Constant Battles: Why we fight (St. Martin's Griffin, 2003) originally published under the title Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage is a book by Steven LeBlanc, a professor of archaeology at Harvard University who specializes in the American Southwest. The book explores the myth of the "noble savage" and it demonstrates a long pattern of violence through human history from nearly all parts of the globe.
Much of the book explores debunking the myth of the "noble savage",[1] which the evidence of archaeological exploration from around the globe does not support (a peaceful ancient human existence). LeBlanc's data supports that as many as 25% (conservatively estimated) of adult males perished as a direct result of warfare and murder in pre-agricultural times. Chapter 2 titled, "Was There Ever an Eden?" explores this notion further.
"Prior to the horse, hunting buffalo was not easy. One of the best methods was the buffalo jump, depicted here by Alfred Jacob Miller in 1867. Used for thousands of years by the Plains Indians, a jump could result in hundreds of buffalo being killed, often far more than could be consumed. The Plains Indians, like everyone else on earth, had no mechanisms to avoid affecting their environment or preventing depletion of their resources." p. 32, 'Constant Battles: Why We Fight' by Steven A. Le Blanc
About 1,000 people die in local wars around the world each day. That's two people every three minutes or so, in places like the Balkans, Central Africa and Timor. It may sound like a lot of killing, but in fact the planet has never been more peaceful. The past is much bloodier.[2]
LeBlanc explains that resource scarcity leads to war and conflict. Scarcity involving access to reproductive capacity including women, food and water, and the required elements involved in creating and holding shelter. When these resources become scarce, warfare and bloodshed tend towards becoming increasingly likely.[3]
In the "Was There Ever an Eden?" chapter, LeBlanc demonstrates evidence, such as the "Buffalo jump", where hundreds to thousands of buffalo would be driven off a cliff, with only some of the killed being able to be used or harvested for their meat and hides, to show that Native and Indigenous persons in the Americas were often very wasteful in their hunting practices, and that it is a myth that such groups and cultures were "conservationists" with regard to all of their interactions with nature, wildlife, and their ecology.[4]
↑ LeBlanc, Steven (2020), Fagan, Garrett G.; Fibiger, Linda; Hudson, Mark; Trundle, Matthew (eds.), "The Origins of Warfare and Violence", The Cambridge World History of Violence: Volume 1: The Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds, The Cambridge World History of Violence, vol.1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.39–57, ISBN978-1-316-34124-7, retrieved 9 July 2024
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