[HN Gopher] Hunter-gatherers first launched violent raids at lea...
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       Hunter-gatherers first launched violent raids at least 13,400 years
       ago
        
       Author : borissk
       Score  : 13 points
       Date   : 2023-12-01 20:00 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.sciencenews.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencenews.org)
        
       | saltcured wrote:
       | I am confused a little by the tone of this. Given that
       | chimpanzees are known to violently raid neighboring groups, why
       | would anyone expect that there is a "first" raid with humans?
       | 
       | I would think a default expectation is that warfare was always
       | there and only got more advanced with tool use etc.?
        
         | JumpCrisscross wrote:
         | > _would think a default expectation is that warfare was always
         | there_
         | 
         | It's an old debate [1].
         | 
         | Nobody was entirely right. Indivduals were generally altruistic
         | and cooperative in group. Groups, meanwhile, were nasty and
         | brutish to each other.
         | 
         | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_nature
        
           | sorokod wrote:
           | Dismissing the chimpanzees behaviour as evidence that humans
           | have been at it all along requires some acrobatics.
        
             | JumpCrisscross wrote:
             | > _Dismissing the chimpanzees behaviour as evidence that
             | humans have been at it all along requires some acrobatics_
             | 
             | We didn't get this evidence until recently. And even then,
             | we didn't evolve from chimpanzees--they could be different
             | or have evolved warfare alongside us (or learned it from
             | us), _et cetera_. So it took time to reject the various
             | reasonable nulls. (I still wouldn 't call it settled
             | science.)
        
             | perrygeo wrote:
             | Not really. Bonobos share roughly the same amount of DNA
             | with humans as do Chimps. And Bonobo societies are
             | matriarchal and mostly lack the group warfare dynamic.
             | 
             | It seems that cooperative altruism and out-group violence
             | are both innate to some extent. Ecology and society
             | determine how we realize those traits - in times of intense
             | competition, we resort to tribal warfare. In times of
             | plenty, we cooperate.
             | 
             | It should also be noted that Chimps and Humans are among
             | the few species (perhaps the only mammal species?) that
             | exhibit this tendency to wipe out their competition with
             | systematic violence. IOW it's not just competition for
             | resources in the moment - all animals do that. It's the
             | sustained desire to wipe out the competition completely
             | (effectively, genocide) that make both Human and Chimp
             | violence rather unique in the animal kingdom.
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | > _this tendency to wipe out their competition with
               | systematic violence_
               | 
               | Is there a term of art for researching this from a
               | biological perspective?
        
         | abdullahkhalids wrote:
         | I don't think anyone is claiming otherwise.
         | 
         | The point of the discovery is that we have some evidence of
         | what occurred in such attacks. What age/sex were involved,
         | weapons used, etc. Or other useful information
         | 
         | > That injury pattern more likely arose from periodic,
         | indiscriminate raids rather than a single battle...
        
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       (page generated 2023-12-01 23:01 UTC)