample (64 percent) were non-
warring or mild-warring. The rest of the sample were determined by Wright to engage
in war for economic or political purposes (29 percent and 7 percent of the total,
respectively).
It is also important that a substantial number of the so-called unwarlike groups
engaged in feuding, and nothing more. If we conceptually untangle feuding from
warring – as Fry has argued we should – then the societies that Wright coded as
unwarlike based solely on descriptions of feuding should more appropriately be
thought of as non-warring. But putting this issue aside for the time being, Wright’s
findings highlight a very important point: War is either lacking or mild in the
majority of cultures! The cross-cultural picture is not nearly as Hobbesian as is often
assumed (Fry, 2006: 97).

Ember’s Cross-Cultural Study

In 1978, Carol Ember wrote, “I wish to address myself to one other view of hunter-
gatherers that I have reason to believe is erroneous – namely, the view that hunter-
gatherers are relatively peaceful.” Ember reported that only ten percent of her “sample
of hunter-gatherers... were rated as having no or rare warfare” (Ember, 1978: 443).
Many writers continue to cite this study, and therefore it is important to address this
apparent contradiction. First, Ember defines war so as to include feuding and even
revenge killings directed against a single individual. Under this definition, personal
grudges that result in a killing can be counted as acts of ‘war’.
A second serious issue is that almost half of the societies in Ember’s sample are not
simple nomadic hunter-gatherers at all! Seven equestrian cultures are included: the
Ute, Kutenai, Coeur D’Alene, Gros Ventre, Comanche, Crow, and Tehuelche. These
societies represent 23 percent of the sample of 31. The use of horses to hunt game,
such as bison on the North American plains, was a very recent cultural development,
occurring only after the Spanish introduced the horse into the Americas. Prior to
becoming horse cultures, some societies practiced horticulture and others hunted and
gathered. The arrival of Europeans brought a multitude of changes to these societies,
such as a shift in their economies to mounted hunting. Increased militarism was
another dramatic change.
Regarding, for instance, one of the equestrian cultures in Ember’s sample, the
Comanche, Hoebel explains that a great transformation occurred regarding warring
and raiding. Prior to adopting the horse, the Comanche, as a subgroup of
Shoshoneans, had nomadically foraged in small bands. “War was a thing to be
avoided, for the Basin Shoshoneans had no military organization and were wholly
lacking in fighting prowess,” writes Hoebel. After adopting the horse, they became
the “Spartans of the Prairies,” and “gave trouble to all their enemies and to
themselves” (Hoebel, 1967: 129). Such societies certainly do not constitute a very
good model of humanity’s past (Fry, 2006: 173-174).
Furthermore, a substantial number of the societies in Ember’s sample are neither
egalitarian nor nomadic but instead are hierarchical and partially or totally sedentary.

21
The latter features characterize complex hunter-gatherers. As we have seen, the
overall pattern is that complex hunter-gatherers tend to be warlike (and,
archaeologically speaking, very recent), in contrast to simple hunter-gatherers, who
tend to be unwarlike (and represent the oldest form of human social organization).
Three sedentary societies (Aleut, Yurok, and Bellacoola) and five semi-sedentary
societies (Squamish, Maidu, Nootka, Eastern Pomo, and Pekangekum) are included in
the sample, representing another 26 percent of the total. Furthermore, seven of the
eight sedentary and semi-sedentary societies have some degree of hierarchical class
stratification.
Together, 48 percent of the sample either are partly or totally sedentary or are
equestrian hunters. Therefore, the findings of Ember’s study cannot legitimately be
used to draw inferences about simple hunter-gatherer bands or the nomadic foraging
past. Consequently, this study cannot be taken as evidence that warfare is common
among simple nomadic hunter-gatherers, the type of society that we are focusing on to
provide insights about the nomadic hunting-and-gathering past (Fry, 2006: 174).

The Archaeological Evidence of Warfare

We have seen that, in actuality, many non-warring cultures exist. Similarly, the belief
that “there always has been war” does not correspond with the archaeological facts of
the matter. The earliest clear evidence for warfare dates from about 10,000 years ago
(Ferguson, 1984, 1990), and war becomes more common with the rise of the state
several millennia later. After reviewing the archaeological record, Sponsel reached the
conclusion that “During the hunter-gatherer stage of cultural evolution, which
dominated 99 percent of human existence on the planet... lack of archaeological
evidence for warfare suggests that it was rare or absent for most of human prehistory
(Sponsel, 1996: 104; italics in original). Keeley acknowledges the very recent time
frame for warfare. Sponsel’s conclusion about the rarity or absence of warfare for
most of prehistory, while perhaps contradicting popular beliefs as to the great
antiquity of war, nonetheless is in accordance with the archaeological facts (Fry,
2006: 141).
Regarding the antiquity of warfare, Fry ignores two strands of indirect evidence: (1)
the universality of ethnocentrism-cum-xenophobia. Ethnocentrism-cum-xenophobia
would not have evolved if groups had not been potential threats to each other during
hominid/human evolution. And (2) the “phylogenetic continuity” argument as I called
it (van der Dennen, 1995, 2002a,b): it is highly improbable that the early
hominids/humans had not at least a modicum of intergroup hostility, given the fact
that their evolutionarily nearest nephews (the great apes: chimpanzees, bonobos,
gorillas; as well as the Old World monkeys) do have intergroup hostility in their
behavioral repertoire (and in the case of the chimpanzee blatant xenophobia as well).

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Table 1: Warring versus Nonwarring and Type of Society
Simple nomadic hunter-gatherers are in the top row. Other types of hunter-gatherers complex and
equestrian) are in the bottom row. Following Prosterman and Otterbein, war is defined as
involving armed combat between political communities and not merely as feuding and revenge
homicide. Societies are classified based on Murdock’s codes. The results are highly significant.
Nonwarring (n = 13) Warring (n = 22)
Simple Hunter-gatherers

!Kung Aranda Montagnais Gilyak

Hadza Copper Eskimo Ingalik Micmac
Mbuti Andamanese Botocudo Kaska
Semang Saulteaux Aweikoma Yukhagir
Vedda Paiute
Tiwi Yahgan
Slave
Other Hunter-gatherers
Bella Coola Haida
Gros Ventre Yurok
Comanche Yokuts
Chiricahua Apache Kutenai
Tehuelche Twana
Klamath Eyak
Eastern Pomo Aleut
Fisher’s exact test (one-tailed) probability, p = .0001
Table after Fry (2006: 106)

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 Pitched battle type of intergroup agonistic behavior
in primates generally, and possibly even in social
and group territorial mammals generally (social
carnivores, dolphins, etc.).

‘Lethal male raiding’ in the common ancestor of both

humans and chimpanzees 6 - 8 mya (Wrangham’s
synapomorphy or shared derived trait).

‘Lethal male raiding’ as independently evolved

in both humans and chimpanzees (implied by
van der Dennen)

THE (CHRONO)LOGICALLY POSSIBLE

THEORETICAL VIEWS ON THE EVOLUTION
OF WAR AS PITCHED BATTLE AND RAIDING
Otterbein’s (2004) “hunting ape” 2-5 mys B.P.

War in both humans (Hu) and chimpanzees

(Chi) as relatively recent ‘cultural inventions’
Hu Chi Bo

CV: Johan M.G. van der Dennen, Ph.D.

Dr Johan M.G. van der Dennen studied behavioral sciences at the University of Groningen,
and is at present a senior researcher at the Section Political Science of the Department of Legal
Theory, formerly the Polemological (Peace Research) Institute, University of Groningen, the
Netherlands. He has published extensively (more than 200 publications) on all aspects of
human and animal aggression, sexual violence, neuro- and psychopathology of human
violence, political violence, criminal violence, theories of war causation, macro-quantitative
research on contemporary wars, ethnocentrism, and the politics of peace and war in
preindustrial societies. In 1995 he published his dissertation “The Origin of War: The
Evolution of A Male-Coalitional Reproductive Strategy”, an evolutionary analysis of the origin
of intergroup violence in humans and animals.
Works in progress: Ongoing research on the politics of peace and war in preindustrial societies;
violent intergroup competition (Intergroup Agonistic Behavior) in social animals; genocide and
war atrocities in contemporary human societies; sexual violence in animals and man; and the
origin of war in hominid/human phylogeny.
Some recent books:
J.M.G. van der Dennen & V.S.E. Falger (Eds.) (1990) Sociobiology and Conflict:
Evolutionary Perspectives on Competition, Cooperation, Violence and Warfare. Chapman &
Hall, London;
J.M.G. van der Dennen (Ed.) (1992) The Nature of the Sexes: The Sociobiology of Sex
Differences and the ‘Battle of the Sexes’ (Essays in Human Sociobiology, Vol. 3). Origin
Press, Groningen;

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H. Caton; F.K. Salter & J.M.G. van der Dennen (Eds.) (1993) The Bibliography of Human
Behavior. Greenwood Press, Westport CT;
J.M.G. van der Dennen (1995) The Origin of War: The Evolution of a Male-Coalitional
Reproductive Strategy. 2 Vols., Origin Press, Groningen;
V.S.E. Falger; P. Meyer & J.M.G. van der Dennen (Eds.) (1998) Sociobiology and Politics,
JAI Press, Greenwich CT;
J.M.G. van der Dennen; D. Smillie & D.R. Wilson (Eds.) (1999) The Darwinian Heritage and
Sociobiology. Praeger/Greenwood Press, Westport CT;
Website: http://rint.rechten.rug.nl/rth/dennen/dennen.htm

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