History: Warfare in prehistory-3

The distinction between ritual and secular phases of warfare has been made also by anthropologists working in other parts of the world. For example, after reviewing ritual warfare (tinku) in the Andes, Arkush and Stanish (2005) conclude that it was related to destructive warfare:

"To summarize, archaeologists can expect destructive warfare and ritual to go hand in hand. Ritual is also involved in contained forms of festive combat such as tinku, games, and rites of passage that can be distinguished precisely by their lack of larger effects. Such setpiece combat surely took place in the prehistoric past, but it should not be associated with fortifications, high rates of trauma, or the other indices of destructive warfare, and we should not be misled by ritual features, trophies, and ritual iconography into thinking that prehistoric conflict was small-scale or unimportant."

The "raid or starve" explanation of warfare is not usually recognized by the peoples who practice it, presumably because the extreme starvation conditions occur so rarely, perhaps only once in many generations. Instead, they may have symbolic explanations like the Danis' ghosts. For the same reason, it is difficult for anthropologists to investigate this hypothesis. Not only are the conditions extremely rare, but even if they were to occur, ethical considerations would impel the anthropologists to intervene and not simply make observations while watching people die of starvation.

Here is a serious weakness of the scientific method, which is good at investigating frequent or easily-repeatable events, but which cannot deal with events that occur only rarely and are not reproducible.

The evolution of traits that are useful only on rare occasions is perhaps easiest to understand in the case of examples from biological evolution, where it is possible to examine hundreds of generations of a plant or animal under relatively controlled conditions. Take, for example, the following discussion of "fire-resistant seeds" in plants, taken from The Basics of Selection by Bell (1996).

"Selection of Lineages for Specific Adaptation. Any environment is likely to change abruptly at long and irregular intervals; this is part of the variation of the environment on all time scales. Organisms are thus liable to suffer infrequent catastrophes, as the result of the devastation caused by fire, flood, or some similar event. They might become adapted to resist this devastation . . for example, by producing seeds that are able to germinate after fire. If the return time of fires exceeds the lineage scale of the organism, then fire-resistant seeds will not, in most generations, increase the reproductive output of individuals. Such seeds will, rather, affect whether a lineage survives and proliferates . . There is, in short, no difficulty in analyzing specific adaptation to rare events in terms of the selection of lineages of appropriate degree.

Any specific adaptation that is favored in this way will be opposed by shorter-term processes. In the first place, it will become degraded by mutation during the intervening period in which it is not being actively maintained by selection; the more extended the lineage, the longer the period involved and the greater the degree of degradation. Second, shorter-term selection acting through lineages of lower degree may often act antagonistically to longer-term selection . . fire resistant seeds, for example, may germinate less easily in normal years, so that selection among lineages, a few generations in extent, is opposed by selection among individuals within lineages. It will, however, by now be a familiar proposition that negative correlation between shorter-term and longer-term fitness will tend to evolve: genes that increase both will be fixed, and those that reduce both eliminated, leaving genes with antagonistic effects segregating in the population.

Now, to understand the usefulness of warfare in prehistory, let us take as a model the preceding description of the evolution of fire-resistant seeds, and substitute "society" for "lineage", "behaviors" for "genes", and "warfare" for "fire-resistant seeds":

Selection of Societies for Specific Adaptation. The environment of any society is likely to change abruptly at long and irregular intervals; this is part of the variation of the environment on all time scales. Societies are thus liable to suffer infrequent catastrophes, as the result of the devastation caused by droughts, floods, or some similar event. They might become adapted to resist this devastation, for example, by developing a culture of war with the military capacity to overcome neighboring tribes and steal their foodstocks or hunting territories. If the frequency of catastrophes exceeds the time scale of several generations, then the coping behavior will not, in most generations, be of evident usefulness. The behaviors will, rather, affect whether the particular society survives and proliferates in the long term. There is, in short, no difficulty in analyzing specific adaptation to rare events in terms of the selection among a number of competing societies.

If the frequency of catastrophes exceeds many generations, then the adaptive usefulness of the behavior itself may be forgotten and may be explained, not in terms of adaptation to catastrophe, but in terms of less specific causes, for example, to appease the spirits of the dead, etc.

Any specific adaptation that is favored in this way will be opposed by shorter-term processes. In the first place, it will become degraded and replaced by competing activities during the intervening period in which it is not being actively maintained by selection; the more extended the society, the longer the period involved and the greater the degree of degradation. Second, shorter-term selection may often act antagonistically to longer-term selection. For example, frequent warfare may kill or injure so many men that a group is less able to grow and prosper than another which engages less in warfare, thus opposing the selection of warfare in all of the societies in a given region. The negative correlation between shorter-term and longer-term fitness will tend to evolve: behaviors that increase both will be fixed, and those that reduce both eliminated. For example, one might expect the behaviors of warfare to become ritualized to the point that the practice is maintained, but the cost of death and injury is minimized.

End of section

To take part in a discussion about this page, click below on the Culture of Peace Dialogues: