Talk:Prehistoric warfare

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and regional and topical task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.

Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.

Additional information and associated task forces:

This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-Class status:

Referencing and citation: not checked
Coverage and accuracy: not checked
Structure: not checked
Grammar: not checked
Supporting materials: not checked

To fill out this checklist, please add the following to the template call:

|B-Class-1=yes/no

|B-Class-2=yes/no

|B-Class-3=yes/no

|B-Class-4=yes/no

|B-Class-5=yes/no

This article is not currently associated with a task force. To tag it for one or more task forces, please add the task force codes from the template instructions to the template call.

Other groups, such as the famous Bushmen of the Kalahari live extremely peaceful lives with conflict and murder all but unheard of.

Ah, the noble savage...man, what century is this? Is there a source for this claim? From what I remember about them they have just as many conflicts as any other group of people. Adam Bishop 17:58, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm actually more astonished by the preceding statement. I would like to know which hunter gatherer groups wage war. Can someone answer this?

I'm interested of that too, if there is no reference, the sentence should be removed. For me, that sentence sound like referring to some swidden agriculturalists in Amazon area. If that's the case, then it should be no problem to "Which of these states was more common among early humans is still unknown, and is a matter of deep debate." That line also need some kind of reference.

Also i think that this part: "What is common among those groups that remain and fight frequently is that warfare is highly ritualized, with a number of taboos and practices in place that limit the number of casualties and the duration of a conflict, a situation known as endemic warfare. Among tribal societies engaging in endemic warfare, conflict may escalate to actual warfare every generation or so, for various reasons such as population pressure or conflict over resources, but also for no readily understandable reason.", refers mostly to agriculturalists in New Guinea and gardener/pastoralist warfare by large?

Hunter Gatherer groups generally do not recogonize themselves as having territory, at least not until recently. And the Ju/wasi or whatever you want to call em' mentioned above do indeed get themselves murdered sometimes, Nisa is a good book to read if you want a personal picture of Botswana ju/wasi society. They do not war though because they do not have property (beyond what can be carried), however in Namibia the army does recruit memebrs from hunter groups to help them hunt people. Either way, hunter gatherers are not p74rehistoric peoples so i guess it doesnt matter. I think this whole paragraph should be removed. ~FreddieResearch

That is a good, good point. What is common among those groups that still remain and fight frequently is that warfare is highly ritualized...

"Those groups that still remain?" What does that mean? --RL

[[]] My question is the same: You say "What is common among those groups that still remain and fight frequently..." What do you mean by "those groups that still remain"? Do you mean current groups living lives similar to what we think Paleolithic and/or Neolithic people might have lived? I think it would be good to clarify this. Athana 00:44, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

You say "Agriculture created large enough surpluses to enable farmers to spend some of the year as warriors, or to support a dedicated class of fighters." This statement should be qualified if not outright stricken from the article. There must be scores of theories about why warfare increased through time. This may be one, but it's only one. And it should also be referenced; otherwise it lowers one's confidence in the article. Athana 00:53, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't disagree with this line, but would like a reference: "While there are no cave paintings of battles between men armed with clubs, the development of the bow is concurrent with the first known depictions of organized warfare consisting of clear illustrations of two or more groups of men attacking each other." Especially it should be added that where these paintings are found geographically.

1 Bible Times
2 bronze age warfare
3 Ignorance
4 Endemic Warfare Citation
5 Neolithic warfare

[edit] Bible Times

I know many of you might not think the Bible is all-out true, but it is still a historical document. The very first "battle" or "war" recorded in It is Genesis 14. I posted this same thing in "Ancient Warfare" as the story, I think, fits better over there. Colonel Marksman 17:54, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Is it the first war recorded though? Ungovernable Force^{Got something to say?} 05:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

the Hebrew Bible is a historical document to be sure, documenting Canaanite history from ca. the 7th to 4th century BC. That's more than a millennium after our first reliable sources concerning warfare of the Assyrian Empire. dab (ᛏ) 07:53, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] bronze age warfare

there is a problem with the one of the dates regarding egyptian warfare. accoriding to David O'connor and many other scholars of Nubian history. Nubia or more properly the kingdom of kerma during this period of time wasn't subdued until 1500bc 1450bc at the latest the date given here coinsides the middle to classic phase of the kerma state during which Nubia is not only independant but rivals Egypt in millitary strength retaking lower nubia

[edit] Ignorance

"One half of the people found in a Nubian cemetery dating to as early as 12,000 years ago had died of violence. The Yellowknives tribe in Canada was effectively obliterated by massacres committed by Dogrib Indians, and disappeared from history shortly thereafter. Similar massacres occurred among the Eskimos, the Crow Indians, and countless others."

ONE: The indians didn't even know north america existed back then. TWO: Eskimo is an old, offensive term (much like calling a native american an indian) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.207.58.166 (talk) 23:59, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Endemic Warfare Citation

Specific to your comments:

txt refers to a sub-set of citation info
- Saying 'hunter gatherer' would be inaccurate because the citation does not refer to hunter gatherers at all. This would be being more specific than citations allow. You can not refer to a sub-set of citation info if there is no basis for it in the citation.

citation supports text not vice-versa
- I have no idea of the text supporting the citation. If you change the content from the citation to the text, then citation no longer supports the text.

Also, substituting hunter gatherer for 90% of tribal societies would make it seem as though all the societies taken into account were hunter gatherers. As far as we know from this, it could have been that none of them were hunter gatherers. Another possible occurence is that the hunter gatherers surveyed were only part of the 10%. Looking at the societies he describes here, examples given are 'the Chippewa Indians, Fiji islanders, the Dinka of West Africa, and certain New Guinean tribes', 'Tahitians, Zulus, and some New Guinean tribes' and 'The Iroquois', all of which are farming societies.

Being 'not total strangers to violent conflict' is no major thing anyway. Even if there was only on average one fight once every 20 years, that would still mean everyone except wee kids would be 'not total strangers to violent conflict'.

Munci (talk) 15:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Here is something saying that another guy, Kelly, says that hunter gatherers weren't warlike:

He accepts almost all of what Keeley points out about tribal peoples since the Neolithic. He also accepts that tribal peoples everywhere have been violent, not peaceful and gentle. Yet, sifting the evidence finely, he still believes that warfare originated very late in human evolution and that he can pinpoint what led to its emergence and proliferation. He observes that “excepting a single Upper Palaeolithic site, archaeological evidence points to a commencement of warfare that postdates the development of agriculture. This strongly implies that earlier hunter-gatherer societies were warless and that the Palaeolithic was a time of universal peace.” Munci (talk) 16:39, 9 May 2008 (UTC)