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Written by April M. Short<\/p>\n
Anthropologists\u2019 research on the origins of war, going back to the beginning of human history and our closest ape relatives, suggests war is not part of our evolution. They also find systems of peace work, and many already exist.<\/p>\n
War and all of its brutality is attention-grabbing and memorable. Recollections of war and conquests tend to stick around and take up the spotlight in historical records. However, a war-centered narrative paints an incomplete picture of human history\u2014and human nature. While there is a popular opinion in the anthropological community that war is an evolutionary, inborn tendency of humans, there is also pushback to that theory. There is a growing argument for a human history that predates war altogether and further points out that war is not innate to human nature, but instead, is a social and cultural development that begins at certain points around the globe.<\/p>\n
However, once war takes place, it tends to spread, explains historical anthropologist R. Brian Ferguson, who has spent more than 40 years researching the origins of war. Ferguson, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, notes that war is not the same thing as interpersonal violence or homicide. War implies organized, armed conflict and killing sanctioned by society and carried out by members of one group against members of another group. Ferguson argues that current evidence suggests that war was not always present but began as a result of societal changes\u2014with evidence of war\u2019s origins appearing at widely varying timestamps in different locations around the world. He estimates that the earliest signs of war appear between 10,000 B.C., or 12,000 years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut in some areas of the world you don\u2019t see any signs of war develop until much more recently,\u201d he says, noting that in both the U.S. Southwest and Great Plains there is no evidence of war until around 2,000 years ago.<\/p>\n
Ferguson wrote an article in the\u00a0Scientific American<\/a>\u00a0in 2018 titled, \u201cWar Is\u00a0Not<\/em>\u00a0Part of Human Nature,\u201d in which he details his take on war. In the article, he summarizes the viewpoints of two anthropological camps, dubbed hawks and doves by late anthropologist Keith Otterbein. The hawks argue that war is an evolved predisposition in humans dating back to when they had a common ancestor with chimpanzees. Doves, meanwhile, argue that war has only emerged in recent millennia, motivated by changing social conditions. In the article Ferguson writes:<\/p>\n \u201cHumans, they [doves] argue, have an obvious capacity to engage in warfare, but their brains are not hardwired to identify and kill outsiders involved in collective conflicts. Lethal group attacks, according to these arguments, emerged only when hunter-gatherer societies grew in size and complexity and later with the birth of agriculture. Archaeology, supplemented by observations of contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures, allows us to identify the times and, to some degree, the social circumstances that led to the origins and intensification of warfare.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Ferguson has studied the anthropological and archeological records throughout ancient, and sometimes into more modern, human history. He says there is a lack of evidence of war or large-scale violence, in many places around the world throughout various periods of history. He has spent four decades researching and historically contextualizing the various origin points of war around the world. He has also contextualized incidents of group violence in humanity\u2019s closest ape cousins, chimpanzees. He argues that war is not innate, evolutionary nor inevitable behavior for humans.<\/p>\n Ferguson spoke with Local Peace Economy correspondent April M. Short for an\u00a0in-depth interview<\/a>\u00a0in 2021 about his findings and theories surrounding war and human history.<\/p>\n Humanity\u2019s future existence hinges on cooperation on a global scale. The greatest existential threats we face are worldwide problems that stem from the man-made climate disaster\u2014and the massive decline in biodiversity, pollution, worsening storms, fires and sea level rise that come with it. Even the COVID-19 pandemic potentially\u00a0resulted from deforestation<\/a>\u00a0and dwindling biodiversity on the planet, and the lack of action to slow down such destruction will only increase the likelihood of pandemics in the future.<\/p>\n The inevitable worldwide impacts of the climate crisis make the idea of war\u2014for instance, Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s aggressions in Ukraine\u2014feel particularly irrational and anachronistic. At a time when scientists around the globe agree that the\u00a0future of life for our species will require<\/a>\u00a0immediate worldwide actions to restore the planet, an aggressive invasion of a smaller nation by a large world power like Russia (and whispers of the unthinkable, like a third world war or nuclear violence) is recklessly out of context with the realistic priorities of our times. Large-scale war stands in stark contrast with the one thing the world should be giving critical consideration to presently: cooperation.<\/p>\n Research by peace and conflict studies professors at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, anthropologists Genevi\u00e8ve Souillac and Douglas P. Fry (who are married), has the potential to support the sort of large-scale cooperation and peace our world so desperately needs. The two coauthored\u00a0a study published in the journal Nature<\/a>\u00a0in 2021 that theorizes how humanity can realistically stop war: develop peace systems. Peace systems, defined as existing clusters of neighboring societies that do not make war with each other, already exist around the world, on both small and large scales.<\/p>\n The\u00a0study<\/a>, \u201cSocieties Within Peace Systems Avoid War and Build Positive Intergroup Relationships,\u201d assessed real-world examples of how war is stopped and future war is prevented when societies shift their cultures and values and adopt intentional systems of peace. Fry spoke with the Independent Media Institute in detail about the study in a 2021 article, \u201cHow Humanity Can Realistically Prevent New Wars From Ever Happening Again<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Thus far, the researchers have found approximately 16 examples of peace systems and are further working to determine whether or not other societies in the world can be classified as peace systems.<\/p>\n \u201cOur overall definition of a peace system is clusters of neighboring societies that don\u2019t make war with each other, and sometimes these societies don\u2019t make war at all, but sometimes they do make war outside the system,\u201d Fry says. \u201cThey [the neighboring societies] have a history of not warring with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n The peace systems that already exist today are found both in smaller Indigenous groups like Brazil\u2019s Upper Xingu River Basin tribes and the Aboriginal Australians of the Great Western Desert, as well as in larger societies\u2014the most obvious modern example being the European Union (EU). The EU is an example of a peace system that would have seemed impossible, even ridiculous, just decades prior to its adoption (since Europeans had historically warred with each other for hundreds of years), and it faces a critical moment of reckoning given the current events in Ukraine.<\/p>\n Researchers Souillac and Fry collaborated on the eight-minute short film\u00a0A Path Away From War<\/em><\/a>, which explains how peace systems work around the world\u2014from how and why they are created to how they are upheld. They teamed up with Chris and Dawn Agnos of the storytelling nonprofit\u00a0Sustainable Human<\/a>\u00a0to create the film, which was released in February 2022.<\/p>\n The film discusses the shared characteristics that are found across peace systems, which include:<\/p>\n \u201cMost citizens of the European Union, which was created to prevent wars, now hold an overarching identity as Europeans in addition to local and national identities,\u201d the film\u2019s narration states. Another example woven throughout the film is that of a historic peace system created by the Indigenous peoples of North America, in which the long-warring cultures of the Cayuga, Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida and Onondaga all came together \u201cinto a\u00a0union<\/a>\u00a0of cooperating neighbors\u201d known as the Haudenosaunee. They intentionally formed a cooperative and peaceful society, which lasted for 300 years, until it was disrupted by the arrival of European colonial settlers.<\/p>\n \u201cMany people think there has always been war and there always will be war,\u201d the film\u2019s narration, done by Fry, states, before pointing out that this is not the case. The film suggests that alternatives to war are necessary to tackle the existential threats all people face. It discusses the potential of peace systems to \u201chelp usher in an era of unsurpassed global cooperation\u201d and explores the ways in which \u201cour destinies are intertwined\u201d around the world due to the global realities of climate change, the potential for continued outbreaks of global pandemics and nuclear proliferation.<\/p>\n Souillac and Fry spoke with April M. Short of the Independent Media Institute for an\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0about the film and the imperative of peace systems, especially given the rising global tensions due to Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n
Peace Systems: How Humanity Can Realistically Prevent War<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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