The emergence of human warfare

Current perspectives

Bibliographic Data

ID8313352
AuthorsM Kissel (0000-0002-4004-1996, Department of Anthropology Appalachian State University College of Arts and Sciences Boone North Carolina, corresponding author), Nam C Kim (0000-0001-7560-2821, Department of Anthropology University of Wisconsin‐Madison Madison Wisconsin)
Year2019
Volume168
IssueS67
Pages141-163
Publication date2019-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Journal of Physical Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-9483 • E-ISSN: 1096-8644
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/ajpa.23751
PMID30575025
OpenAlexW2905613506
LanguageEN
Citations received28
References cited159

The origins of warfare have long been of interest for researchers across disciplines. Did our earliest ancestors engage in forms of organized violence that are appropriately viewed as approximations, forms of, or analogs for more recent forms of warfare? Assessed in this article are contrasting views that see warfare as being either a product of more recent human societies or a phenomenon with a much deeper chronology. The article provides an overview of current debates, theories, and methodological approaches, citing literature and data from archaeological, ethnographic, genetic, primatological, and paleoanthropological studies. Synthetic anthropological treatments are needed, especially in efforts to inform debates among nonacademic audiences, because the discipline's approaches are ideally suited to study the origins of warfare. Emphasized is the need to consider possible forms of violence and intergroup aggression within Pleistocene contexts, despite the methodological challenges associated with fragmentary, equivocal, or scarce data. Finally, the review concludes with an argument about the implications of the currently available data. We propose that socially cooperative violence, or “emergent warfare,” became possible with the onset of symbolic thought and complex cognition. Viewing emergent warfare as a byproduct of the human capacity for symbolic thought explains how the same capacities for communication and sociality allowed for elaborate peacemaking, conflict resolution, and avoidance. Cultural institutions around war and peace are both made possible by these changes. Accordingly, we suggest that studies on warfare's origins should be tied to research on the advent of cooperation, sociality, and communication

Aggression · Argument (complex analysis) · Conflict resolution · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Ethnography · Peacemaking · Social science · Sociality · Sociology · Animal Ecology and Behavior Studies · Anthropology · Ecology · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research

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