The Ancients - The Origins of Warfare

Episode Date: March 4, 2021

Popular discussions of human history are punctuated with conflict, but when did warfare begin? To discuss this massive question, Professor Nam Kim has returned to the Ancients. Taking in examples from Ancient Germany, Britain, Kenya and Vietnam, Nam uses Anthropological Archaeology to decipher whether Ancient societies were involved in warfare before the birth of nation states, and to explore the question of why humans have been prone to violence between groups.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast we are talking about the origins of warfare. We're going to be looking at several different case studies from pre-history that range from ancient Britain and ancient Germany, all the way to ancient Kenya and even ancient Vietnam.

Now we're going to be looking at these case studies and seeing how they relate to the question of how does warfare emerge, where does it emerge, when does it emerge and why. And joining me for this amazing chat, I was delighted to get back on the show Professor Nam Kim. Nam has been on the podcast once before to talk about ancient Vietnam and his archaeological work on the site of Kaloa. But Nam's real passion project has been looking into this huge question around the origins of warfare. Now Nam is an anthropologist so he is approaching this through the anthropological lens and he explains how this angle is the best way to understand the huge topic that is the origins of warfare. This was an absolutely brilliant chat. So without further ado, here's Nam.

Nam, it's great to have you back on the podcast. Thank you. It is such a pleasure to be back. Now, ancient Vietnam last time, amazing topic in its own right, but we are now talking about one of the biggest topics of ancient history. This is a huge topic of ancient military history in particular. This is the origins of warfare. Yeah, this actually is, I would say, my lifelong passion. This is the reason I got into research. This is the reason I got into research. This is the reason I got into anthropology. It's the reason I made certain decisions in my studies, in my education, and then now

in my research. And you mentioned that this is the reason that you went into anthropology. So just a bit of background to this, because your personal interest in this is linked to your family too. That's right. So I'm of mixed ancestry. My father is Korean, my mother is Vietnamese. And they both grew up in environments that were significantly affected by a conflict of warfare. We can talk about the 20th century and Cold War politics and

everything that happened in the Korean Peninsula and in Vietnam, respectively. But my father survived. He was separated from his family at a very young age when the war started in 1950, was homeless for quite some time, ended up joining the war effort, saw some really horrific things, but ended up surviving, reuniting with some of his family. His mother passes away before the war ends. He never sees her again after he'd left her. But he survives that. And the interesting thing is he ends up in Vietnam later, in the 1960s, where he meets my mother. And she experienced very similar things as a youngster because her family hailed from the northern parts of the country.

And when World War II comes to an end, the Japanese leave, the French try to come back. There's all kinds of conflicts and independence movements and so forth. There's chaos. And her family is actually forced to flee as well. So they're refugees at young ages. And then they become refugees again towards the end of the Vietnam conflict or the Vietnam War, as we see it in the United States.

I was born in 74. In 75, we evacuate by helicopter off the rooftop of one of these buildings the day before the city of Saigon is taken. So we become refugees and start this journey across the Pacific before we end up in the United States. So I've grown up hearing these stories and understanding that war is one of the principal reasons why I ended up in the United States. So I've always been fascinated by the topic. And it's also really interesting what you were saying right at the start there, Nam, is that your approach to the origins of warfare is through the anthropological lens, is through humans. That's right. So when I first started getting into these topics, as an undergrad, I studied

the topic from an international relations perspective. I went on to do graduate work in political science. And through that particular lens, war is viewed in a more contemporary setting. And it's also viewed in the modern nation state setting, which is a very different level of analysis when you think about it. I started to get interested in other aspects, other reasons why people fight, cultural reasons, maybe biological reasons. And it's because of that deeper dive into the topic that I got introduced into anthropology. And eventually I was given a sales pitch by my PhD supervisor, who was an archaeologist by the name of Lawrence Keeley, who said, if you really want to understand the phenomenon and how it starts and how it evolves over time and how it's related to

humanity, archaeology is the way to go. You have to start in the deeper past. You have to look at the material record. And that's the only way to truly begin to understand the underpinnings of the behavior of the phenomenon. It feels like such a daunting topic to really, especially when you're starting looking at this stuff, to really dive into because it's one a big area, one a big word in the meaning of it. If we look on the definitions, first of all, before looking at some case studies for warfare, it sounds like a simple question, but it's so much more complex. How does one define war? That's the big question, isn't it? For me, when I started looking at it from these other subfields or subdisciplines, one thing that struck me was the definition of war involving states. That's in a more historically recent or modern context.

I think when we think about the earlier context, when we think about the origins, we know that for the majority of our species history, we didn't live in urbanized state level settings. We didn't live in so-called civilizations. And if we want to understand whether or not war existed in various forms, maybe rudimentary forms, we have to look at those kinds of settings, those cultural settings. And so the definition of war has to begin to change. It has to become more inclusive. For me, when I look at some political scientists and their views on war, I've heard arguments that you don't see war unless you have a minimum number of fatalities, battle fatalities, like

1,000. Then that conflict qualifies as war. When I am faced with those kinds of definitions, I think, well, that just discounts all kinds of possibilities. It restricts our database. It restricts our ability to compare and contrast culturally, different settings temporally, and across space and time. So for me, a more productive, perhaps anthropological perspective would be conflict between groups of people, inter-community kinds of conflict or

violence. That kind of perspective, I think, is more productive if we're trying to answer the question about origins. And so with that in mind, especially when we're diving into prehistory before the written records, when our archaeological record is more limited than we have, let's say, in ancient history with the Greeks and Romans, etc. How do archaeologists go about recognising signs of warfare in these prehistoric communities? Very creatively. So actually, this is something that in a recent publication, my colleague and I, Dr. Mark Kissel, who's at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, we just put out a book a couple years ago on what we call emergent warfare. And this is the kind of publication that we wish we had when we started getting into this topic, because it gives a kind of holistic anthropological perspective. it gives a kind of holistic anthropological perspective. And what's important about this holistic approach is that you have a series of data sets, subfields that you can rely upon to

reconstruct these past behaviors. For the archaeologist, there are various analogies we can use. For example, if you look at ethnographic research on smaller scale non-state societies, it gives you some ideas as a starting point. It's challenging. You can't project one to one and say, this is exactly how we behave, exactly how our societies were structured and how we live. But at the same time, it gives you clues to try to interpret life ways, interpret artifacts and structures and architecture and so forth. But that gets at the archaeological part of this. And that is, there are various markers, material signatures. The obvious ones would be trauma on skeletal remains, for instance, the presence of defensive architecture, fortification features, the presence of specialized kinds of implements, what we might consider

weapons, armor, shields, things that wouldn't be ambiguous in terms of function. So not used for woodworking, not used for farming or hunting of animals, but more specifically for hurting other people. And then you have things like iconographic depictions and more subtle clues too, such as the presence of buffer zones or refuges. Now, in and of themselves, these pieces of evidence don't suggest warfare, they suggest something. But when you start to combine pieces, the circumstantial evidence builds and you have a stronger case in which you can infer that some kind of warfare is of concern or is happening. Now, if we go to a few case studies, then to

really try and dive into these origins of warfare, you mentioned their fortifications, which brings me on to the first real case study, as it were. It's a name that has to be mentioned on the podcast before as a possible place for the origins of warfare, Jericho, as this city-state. Now, what's the whole argument around Jericho and the origins of warfare? So Jericho is interesting because we've known about the site for quite some time. And there are certain architectural features about the site that have led to debates about function. So the walls that come up at Jericho, as well as a feature known as the tower. For some people, when they look at this and they look at this time period of when it comes about,

this is sort of the beginning of the Holocene. We're looking at sometime around 8,000 BC. Some people look at the walls and the tower and say, well, the functions could have been something like flood control. It could have been something astronomical, could have been other kinds of non-military functions. Then you have others who say, well, actually, we suspect that there would have been military functions there would have been military utility for those features we're all looking at the same architecture we're all looking at the same pieces of evidence but we have very different interpretations some of that might have to do with how we view the data some of it might have to do with our own preconceived notions about what could be happening at that point in time. And it operates as a sort

of litmus test because it tells you some people have arguments or believe that warfare is relatively recent in terms of its emergence. When I say recent, this is from an archaeologist's perspective, right? So not in terms of centuries old, but recent here, meaning maybe the mid-holocene. Maybe warfare only comes about when we have so-called civilizations or states. When we have people putting down roots and investing into big plots of territory, reluctant to move away, starting to farm and so forth. And all of a sudden now, warfare becomes part of our social calculations. For some people, the origins of war stem to that period of time. For others, warfare goes back further. And so non-sedentary, non-farming kinds of communities, those kinds of

cases start becoming interesting. But Jericho is one of these traditional litmus tests where depending on who you are, and depending on what you see in the world, you see one thing or another. Now, you mentioned litmus tests there. There is one other key site that is another key litmus test for this, which goes, should we say, against Jericho. There are other cases. There is the case of Jebel Sahaba that's often held up as one of these classic cases where we have debates on either side of this argument. either side of this argument. Jebel Sahaba in the Nile River Valley in Sudan, it's a cemetery that dates to something like 12 to 14,000 years ago. And you've got dozens of individuals who are buried in this cemetery from different demographics, different age groups. And what's interesting about

the cemetery is that many of these individuals, a good percentage of them, exhibit signs of physical trauma, injuries. And in some cases, you have lithic materials, points still associated with the remains. So it's clear that there are incidents of violence that are associated with many of these people. And for a lot of researchers, the argument is, well, this could be very early signs of warfare. And it is very early. It is before so-called states, before we even have lots of sedentary kinds of lifestyles. And others disagree. And others say, well, perhaps we're looking at hunting accidents.

Perhaps we're looking at incidences of violence within a society. So not necessarily conflict between communities. We're defining warfare as inter-community conflict. It really depends, again. It's in the eye of the beholder. Is this one of the cases, and you mentioned earlier how for archaeologists there are certain cases, certain archaeological finds which are more ambiguous as if they point to warfare. Is the case of Jebel al-Sahaba and what they found there, is that a good example of this, of more ambiguous finds? It is somewhat ambiguous, sure. I think you could come up with alternative explanations for what you

see in the ground. Months ago, when we talked about Goloa, we talked about the Chung sister rebellion. And we also mentioned how it's comparable to the Boudicca case in the UK. So this strikes me also as something that without textual evidence, it's comparable to the Boudicca case in the UK. So this strikes me also as something that without textual evidence, it's difficult to know what the interpretation is. So from what I understand, at certain locations like Colchester, for instance, archaeologists have found what they call the destruction layers that maybe associate with Boudicca's uprising. So you have evidence of arson, of buildings being destroyed, and so forth. If you had found those without any kind of historical context, it would be ambiguous. You

would have to ask, well, why did these buildings get burned down? Was it ritual? Was it religious? Was it some kind of internal uprising? Was it warfare between groups of people? But now all of a sudden you've got texts written by Romans who describe Boudicca's uprising and her campaigns against some of these cities. So the ambiguity starts to go away. The problem for us with archaeology is in these prehistoric settings where we don't have any of those rich textual descriptions. How do we interpret data?

How do we interpret and get rid of the ambiguities? conditions, how do we interpret data? How do we interpret and get rid of the ambiguities? Well, I think this brings us on very nicely to the next figure on the list, on the prehistoric list. One of the most famous figures, I think, in the whole of prehistory ever discovered, a name that many people probably have heard of and has to do with ambiguity in regard to this, which is Ötzi the Iceman. Yes, Ötzi. So you know, and as I'm sure many of our listeners know, Otzi was discovered accidentally by hikers in the Alps in the early 1990s. Must have been a fright. Yeah.

And he was so well preserved that researchers could make out all kinds of things. He's been one of the most intensively studied individuals from the archaeological past. But people could see tattoos on the body. They were able to figure out what he might have had as his last meal, the kinds of materials he was carrying on his person. But what's interesting for our conversation here is the evidence of trauma experienced by Ötzi and potentially the causes of his death. There are various indications that suggest he was killed by other people. We know from CT scans, for instance, of materials lodged in his body, maybe arteries being severed, injuries to his hand. So the suggestion that he died because of

violent injury inflicted by someone else, those indications are very strong. Now the problem is, what was the wider context for that? Was it part of some struggle? Was he part of a larger struggle between groups of people? Was he part of some kind of struggle where others viewed him as an enemy of some kind? That's a cultural, social context that we are lacking. There are clues. From what I understand, there have been studies showing the remains or residues of blood from different individuals associated with him. So maybe he had others involved in that set of events.

It's unclear. But what we can say is homicide, most likely, but warfare, ambiguous. Ambiguous indeed. And just to get my dates right with all of this now in regards to Ötzi, when Ötzi is alive around that time, are we talking about a time where the nearby communities, that part of the world, there weren't any states? That's my impression. So we're looking at about 5,000 years ago in Europe.

And at that point in time, we have civilizations that are emerging in other parts of the world, Mesopotamia and Egypt and then further to the east. My impression is for that part of the world in Europe, weia and Egypt and then further to the east. My impression is for that part of the world in Europe, we don't have anything on that kind of scale. So this is a different environment. So this is a key point here, even though Erzi dates to, let's say, later than the erection of the walls at Jericho and the evidence is ambiguous for warfare, a key thing here is that even if it is ambiguous, if this was warfare, this is warfare coming from a place which predates the emergence of the state. That's right. And there are other cases in Europe thing here is that even if it is ambiguous, if this was warfare, this is warfare coming from a

place which predates the emergence of the state. That's right. And there are other cases in Europe too that show us two different perspectives, if you will. Let's go on to those cases now. What are those cases? So ironically enough, they're both from the modern day country of Germany, but they date to different time periods. The more recent case is at the Tallins River Valley. So here, this is the Bronze Age of the region. And we're looking at something like 1200 BC, where also in the 1990s, there were chance finds. Things started to come up out of the riverbed

right next to the river. We had the remains of people, remains of horses, and all kinds of artifacts. When people started to study this, they realized that many of these individuals appeared to have been young males who had artifacts that appeared to have been weapons, specialized equipment associated with them. And the suspicion is that something may have happened here. This is not the accumulation over decades or centuries, sediments or the river pushing things into a location. Something happened here. This is not the accumulation over decades or centuries, sediments or the river pushing things into a location. Something happened here. So it prompted the researchers to suggest that perhaps this is a battle of some kind. And what's interesting about this is the specific

kinds of artifacts. They appear to be associated with what might be professional individuals, professional warriors, maybe soldiers, depending on how you want to define them. And the suggestion by the kinds of diagnostic details or attributes of the artifacts is that many of these individuals may have come from far away. They weren't locals. We can tell that from the kinds of artifacts. We can also tell that from some of the chemical analysis of their remains, where they might have spent their early childhood, for instance. You can kind of make that out. And the suspicion also is that we only have uncovered a small percentage or portion of what might actually be out there. So all of a sudden now you're looking at groups of people coming from far away with specialized equipment,

engaging in some kind of event that is large in scale. And the indication suggests that this is a battle. This is some kind of event. And now you're looking at warfare. What's interesting about this is people had no idea that this might be out there, or they didn't think that they might ever uncover something like this. So for a lot of folks, traditionally, that period of time in Europe is viewed as relatively peaceful. And we don't have texts telling us about what's happening here at 1200 BC. But to find this,

and by accident, suggests that there might be a lot more out there, other sites that could be like this, that suggests that there are all kinds of activities and behaviors that are happening that we suspect could be the case, but we don't know yet. This is absolutely astonishing when you hear these stories. And this is just a great example of it, where these people stumble upon these amazing archaeological sites. And in this case, from what you're saying, from only excavating a small part of it, it could be a Bronze Age battlefield that will tell us so much more about this period in prehistory. That's right.

I think the age-old question of was there warfare or not in these contexts, those questions I think are starting to evolve into what can these studies tell us, not just about warfare's existence, but also all other aspects of societies. What kinds of exchange patterns existed? What kind of migration patterns existed? What kinds of interactions or alliances might have happened? What kinds of institutions might have existed to avoid conflict, to build peace, for instance? To me, they're all parts of the same social system. We can't look at it as a sort of divide, right? This dichotomous view of war and peace. They're all parts of social relationships. The bodies that have been uncovered

in this possible Bronze Age battlefield, do they reveal any marks of combat? They do. In fact, there's evidence of trauma on many of these individuals. And in some cases, the trauma, the impacts, match with some of the kinds of implements that would have been used as weapons. In some places, we also see lithic materials, points still embedded in the bone. So this suggests that they died by their wounds.

And it also suggests that perhaps the scale of the violence was quite large because many of these people might have survived and left the scene. Many individuals may have been carried off by their comrades. And so we suspect, according to the researchers, that maybe hundreds, if not thousands of people may have been involved in whatever event or events were happening in this area. That's really interesting in itself. And you mentioned earlier the importance of Peace Fair alongside the origins of warfare. And we'll definitely go into the origins of peace as well in time. But you mentioned just before we started going about the Tollens River example in Germany, that there was also another example we have from Germany. That's right. This is from a far earlier time period. This is the site known as Herxheim. And Herxheim dates to something like 7,000 plus years ago. At this point in time, in Germany, we're looking at what's known as the Linear Band Keramik, LBK for short, archaeological culture.

So the LBK culture, they consist of some of the earliest farming communities in that part of the world. And you have farming practices coming in, migrating westward, and getting into areas where hunting and gathering communities have long been living already. And what's interesting about the LBK is many of their villages, as they begin to live in these settled ways, suggest that they were concerned about the defense. They have palisade walls. They have defensive ditches. And in some of these cases, you also see evidence of individuals that have been killed.

This particular example of Herxheim, in the defensive ditch outside of the village, the remains of hundreds of individuals have been uncovered. I think the number is something like 500 people, and they range in age from infants to the elderly. And many of these individuals appear to have their bones disarticulated. There are butchery marks on many of the individuals. In some cases, the skulls may have been fashioned into bowls or cups, it appears. Many of the faces appear to have been smashed beyond recognition. And it raises the question, why? Why is all this happening? And there are debates about this. This is, again, a little bit ambiguous because we don't know what the wider context might have been. We know that there were forms of conflict that were happening.

You wouldn't have defensive constructions if you weren't concerned about attack by others. But why this particular set of features and why this particular set of data exists here, that's a little bit more up for interpretation. Some people have suggested cannibalism. Some people have suggested this is how you treat the remains of people, whether you're community members or those of others.

Some people say, well, this may have been a massacre of some kind. But again, a little bit of ambiguity in these cases, but I mean, compared to the Ertzi case, this archaeological evidence that we have surviving, it does really seem to suggest that it is possible that there was warfare before the state. Absolutely. The ambiguity notwithstanding, the presence of weapons in LBK civilization or culture in general, the presence of defensive architecture, the cases like Herxheim and others where we do see less ambiguous evidence of potential massacre happening, destruction of villages, all that points to the likelihood

that warfare is a part of interactions between communities. Which begs the big question then, if warfare doesn't emerge with the state, with Jericho and the like, how far back can we go? We start to get into more speculative realms, but there are pieces of evidence that are very, very intriguing. Very recently, in another part of the world, there was a case study from Kenya. This is a site known as Naderook. And this particular site dates to about 10,000 years ago. And here along the banks of what might have been a lagoon, the remains of dozens of people, something like 30 folks were found recently. And many of the skeletal remains show signs of trauma. They likely died by violence. Some of the individuals still have points embedded

within them, obsidian points. Some have blunt force trauma as cause of death. Some appear to have been bound. There is one individual who was likely a pregnant woman in later stages of pregnancy, appeared to have her hands and feet perhaps bound. They were placed into the ground or left in the ground in ways that don't correspond to how people normally treated their dead. And so the suspicion here is that they were violently killed by another group of people, probably a larger group that outnumbered them. And some of the artifacts suggest that the other group of people

may have come from somewhere non-local because of the artifacts suggest that the other group of people may have come from somewhere non-local because of the kinds of artifacts that were here. So the researchers suggest that potentially two groups of people met maybe by chance, maybe this was premeditated, but that the attackers were carrying implements that were not normally used for hunting or for fishing. They were carrying clubs and other kinds of blunt force trauma equipment from somewhere else. And they encountered this group. And so you have the remains of whatever happened here. And what's interesting about this is this is well before sedentary farming, urbanized civilizations. Well before. We're talking about the beginnings of the Holocene. And this is a very recent discovery.

It has really transformed the debate and led us to think about other possibilities. For those that suggest that warfare is older than states, this comes as no surprise. And we, myself included, would expect that other chance finds like this will come up in the future. This is not a one-time unique occurrence. It is really interesting how we've just gone from a case study in Germany, which seems to affirm it, but then we've gone to one in Kenya, which is many thousands of years older than that one in Germany. But as you say, it's linking the dots, as it were, isn't it? It's slowly perhaps debunking this argument of the state. That's right. I think there's enough evidence, compelling evidence, to suggest that warfare, at least forms of it, existed well before the state. Now, we can split hairs here and talk

about what to use as a definition for war. Obviously, 21st century war is different than 15th century versus warfare from 2,000 or 10,000 years ago, right? But in terms of technologies, they might be different. In terms of scale, they might be different. But in terms of why people fight, the motivations, there are links between humans even further back in time. Absolutely. Let's go on to that now, because this is quite fun seeing how far back it could really go with our next case study because this is a cave site in Spain which dates back and correct me if I'm wrong hundreds of thousands of years yes 800,000 years ago right so it's staggering to think about but this particular case is interesting we're looking at the Grandalina cave site in the Ataparca Mountains

in Spain. And the site is associated with a lineage of our ancestry, our hominin ancestry, so Homo antecessor, which is viewed as a sort of earlier ancestor to Neanderthals or to modern humans. There are debates about this. I won't get into the specifics, but we're looking at 800,000 years ago. And in this particular context, you have individuals whose remains appear to have been butchered. The remains are mixed in with the remains of prey animals that have also been butchered. And so the suggestion that the researchers put out there is that you have folks who may have been cannibalized. They were treated in the same way that prey animals were treated. And if you accept that interpretation, this may be one of the earliest

instances of what they consider culinary cannibalism. So not cannibalism because you're starving or something like that, but something related to a culinary practice. And some researchers, anthropologists, viewed that particular case and suggested, well, if this is true, and if this is one group of people targeting another group of people for cannibalism, and maybe raiding another camp or another settlement or whatever the case might be,

another site and another community for victims, perhaps this is the earliest instance of warfare that we can point to. Now, we can talk about whether or not we should accept that proposition, right? When we think about the clues, and when we think about some of the definitions we had earlier, and some of the ambiguities that exist, for me personally, and my colleague Mark Kissel, the two of us actually started thinking about all of this stuff when we thought about this case this is when the conversation really got sparked but we looked at this case and suggest that the wider social context is completely missing here

we have no idea if there were groups of individuals if there are groups of people that were actively targeting others. And so while there may be cannibalism that's occurring, we don't know for sure if this is a form of intergroup raiding or conflict or coalitionary violence or warfare. That's a bit ambiguous still. Now, before we go on, you mentioned how you and Mark, your colleague, have been looking at lots of different case studies before really attempting to answer the question of the origins of warfare. Are there any other particular case studies that you'd love to highlight just before we move on to the next steps? Sure. Well, there's one closer to you, in fact, geographically speaking. So what's interesting

about the Grandalina case is the suggestion of cannibalism and the suggestion that perhaps the earliest motivations for intergroup conflict might have been tied to cannibalism. the suggestion that perhaps the earliest motivations for intergroup conflict might have been tied to cannibalism. I don't know if you're familiar with Goff's Cave in the UK. I'm going to have to admit that I am not. What is Goff's Cave? So Goff's Cave, from what I understand, we're looking at the end of the Pleistocene, about 15,000 to 12,000 years ago. And in this particular context, in the cave, we have evidence of people and their remains in which there appears to have been butchery as well. So similar to the kinds of things we see with Grandolina, we have evidence of skull cups being manufactured, we have breakages

using stone tools that are suggestive of defleshing that would be associated potentially with cannibalism. There are different interpretations, of course, but that's one possibility. And so some have suggested that we have cannibalism that's happening here. And in fact, this is a pattern we see not just here, but in other areas of Western Europe at around this time. And then we can rewind the clock going back. There are cases with Neanderthals, for instance, in other parts of Western Europe going back tens of thousands of years, also suggestive of cannibalistic activities. So I'm not saying that cannibalism equals warfare, but some people make the argument that those kinds of behaviors may sometimes be

connected. And if that's the case, there's another strand of evidence suggesting possible warfare happening in different kinds of cultural contexts. And this gets at the power of anthropology, because now we're looking at various forms of circumstantial evidence. So not only do we look at the archaeological evidence, but we can also look at analogies, right? When we get into the earlier parts of human history or hominin history, many researchers will use comparisons with living primates to give us clues about behavior. And that gets us into privatology. It gets us into specifically chimpanzee behavior. Absolutely. I mean, for people looking at it that way, can this give us an insight into the origins of warfare among humans?

I think it can give us some insights. If you're familiar with the film, Stanley Kubrick's film, 2001, Space Odyssey, there's that opening sequence that's just captivating, right? You have our ancestors, our hominin ancestors engaging in activities and violence ensues. And I think it ends with one of the individuals holding up a bone that was wielded as a weapon. This is from the 1960s, but this view comes from anthropological studies as well that suggested that our earliest past were bloody in the sort of Habesian sense. And for quite some time, people were wondering, well, does the evidence suggest that?

And some folks would say, well, if you look at chimpanzee behavior, so Jane Goodall, one of the famous primatologists observed the 1970s chimpanzee behavior in which males would participate in violence, in intergroup violence. And in some cases, even more recent studies have shown this groups of males will go out on single file and patrol their boundaries. And when they come across a neighboring chimpanzee, they might attack. And they participate in this kind of lethal raiding. And some researchers have pointed out that there are very few species in the world that participate in this kind of behavior, chimpanzees and humans.

You have lethal group violence between other species as well, lions, hyenas, and so forth. But in particular, chimpanzees stand out. And this has led some to argue that maybe there is an evolutionary adaptation here. Maybe there's a biological predisposition for violence. And maybe our last common ancestor with chimpanzees, five plus million years ago behaved in much a similar way. So it's interesting. So it could be possibly inherent in early humans. That's what some suggest. I don't subscribe to that view. To me, the picture is a bit more complicated than that. When I think about warfare, when I think about intergroup violence, chimpanzee behavior could

give us some clues and insights, but I also would argue humans fight for so many different reasons. It's sort of staggering to consider all the possibilities. There are a couple of anecdotes that come to mind. I don't know if you're familiar with the story of Hiro Onoda. This is an individual who was in World War II. To make a long story short, he was stationed in the Philippines and after World War II ends, he didn't know it ended. His commanding officer had left and the last order he was given was, do not surrender, keep fighting. And he continued. Even after the war ended, he fought and he survived using guerrilla tactics, raiding farms and so forth for decades until the 1970s, I believe. And that's when he was discovered and his commanding officer actually came back, was asked to come back and help bring him back and told him, you are relieved.

You don't need to keep fighting. The war is over. He said he kept doing it because he would have been ashamed to disobey the order and to give up the cause. And this, to me, encapsulates the human elements, the cultural elements of warfare. We put meaning and symbols and all kinds of things into our practices, whether it has to do with warfare or some other kinds of activities. That's very different than what we see elsewhere in the animal natural world. Does this really emphasize, Nam, why you believe looking at the origins of warfare, when we're tackling this huge question, where does warfare really begin,

why it seems so important, so crucial to approach this question, this whole topic, through the anthropological lens? I think it is important. I think when we think about the question of how old is war or when does war begin, that was something that preoccupied many people for so long. And I wonder if maybe the more accurate or appropriate question is not when did war begin, but when did we become human? When did we begin to think and behave in ways that allowed us to become very, very creative, very symbolic in our behaviors, how to think in very complex ways, that allowed us to cooperate in very complex ways, to become social in very complex ways. We see sociality, we see those kinds of behaviors in other species, but humans are able to take it to a different level because of our other kinds of cognitive abilities, because we have the ability to communicate through speech, for instance, in complex ways.

This ties to this idea of modernity and behavioral plasticity. We have a range of options available to us because of how we can think and behave, because of how we can cooperate. And so some people might say there is this dichotomy between competition and cooperation, between war and peace. For my colleague and I, when we wrote this book, we argued that it is really the cooperation and the sociality that allows for all of this to be possible. Because what is war except a group of people that are highly effective in cooperating with each other with common goals, competing against another group. It's this fusion of cooperation and competition. So is that the whole argument then, Nam, with the

emergence of modern humans? It's also the development of us as a species, as you said, this ability to cooperate with each other, which leads ultimately, in one sense, to us to be able to fight for various different things? I think so. So we've proposed this idea of socially cooperative violence as part of what we call emergent warfare. And that is something that comes to us as we start to think about how we become distinctly human. So if we consider the reasons why we fight and the justifications for it and the ability to communicate that justification and to persuade or compel others to participate in those reasons, in those activities,

who is an appropriate enemy? Why is it justified? What do our ancestors demand from us? What do the gods say we need to do? How do we appease them? How do we change the conditions around us, our social conditions? All these ideas come to us because of behavioral changes, cognitive changes, and then the ability to communicate those changes, to communicate those ideas, those symbols. I think that is at the crux of these behaviors, and they can lead to all kinds of outcomes right we are conditional cooperators and those conditions can be different they call for different responses but in the end they can lead to quite peaceful outcomes or quite violent ones so we're talking

about the origins of warfare with the emergence of modernity in humans. But also at a similar time, it's not just warfare. We also see, thanks to our amazing cognitive ability that we have, we can also pursue alleys of peace. That's right. And I'm not denying the ability to see groups and to compete and cooperate in other species. I just think that humans can take it to a completely different level. But if you think about the formation of identities, of common bonds, of community, having your identity juxtaposed against that of another community

strengthens your own sense of belonging and community and identity within your group. So perhaps the underpinnings of xenophobia and so forth, you can see elements of the biology working with culture here, right? They're intertwined. So I don't see a very strict boundary between nature and nurture in these kinds of debates. They're all implicated in our evolutionary development and in our kinds of behaviors. But if you're thinking about principles like esprit de corps decor or altruism, we start to value our own forms of bonds and identity. And oftentimes,

they're strengthened when there is a juxtaposition where there is an other or an outside group. So in a way, becoming ultra social, foster these kinds of perspectives, helping us to bond together internally, but also helping us to view others as maybe not even human, that may be at the crux of the dehumanization of outsiders. And that makes it much more permissible to engage in violence. It is really interesting. And you mentioned how humans fight for so many different things. And you also mentioned earlier that Kenya case study, those communities who seem to come to blows. it is remarkable how you have this strong sense of cooperation among one community to fight together against another community but vice versa perhaps

that community has a strong sense to fight together with them against the other community it is really interesting how that behavior could if you're looking at it through the anthropological lens date back to the earliest anatomically modern humans? Yeah. Once we get into the Pleistocene in the paleoanthropological record, it is very fragmentary. It is difficult to be able to come up with very concrete kinds of interpretations and conclusions. That being said, my suspicion is that all of this didn't emerge overnight, right? This is a series of gradual developments, different pieces coming into the picture that lead to changes in behavior, changes in how we organize ourselves, how we communicate, how we cooperate.

There was a time where archaeologists argued that there was this, what's known as the upper Paleolithic revolution. So all of a sudden now, modern behavior comes about through an explosion of changes. And the reason they argued this was the case was because you could look at something like cave art from Europe, dating to about 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. And the very sophisticated forms of expression that are reflected in that artwork. Think of Chauvet, cave, Lascaux and others, for example. And so for the longest time, people argued, well, that's the birth of this modern behavior, modern cognition. Now we know, based on more recent finds,

that there's cave art in other parts of the world that are just as old. Thinking, for example, of recent finds in Indonesia. Sulawesi. That's right. Absolutely. So when you are faced with that kind of evidence, you have to question this idea of the Upper Paleolithic Revolution. Is that time period, is the explosion really accurate? And is that geographic locus really accurate? And then you start to see other parts of the world in Africa, for instance, where you have evidence of etchings of potential art that might be occurring at 70,000 years ago in Blombo's cave, for instance,

on pieces of red ochre, the kinds of changes in artifacts that might be coming about as well, microliths, other kinds of artifacts, bows and arrows, stone-tipped spears, fire-hardened spears, fish hooks, all of this suggesting creative thought, creative thinking, pre-planning on scales that were radically different from earlier ancestors. And because these are from all over in different parts of the world in different time periods, it paints this picture of gradual change. And so the behaviors follow along, the cultures follow along. They're hand in hand, these changes, the biological and the cultural changes. And so elements of violence and violent organization could be coming along hand-in-hand with those changes, larger cultural repertoire. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era,

or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not, just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push, find your power. Peloton. Visit peloton at onepeloton.ca and so then to wrap it all off then you've explained it brilliantly over the last 40-50 minutes or so now but through your lens and through all that you've argued today do you really have a concrete explanation for how we can therefore define warfare and where we can say it roughly begins i know know it begins gradually. These are

huge questions, but any answer, let me know. Well, we can offer some speculative answers for now. I would characterize these as placeholder arguments. There is evidence that's likely to come about in the next year, the next decade that may be completely upend, whatever I say here. But I think our best guess, at least for my colleague and I, right now is with the fossil record, with the artifacts that we can see, with modern behavioral plasticity, something like 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. So instead of 50,000 years ago, we're now talking hundreds of thousands of years ago. That's when we start to see these very complex forms of behavior and cooperation and cognition. And so if you were to ask me about the origins of war, I would say the capacity for warfare exists as early as that.

Now, whether or not it's frequent, whether or not the conditions lead to those outcomes, occasionally or frequently, no one can say. But the capacity, I suspect, would have stemmed from that point in time. There might have been other forms of group violence that existed prior to that. But when we're talking about forms of human warfare, in the ways in which I've described here today, I would say the origins are in that X marks the spot, right? Something like two to 300,000 years ago. And as you say, it's really exciting that we'll probably have finds coming out of the ground in the years to come, which might confirm it, might throw some stuff on the pile. But as you said, with that find in Kenya very recently too, very exciting for the future.

And I also would want to end with a more positive note. Some might say, well, if you can see evidence of warfare going back that far, it just reinforces the notion that it is intimately tied to our origins, to our behavior. Maybe it's an evolutionary driver, an adaptation. We have a propensity for violence. Going back to an earlier point, I don't believe that. I believe that what it does illustrate is we have a propensity to cooperate in very effective ways, sometimes for one purpose or another. But we manufacture those reasons. We're very social beings.

We strive to cooperate, but we cooperate conditionally depending on the kinds of environmental conditions around us, as well as the kinds of social conditions around us. What those conditions call for will dictate the responses we have and how we choose to react. So the ultimate message here is that we have choices. We cooperate based on conditions. And so when we think about peace, for instance, I don't see peace as the absence of war. Peace is something that we manufacture, we actively maintain and cultivate. It involves institutions and decisions and practices. And this is part of the exciting work that my colleague and I are embarking upon now, this sort of sequel to the Emergent Warfare

book, is the flip side of that. So if we don't see warfare as a natural state, but as something that emerges as an outcome, peacefare is the flip side of that. What can we see in the archaeological record that shows us when elements of peacefare and peacemaking begin to emerge as well? Now, it is absolutely extraordinary looking throughout human history. Yes, perhaps to the extent and the reasons that certain communities go to war, but also in ancient history, in more modern history, the huge extents people go to, to avoid war, to maintain peace, ceremonies, etc, etc,

these links. That's right. And we can see elements of this in the natural world. There are different practices or different behaviors where animals will try to avoid conflict or maybe settle things in a way that avoids bloodshed. Again, we take those kinds of behaviors and we expand them on a completely different level. So it makes me wonder about some of our institutions that have come up in the course of human history. Marriage, for instance. It's an institution that we can see a natural underpinning for that pair bond relationships, for instance, but we use it politically as well for alliance building, to put families together, to maybe forge relationships between those families, maybe to signal to outsiders, don't attack us because now this family is part of us. So there are all kinds of institutions,

trade, exchange, for instance, who we choose to make exchange partners. Sometimes we actually need something from that group of people. They have resources that we need. But sometimes it's political. We need your support politically. And we can see this in the modern world. It plays out every day all around us. And one might ask, what are the underpinnings of those kinds of behaviors as well?

All amazing questions deep very thoughtful questions to end this on now that was fantastic and just before we finish this your book that you've done on this groundbreaking topic is called emergent warfare in our evolutionary past and you also mentioned that doing a sequel to we are engaged in research that we hope will result in a sequel to that. Yes. Fantastic. Nam, thanks so much for coming back on the show. Always a pleasure to see you. Thank you.