War Before Civilization

Last updated
War Before Civilization
AuthorLawrence H. Keeley
LanguageEnglish
Subject Warfare
PublisherOxford University Press
Publication date
1996
Media typePrint
Pagesxiv, 245
ISBN 9780199761531
OCLC 770942100

War Before Civilization: the Myth of the Peaceful Savage (Oxford University Press, 1996) is a book by Lawrence H. Keeley, a professor of archaeology at the University of Illinois at Chicago who specialized in prehistoric Europe. The book deals with warfare conducted throughout human history by societies with little technology. In the book, Keeley aims to stop the apparent trend in seeing modern civilization as bad, by setting out to prove that prehistoric societies were often violent and engaged in frequent warfare that was highly destructive to the cultures involved. [1]

Contents

Summary

According to Keeley's book, modern western societies are not more violent or war-prone than (historical) tribes. This bar chart compares the percentage of male deaths as caused by warfare in eight tribal societies (Jivaro, Yanomamo, Mae Enga, Dugum Dani, Murngin, Huli, Gebusi) with Europe and the US in the 20th century. The chart is based on War before Civilization. War deaths caused by warfare.svg
According to Keeley's book, modern western societies are not more violent or war-prone than (historical) tribes. This bar chart compares the percentage of male deaths as caused by warfare in eight tribal societies (Jívaro, Yanomamo, Mae Enga, Dugum Dani, Murngin, Huli, Gebusi) with Europe and the US in the 20th century. The chart is based on War before Civilization.

Keeley conducts an investigation of the archaeological evidence for prehistoric violence, including murder and massacre as well as war. He also looks at nonstate societies of more recent times – where we can name the tribes and peoples – and their propensity for warfare. [2] It has long been known, for example, that many tribes of South America's tropical forest engaged in frequent warfare.

Keeley says peaceful societies are an exception. About 90–95% of known societies engage in war. Those that did not are almost universally either isolated nomadic groups (for whom flight is an option), groups of defeated refugees, or small enclaves under the protection of a larger modern state. The attrition rate of numerous close-quarter clashes, which characterize warfare in tribal warrior society, produces casualty rates of up to 60%, compared to 1% of the combatants as is typical in modern warfare. Despite the undeniable carnage and effectiveness of modern warfare, the evidence shows that tribal warfare is on average 20 times more deadly than 20th-century warfare, whether calculated as a percentage of total deaths due to war or as average deaths per year from war as a percentage of the total population. [3] "Had the same casualty rate been suffered by the population of the twentieth century," writes Nicholas Wade, "its war deaths would have totaled two billion people." [4] In modern tribal societies, death rates from war are four to six times the highest death rates in 20th-century Germany or Russia. [5]

One-half of the people found in a mesolithic cemetery in present-day Jebel Sahaba, Sudan dating to as early as 13,000 years ago had died as a result of warfare between seemingly different racial groups with victims bearing marks of being killed by arrow heads, spears and club, prompting some to call it the first race war. [6] [7] The Yellowknives tribe in Canada was effectively obliterated by massacres committed by Dogrib Indians, and disappeared from history shortly thereafter. [8] Similar massacres occurred among the Eskimos, the Crow Indians, and countless others. These mass killings occurred well before any contact with the West. In Arnhem Land in northern Australia, a study of warfare among the Australian Aboriginal Murngin people in the late-19th century found that over a 20-year period no less than 200 out of 800 men, or 25% of all adult males, had been killed in intertribal warfare. [9] The accounts of missionaries to the area in the borderlands between Brazil and Venezuela have recounted constant infighting in the Yanomami tribes for women or prestige, and evidence of continuous warfare for the enslavement of neighboring tribes such as the Macu before the arrival of European settlers and government. More than a third of the Yanomamo males, on average, died from warfare.

According to Keeley, among the indigenous peoples of the Americas, only 13% did not engage in wars with their neighbors at least once per year. The natives' pre-Columbian ancient practice of using human scalps as trophies is well documented. Iroquois routinely slowly tortured to death captured enemy warriors (see Captives in American Indian Wars for details). In some regions of the American Southwest, the violent destruction of prehistoric settlements is well documented and during some periods was even common. For example, the large pueblo at Sand Canyon in Colorado, although protected by a defensive wall, was almost entirely burned, artifacts in the rooms had been deliberately smashed, and bodies of some victims were left lying on the floors. After this catastrophe in the late thirteenth century, the pueblo was never reoccupied.

For example, at the Crow Creek massacre site (in the territory of the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota), archaeologists found a mass grave containing the remains of more than 500 men, women, and children who had been slaughtered, scalped, and mutilated during an attack on their village a century and a half before Columbus's arrival (c.1325 AD). The Crow Creek massacre seems to have occurred just when the village's fortifications were being rebuilt. All the houses were burned, and most of the inhabitants were murdered. This death toll represented more than 60% of the village's population, estimated from the number of houses to have been about 800. The survivors appear to have been primarily young women, as their skeletons are underrepresented among the bones; if so, they were probably taken away as captives. Certainly, the site was deserted for some time after the attack because the bodies evidently remained exposed to scavenging animals for a few weeks before burial. In other words, this whole village was annihilated in a single attack and never reoccupied. [10]

Chapter 5, compares civilized soldiers with primitive warriors. Keeley observes that tactical methods by civilized soldiers were not very good and that primitive methods were actually better. Indigenous groups in many areas of the world successfully defended and defeated multiple European colonization campaigns for decades due to primitive unorthodox warfare techniques like smaller mobile units, using small arms as opposed to artillery, open formations, frequent uses of ambushes and raids, surprise attacks, destruction of infrastructure (e.g. villages, habitations, foodstores, livestock, means of transportation), extensive uses of scouts. European conquests were greatly helped by ecological changes like diseases, viruses, and bacteria in defeating many indigenous groups since such conditions eliminated more indigenous people than did any armed conflict. The defeat of the Inca and the Aztecs are examples. Sometimes, primitive groups had better military foresight than civilized counterparts. Keeley relates an incident in which an Eipo tribal leader of highland Irian (in Western New Guinea) quickly thought of and wanted to immediately use aerial bombardment of enemies shortly after seeing an airplane for the first time. Keeley says the Western developers of planes took years to develop similar ideas. Many primitive techniques are preserved in modern times as guerrilla warfare. [11]

He makes three conclusions which The New York Times considers unexpected:

Reception

When it was published, I thought my book would annoy everybody. Other than a few anthropologists whom I either ridiculed or found rather obvious mistakes in their analyses, the reception was instead surprisingly positive. This positive response was especially true of archaeologists.

Keeley, L. H. (2014). War Before Civilization – 15 Years On. In The Evolution of Violence (pp. 23–31). Springer, New York

TheNew York Times said that "the book's most dramatic payoff is its concluding explanation for the recent "pacification of the past" by scholars" [12] and that "...revulsion with the excesses of World War II has led to a loss of faith in progress and Western civilization....".

American political scientist Eliot A. Cohen described the book as "At once scholarly and lucid, he paints a dark picture of human nature, although he does not believe humankind is doomed to a perpetual striving for mutual extinction. A sobering, grim, and important book." [13] Anthropologist R. Brian Ferguson gave a mostly positive review but argued that Keeley overstated the commonality of ancient warfare and that aversion by academics to the existence of pre-historical warfare was misrepresented. [14]

The book was a finalist for the 1996 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History. [15]

Selected academic reviews

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">War</span> Intense armed conflict

War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces. Warfare refers to the common activities and characteristics of types of war, or of wars in general. Total war is warfare that is not restricted to purely legitimate military targets, and can result in massive civilian or other non-combatant suffering and casualties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noble savage</span> Stock character

In Western anthropology, philosophy, and literature, the noble savage is a stock character who is uncorrupted by civilization. As such, the noble savage symbolizes the innate goodness and moral superiority of a primitive people living in harmony with Nature. In the heroic drama of the stageplay The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards (1672), John Dryden represents the noble savage as an archetype of Man-as-Creature-of-Nature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tribe</span> Human social group

The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. Its definition is contested, in part due to conflicting theoretical understandings of social and kinship structures, and also reflecting the problematic application of this concept to extremely diverse human societies. The concept is often contrasted by anthropologists with other social and kinship groups, being hierarchically larger than a lineage or clan, but smaller than a chiefdom, ethnicity, nation or state. These terms are similarly disputed. In some cases tribes have legal recognition and some degree of political autonomy from national or federal government, but this legalistic usage of the term may conflict with anthropological definitions.

Tribalism is the state of being organized by, or advocating for, tribes or tribal lifestyles. Human evolution has primarily occurred in small hunter-gatherer groups, as opposed to in larger and more recently settled agricultural societies or civilizations. With a negative connotation and in a political context, tribalism can also mean discriminatory behavior or attitudes towards out-groups, based on in-group loyalty.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hunter-gatherer</span> Peoples who forage or hunt for most or all of their food and life

A hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living in a community, or according to an ancestrally derived lifestyle, in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local naturally occurring sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, honey, bird eggs, or anything safe to eat, and/or by hunting game. This is a common practice among most vertebrates that are omnivores. Hunter-gatherer societies stand in contrast to the more sedentary agricultural societies, which rely mainly on cultivating crops and raising domesticated animals for food production, although the boundaries between the two ways of living are not completely distinct.

A feud, also known in more extreme cases as a blood feud, vendetta, faida, clan war, gang war, private war, or mob war, is a long-running argument or fight, often between social groups of people, especially families or clans. Feuds begin because one party perceives itself to have been attacked, insulted, injured, or otherwise wronged by another. Intense feelings of resentment trigger an initial retribution, which causes the other party to feel greatly aggrieved and vengeful. The dispute is subsequently fuelled by a long-running cycle of retaliatory violence. This continual cycle of provocation and retaliation usually makes it extremely difficult to end the feud peacefully. Feuds can persist for generations and may result in extreme acts of violence. They can be interpreted as an extreme outgrowth of social relations based in family honor. A mob war is a time when two or more rival families begin open warfare with one another, destroying each other's businesses and assassinating family members. Mob wars are generally disastrous for all concerned, and can lead to the rise or fall of a family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Burnett Tylor</span> English anthropologist (1832–1917)

Sir Edward Burnett Tylor was an English anthropologist, and professor of anthropology.

Prehistoric warfare refers to war that occurred between societies without recorded history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crow Creek massacre</span> United States historic place

The Crow Creek massacre occurred around the mid-14th century AD and involved Native American groups at a site along the upper Missouri River in the South Dakota area; it is now within the Crow Creek Indian Reservation. Crow Creek Site, the site of the massacre near Chamberlain, is an archaeological site and a U.S. National Historic Landmark, located at coordinates 43°58′48″N 99°19′54″W. An excavation of part of the site was done in the 1950s, at the time of dam construction on the river. Additional excavations were conducted in 1978 and later.

Primitive Culture is an 1871 book by Edward Burnett Tylor. In his book, Tylor debates the relationship between "primitive" societies, and "civilized" societies, a key theme in 19th century anthropological literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pierre Clastres</span> French anthropologist and ethnologist (1934–1977)

Pierre Clastres was a French anthropologist, ethnographer, and ethnologist. He is best known for his contributions to the field of political anthropology, with his fieldwork among the Guayaki in Paraguay and his theory of stateless societies. An anarchist seeking an alternative to the hierarchized Western societies, he mostly researched Indigenous peoples of the Americas in which the power was not considered coercive and chieftains were powerless.

The "original affluent society" is the proposition that argues that the lives of hunter-gatherers can be seen as embedding a sufficient degree of material comfort and security to be considered affluent. The theory was first put forward in a paper presented by Marshall Sahlins at a famous symposium in 1966 entitled 'Man the Hunter'. Sahlins observes that affluence is the satisfaction of wants, "which may be 'easily satisfied' either by producing much or desiring little." Given a culture characterized by limited wants, Sahlins argued that hunter-gatherers were able to live 'affluently' through the relatively easy satisfaction of their material needs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ritual warfare</span> State of continual or frequent warfare

Ritual warfare is a state of continual or frequent warfare, such as is found in some tribal societies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Verrier Elwin</span> British-born Indian anthropologist, ethnologist and tribal activist

Harry Verrier Holman Elwin was a British-born Indian anthropologist, ethnologist and tribal activist. He first abandoned the clergy, to work with Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress, then converted to Hinduism in 1935 after staying in a Gandhian ashram, and split with the nationalists over what he felt was an overhasty process of transformation and assimilation for the tribals. Verrier Elwin is best known for his early work with the Baigas and Gonds of Orissa and Madhya Pradesh in central India, and he married a 13 year old member of one of the communities he studied. He later also worked on the tribals of several North East Indian states especially North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) and settled in Shillong, the hill capital of Meghalaya.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yanomami</span> Indigenous people who live in the Amazonas basin

The Yanomami, also spelled Yąnomamö or Yanomama, are a group of approximately 35,000 indigenous people who live in some 200–250 villages in the Amazon rainforest on the border between Venezuela and Brazil.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claude Lévi-Strauss</span> French anthropologist and ethnologist (1908–2009)

Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthropology at the Collège de France between 1959 and 1982, was elected a member of the Académie française in 1973 and was a member of the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. He received numerous honours from universities and institutions throughout the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Talheim Death Pit</span> Neolithic mass grave in Germany

The Talheim Death Pit, discovered in 1983, was a mass grave found in a Linear Pottery Culture settlement, also known as a Linearbandkeramik (LBK) culture. It dates back to about 5000 BC. The pit takes its name from its site in Talheim, Germany. The pit contained the remains of 34 bodies, and evidence points towards the first signs of organized violence in Early Neolithic Europe.

Primitive communism is a way of describing the gift economies of hunter-gatherers throughout history, where resources and property hunted or gathered are shared with all members of a group in accordance with individual needs. In political sociology and anthropology, it is also a concept, that describes hunter-gatherer societies as traditionally being based on egalitarian social relations and common ownership. A primary inspiration for both Marx and Engels were Lewis H. Morgan's descriptions of "communism in living" as practised by the Haudenosaunee of North America. In Marx's model of socioeconomic structures, societies with primitive communism had no hierarchical social class structures or capital accumulation.

Harry Holbert Turney-High (1899–1982) was an American anthropologist and author who studied primitive war and conflict. He was a professor of anthropology at University of South Carolina and also a colonel in the military police in the United States Army Reserve. He based his theory on the concept of military horizon, which is the point where a society evolves from a primitive form of war towards a more complex one. This evolution depends not only on traditionally studied mechanism, such as climate or access to resources, but mainly on the organizational ability of any given society.

Lawrence H. Keeley was an American archaeologist best known for pioneering the field of microwear analysis of lithics. He is also known for his 1996 book, War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. Keeley worked as a professor of archaeology at the University of Illinois Chicago.

References

  1. Helms, M. W. (1999). War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage/Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War. Journal of World History, 10(2), 431.
  2. "War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage – Harvard Book Store". www.harvard.com. Retrieved 14 February 2019.
  3. Nelson, T.J (2006). "Review: War Before Civilization". randombio.com. Retrieved 14 February 2019.
  4. Spengler (4 July 2006). "The fraud of primitive authenticity". Asia Times Online. Archived from the original on 6 July 2006. Retrieved 8 June 2009.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  5. Windschuttle, Keith (16 August 2003). "Enduring myth of 'noble savage' vs. a species at continuous war?". Washington Times. Retrieved 8 June 2009.
  6. "Saharan remains may be evidence of first race war, 13,000 years ago". The Independent. 14 July 2014.
  7. "Proof of the First Race War Uncovered in Northern Sudan?". 16 July 2014.
  8. See pp. 67–69 of the 1996 Oxford University Press edition of War Before Civilization
  9. See pp. 118–119 of the 1996 Oxford University Press edition of War Before Civilization
  10. "Crow Creek Massacre". www.usd.edu. Archived from the original on 22 November 1999.
  11. Keeley, Lawrence H. (2001). "5. Primitive Warriors Versus Civilized Soldiers". War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savahe. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 71–81. ISBN   9780195119121.
  12. Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (18 July 1996). "BOOKS OF THE TIMES;Even in Eden, It Seems, War Was Hell". The New York Times.
  13. Cohen, Eliot A. (28 January 2009). "War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage". Foreign Affairs: America and the World. No. November/December 1996. ISSN   0015-7120 . Retrieved 14 February 2019.
  14. Ferguson, R. Brian (June 1997). "War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage". American Anthropologist. 99 (2): 424–425. doi: 10.1525/aa.1997.99.2.424 .
  15. "1996 Los Angeles Times Book Prize - History Winner and Nominees". Awards Archive. 25 March 2020. Retrieved 30 April 2023.