Man and war: a marriage that precedes evolution

Those who believe that armed conflicts and genocides are a product of more or less modern technology and social organization, or rather of our way of life that emerged in historical times, are mistaken: Organized aggression and violence are an age-old characteristic of the primate group to which we belonga feature that predates the emergence of our own species.

If it were possible for us to wander around our planet about 300,000 years ago, we would find at least eight different human species different from ours. The Neanderthals, stocky hunters adapted to the cold European steppes. The Denisovans, who inhabited Asia. The more primitive Homo erectus that lived in Indonesia and Homo rhodesiensis in central Africa, and then Homo naledi in South Africa, Homo luzonensis in the Philippines, Homo floresiensis in Indonesia and the mysterious species called “Red deer cave people” in China. Given how quickly we are discovering new species, it is likely that more are waiting to be found.

Yet, within 10,000 years ago, all of these different human species disappeared, as if following a mass extinction, but without an obvious environmental catastrophe – volcanic eruptions, climate change, asteroid impacts. Instead, the timing of the extinction suggests that all other human species have disappeared due to the diffusion of a new species, which evolved 260-350 thousand years ago in Africa: ours.
We are an extraordinarily dangerous species. We have hunted woolly mammoths, ground sloths and gigantic birds like moas to extinction. We have destroyed plains and forests to expand agriculture, changing over half of the planet’s land area. We have altered the global climate to fuel our need for energy sources.

However, it is probable that we have directly destroyed other human species with which we have come into contact, by competition and even directly with violence. History is replete with examples of populations fighting and wiping out other human groups, and right now we can count numerous contemporary examples.

There are few reasons to think that the first Homo sapiens were less territorial, less violent, less intolerant, ultimately less human. Like language or tool use, the ability and tendency to engage in genocide is likely an intrinsic part of our social behavior.

Until evidence of genocide in the Neolithic was discovered, our ancestors were often portrayed as peaceful, noble savages, arguing that our culture, not our nature, would have created organized and violent confrontation between groups. But field studies, historical accounts, and archeology all show that warfare in primitive cultures was intense, pervasive, and lethal.

If, in particular, all available historical evidence is put together, it becomes evident that violence was e.g. endemic in Neolithic Europe, reaching such levels of intergroup hostility that the clashes ended in several documented cases with the total destruction of whole community.

Neolithic weapons such as maces, spears, axes and bows, combined with guerrilla tactics such as raids and ambushes, were devastatingly effective: in some large geographic areas studied, violence was the leading cause of male death, and if you look to mortality, primitive wars had higher levels of per capita casualties than either World War I or World War II.

This is why armed clashes and genocides are ancient: Kennewick man, who lived 9,000 years ago in North America, has a spearhead stuck in his basin. The 10,000-year-old Nataruk site in Kenya documents the brutal slaughter of at least 27 men, women and children. Thirteen thousand years ago a massacre was perpetrated at the Jebel Sahaba site in Sudan, where a burial containing dozens of individuals has been identified, nearly half with arrowheads embedded in their skeletons.

It is unlikely that other human species were much more peaceful. Indeed, the existence of organized cooperative violence between groups of chimpanzees suggests that warfare precedes the evolution of humans.

The archaeological record confirms, for example, that Neanderthal lives were anything but peaceful. They were skilled big game hunters, using their spears to bring down deer, ibex, elk, bison, even rhinoceros and mammoth. It is unlikely that Neanderthals hesitated to use such weapons against rival groups. Indeed, archeology suggests that such conflicts were commonplace. A club to the head is an effective way to kill – clubs are fast, powerful and accurate weapons – so prehistoric Homo sapiens often show trauma to the skull. So also the Neanderthals. For example, the skull of Saint-Césaire, which belonged to a Neanderthal, suffered a blow that split the bone 36,000 years ago in France.

Another sign of warfare is the defense fracture, a break in the forearm done to protect itself from blows. Like our ancestors, Neanderthals also display many broken arms. Trauma was especially common in young Neanderthal males, as were deaths. Some wounds may have been sustained while hunting, but the patterns match those expected for a group engaged in intertribal warfare: small-scale but intense and protracted conflicts, warfare dominated by raids and ambushes, with pitched battles rarer.

Moreover, at least one Neanderthal man, coming from the Shanidar cave in Iraq, was pierced by a spear in the chest. From that spear to the missiles that today wreak havoc and death in Ukraine, only our technology has changed: the wiring of our brains, however, has apparently remained the same, and organized violence continues to be a specific trait of us humans.