In this volume, Nam Kim and Marc Kissel take on a complex subject, draw upon a plethora of evidence and perspectives, and raise important questions. Unlike most researchers dealing with warfare, they also include a consideration of the state of peace. That being said, there are aspects of the book that could be improved for the next edition.Kim and Kissel present a concise, readable and accurate review of the archaeological evidence pertaining to violence—from interpersonal to intergroup fighting. They explore research and interpretations from a variety of disciplines, considering for instance: the development of language; the evolution of cooperation (which they see as foundational to the human capability for both war and peace); genomic research on aggression; ancient cannibalism; hunting; weapons; and primate studies. The volume also considers divergent perspectives on the origins of war, which are important to address, although like the authors, I too question the value of labelling researchers as ‘hawks’ or ‘doves’, a practice mirroring current dysfunctional polemics in politics.
The central tenet of the volume is a new concept proposed by Kim and Kissel, that of emergent warfare. Basing this on comparisons between ancient and modern cognitive potential they write:
Because we see no qualitative differences between the cognitive and cultural potential that humans possess today, as compared to those at 12,000 years ago, 50,000 years ago, or perhaps even 200,000 to 300,000 years ago, we propose that warfare, or at least nascent forms of warfare, would have been just as much a major part of our potential along with a temporal continuum wherein our ancestors were bearers of behavioral and cultural modernity (p. 209).
In reaction to that I would ask whether it is useful to coin a new term for the proposition that as modern humans are capable of warfare, our early ancestors must also have been capable of war.
While it may seem plausible to propose that our ancestors in the Pleistocene could have engaged in warfare, there are at least three problems with this proposition. The most obvious is the lack of evidence for war in the deep past; Kim and Kissel themselves repeatedly acknowledge the worldwide dearth of evidence for intergroup violence before about 12 000 BP. The second problem is the lack of a well-developed theory that would predict emergent warfare. Stating that early humans probably had a capacity for warfare should not be mistaken for theory-grounded predictors for war. The Pleistocene ancestors of modern humans—with brains similar to those of Kim, Kissel or me for example—may have had the potential to write books; this does not mean however, that it is likely that they actually wrote books.
A third problem raises the necessity of considering the archaeological evidence and the social and environmental conditions under which warfare actually does emerge (Fry Reference Fry2006; Fry et al. Reference Fry, Keith, Söderberg and Moreauin press). Archaeological sequences in the Holocene suggest that the development of war entails various synergistically interacting elements of social complexity (e.g. the development of social hierarchy and sedentary villages), increasing population density and environmental subsistence conditions such as the intensification of resource utilisation.
Kim and Kissel acknowledge the relationship between complexity and war in early civilisations (states) in the last few millennia, but they do not explore the types of pre-state complexification and the rich insights for theory and data that are provided by Holocene archaeology supplemented with comparative forager studies. These are unfortunate omissions in their otherwise data-filled interdisciplinary exploration of war. Various archaeological sequences demonstrate a recurring pattern of how war originated from previous conditions of warlessness along with shifts towards socio-political complexity, demographic changes and types of resource use. War originated among the Anasazi of North America between 800–750 BP; on Kodiak Island c. 1100 BP; Northwest Alaska in 2000 BP; in the Valley of Oaxaca by 2800 BP; sometime after 2800 BP in Japan; 9500 BP in parts of the Near East; and around 11 600 BP at Jebel Sahaba on the Nile. Had Kim and Kissel considered some of the many sequences that chronicle the emergence of war, they would have found a treasure trove of information on how war originates in synergetic interaction with population dynamics, ecology subsistence patterns and, critically, the sequences of complexification of pre-state social organisation. Such archaeological evidence for the origins of war calls into question Kim and Kissel's proposition that “warfare, at least in incipient forms, was present well before the Holocene” (p. 209).
Kim and Kissel call for more attention to the emergence of peace. They conclude that humans do not have genetically determined aggression, and they doubt that war is an evolutionary adaptation, instead calling it an epiphenomenon of culture and other human behaviours. They write, “it is misleading to conclude that either war or peace is the ‘natural’ state of humanity. Rather, we acknowledge how both are culturally constructed” (p. 179). Both war and peace are certainly human capacities (Fry Reference Fry2006); capacities alone are not sufficient cause for war or peace, however. We must also consider the presence of the necessary pre-conditions for war, such as: social organisational shifts towards complexity; ecological subsistence conditions including aquatic resources or the development of agriculture; and demographic patterns of increasing population densities associated with the origins of war that are known from the archaeological record.
I certainly recommend this book to anyone interested in the antiquity of intergroup fighting, the archaeological evidence for war and questions surrounding the role of human nature in war and peace. My reservations notwithstanding, this is an innovative and clearly written text, in which readers will find much to contemplate. It undoubtedly will be appreciated for years to come.
