Prehistoric_warfare

Prehistoric warfare is war conducted in the era before writing, and before the establishments of large social entities like states. Historical warfare sets in with the standing armies of Bronze Age Sumer, but prehistoric warfare may be studied in some societies at much later dates.

When humans first began fighting wars is a matter of debate among anthropologists and historians.^{[citation needed]} The answer to this question is dependent on the definition of "war" itself.

The size of prehistoric armies is also a matter of debate.^{[citation needed]} Those who reject the notion of prehistoric war argue that most early population densities were too low to field anything larger than raiding parties of a few dozen men.^{[citation needed]} This is supported by the later Amarna letters, where no more than 20 armed persons were able to terrorize towns in the southern Levant. Others argue that settlements of the size of Çatal Höyük in modern day Turkey would have likely fielded several hundred men, and an alliance of a few cities would thus produce a sizable force.^{[citation needed]} Presumably, such a group would have been large enough to require all of the elements of warfare, such as tactics, logistics, and organizational structure, for the success of an expedition.

Endemic warfare

Main article: Endemic warfare

Of the hunter-gatherer societies still in existence today, some lead lives of great violence, frequently raiding neighboring groups and seizing territory, women, and goods from others by force.Keeley, pg. 28. "Three independent cross cultural surveys of representative samples of recent tribal and state societies from around the world have tabulated data on armed conflict, all giving very consistent results. The results indicate that 90 percent of the cultures in the sample unequivocally engaged in warfare and that the remaining 10 percent were not total strangers to violent conflict." Other groups, such as the Bushmen of the Kalahari, live in societies with no warfare and very little murder.Keeley, pg. 29.

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.^{[citation needed]} 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.

Paleolithic

The most common weapons used by early man were simple in form and easy to produce. Originally, such weaponry consisted of clubs and spears. These were heavily used for hunting as early as 35,000 BC, but there is little evidence that there was much of what we would consider war in that era. Of the many cave paintings from this period, none depict people attacking other people. There is no known archaeological evidence of large scale fighting during this period of social evolution.Guthrie, pg 422.

Beginning around 12,000 BC, combat was transformed by the development of bows, maces, and slings. The bow seems to have been the most important weapon in the development of early warfare, in that it enabled attacks to be launched with far less risk to the attacker when compared to the risk involved in the use of mêlée combat weaponry. 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. These figures are arrayed in lines and columns with a distinctly garbed leader at the front. Some paintings even portray still-recognizable tactics like flankings and envelopments.Keeley, pg.45, Fig. 3.1

Neolithic

Although the Neolithic occurred at different times in different places around the globe, very little evidence exists generally for warfare during this time period. Compared to the subsequent Bronze and Iron Ages, the Neolithic is characterized by small towns, stone versus metal technology, and a lack of social hierarchy. Towns are generally unfortified and built in areas difficult to defend. Skeletal and burial remains do not generally indicate the presence of warfare.

The first archaeological record of what could be a prehistoric battle is on the Nile in Egypt near its border with Sudan. Known as Cemetery 117 it is at least seven thousand years old. It contains a large number of bodies, many with arrowheads embedded in their skeletons, which indicates that they may have been the casualties of a battle. Some question this conclusion by arguing that the bodies may have accumulated over many decades, and may even be evidence of the murder of trespassers rather than actual battles. Nearly half of the bodies are female, and this fact also causes some to question the argument for large-scale warfare.

The Māori of New Zealand are notable for the thousands of fortifications constructed to enhance a group\'s standing in the near continuous fighting on their islands in the South Pacific. In an era before siege weapons had been developed to a high level of technological complexity, and when attackers had limited supplies and time to spend engaged in battles, fortifications seem to have been a successful method of securing a population and livestock against invaders, though the fields and homes would likely be pillaged by the attackers. These substantial fortifications show that there was considerable social organization in the societies of prehistoric peoples. This is indirect corollary evidence for them also having been capable of conducting organized warfare.

Bronze Age

The onset of the Chalcolithic saw the introduction of copper daggers, axes, and other items. For the most part these were far too expensive and malleable to be efficient weapons. They are considered by many scholars to have been largely ceremonial implements. It was with the development of bronze that edged metal weapons became commonplace.

Military conquests expanding city states to empires begin in the 3rd millennium BC, notably with Sargon I creating the Akkadian Empire. Senusret I in the 20th century BC subjugates Nubia under Egyptian control. Babylonia and later Assyria built empires in Mesopotamia while the Hittite Empire ruled much of Anatolia. Chariots appear in the 20th century BC, and become central to warfare in the Ancient Near East from the 17th century BC. The Hyksos and Kassite invasions mark the transition to the Late Bronze Age. Ahmose I defeated the Hyksos and re-established Egyptian control of Nubia and Canaan, territories again defended by Ramesses II at the Battle of Kadesh, the greatest chariot battle of the Bronze Age. The raids of the Sea Peoples and the renewed disintegration of Egypt in the Third Intermediate Period marks the end of the Bronze Age.

Iron Age

Main article: Ancient warfare

Early Iron Age events like the Dorian invasion, Greek colonialism and their interaction with Phoenician and Etruscan forces lie within the prehistoric period. Germanic warrior societies of the Migration period engaged in endemic warfare (see also Thorsberg moor). Anglo-Saxon warfare lies on the edge of historicity, its study relying primarily on archaeology with the help of only fragmentary written accounts.

War before civilization

In his book War Before Civilization, Lawrence H. Keeley, a professor at the University of Illinois, calculates that 87% of tribal societies were at war more than once per year, and some 65% of them were fighting continuously.

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. These mass killings occurred well before any contact with the West. In Arnhem Land in northern Australia, a study of warfare among the Indigenous Australian 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. 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.

In fact, says Keeley, it is peaceful societies that are the 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. "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."

According to Keeley, even among the supposedly peaceful 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 and cannibalized captured enemy warriors.^{[citation needed]} 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.

Professor 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 with surprisingly deadly cumulative effects. It has long been known, for example, that many tribes of South America\'s tropical forest engaged in frequent and horrific warfare, but some scholars have attributed their addiction to violence to baneful Western influences. Keeley produces evidence of frequent deadly raids and occasional wholesale massacres over much of prehistoric North America, arguing that this archaeological evidence indicates that these massacres were not only prior to Western contact, but also more severe than anything reported in the ethnographic record for the region.

For example, at Crow Creek 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 (ca. A.D. 1325). 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.[1]

Notes

References

• Bouthoul, Gaston. Traité de polémologie: Sociologie des guerres. Paris: Payot, 1991.
• Guilaine, Jean. Jean Zammit. Le sentier de la guerre : visages de la violence préhistorique. Paris : Seuil, 2001.
• Guthrie, R. Dale. "The nature of Paleolithic art", University of Chicago Press, 2005, ISBN 0226311260
• Kelly, Raymond C. Warless societies and the origin of war. Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2000.
• LeBlanc, Steven A., Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest, University of Utah Press, 1999.
• LeBlanc, Steven A., Katherine E. Register. Constant battles : the myth of the peaceful, noble savage. New York : St. Martin\'s Griffin, 2004. ISBN 0312310897
• Otterbein, Keith F.. How war began. College Station : Texas A&M University Press, 2004
• Randsborg, Klavs. Hjortspring : warfare and sacrifice in early Europe. Aarhus, Denmark; Oakville, Connecticut. : Aarhus University Press, 1995.
• Roksandic, Mirjana ed.. Violent interactions in the Mesolithic : evidence and meaning. Oxford, England : Archaeopress, 2004
• Zimmerman, L. The Crow Creek Site Massacre: A Preliminary Report, US Army Corps of Engineers, Omaha District, 1981.
• Chagnon, N. The Yanomamo, Holt, Rinehart & Winston,1983.
• Keeley, Lawrence. War Before Civilization, Oxford University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-19-509112-4
• Pauketat, Timothy. North American Archaeology 2005. Blackwell Publishing.
• Wade, Nicholas. Before the Dawn, Penguin: New York 2006.
• Rafael Karsten, Blood revenge, war, and victory feasts among the Jibaro Indians of eastern Equador, 1923.

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