Constant battles : the myth of the noble savage / Steven A. LeBlanc with Katherine E. Register.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

LeBlanc, Steven A.

Contributor:

Register, Katherine E.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Anthropology--Philosophy.

Anthropology.

Noble savage stereotype.

Warfare, Prehistoric.

Hunting and gathering societies.

Physical Description:

xv, 271 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : St. Martin's Press, 2003.

Summary:

In This Riveting Book, Archaeologist Steven A. LeBlanc blasts the myth of a peaceful past in which the "noble savage" lived in a natural paradise. Constant Battles demonstrates that, contrary to popular belief and scholarly bias, there has always been warfare, and that humans have never lived in balance with nature. During the last thirty years, LeBlanc has worked on digs as a student, as a member of the crew, and as the director of multiyear projects on several continents on sites from very different periods. After all this time in the field, he has only recently realized that wherever he has dug, regardless of time period or place, he has discovered evidence of warfare. His conclusions have been resisted by many in the scholarly community, who view warfare in ancient society as incidental, inconsequential, and without impact on human history.

Despite a growing willingness among many anthropologists to accept the idea that the past was not peaceful, a lingering desire to sanitize and ignore warfare still exists within the field and is absorbed by popular culture. This nostalgia for a peaceful past assumes that for much of human history, people lived in nonviolent societies and maintained symbiotic and pleasant relationships with their neighbors, and practiced a natural ecology. The myth would have it that only after the development of "civilization" or highly complex societies did warfare become prevalent. This theory holds that when more complex societies spread, and in particular when European civilization came to dominate much of the world through colonizing, warfare was introduced to the far corners of the earth.

LeBlanc brilliantly reveals a six-million-year equation of population growth, resource stress, and warfare. Constant Battles surveys archaeological, ethnographic, and historical records from around the world. Often relying on his own fieldwork, LeBlanc examines prehistoric warfare, ancient foraging, agricultural patterns, and the ways bands of hunter-gatherers, tribes, and more complex societies interact with each other and the environment. He explores the implications of his findings by considering whether humans are doomed by genetic heritage to fight each other. Finally, he arrives at a hopeful conclusion: by understanding why people fought in the past, modern humans, with technology and awareness, can avoid warfare and depletion of the environment in the future.

Contents:

Prologue: Finding Warfare in All the "Wrong" Places xi

Chapter 1 Warfare and Ecology: Myth and Reality 1

Chapter 2 Was There Ever an Eden? 23

Chapter 3 Enter Conflict 55

Chapter 4 Our Earliest Past 77

Chapter 5 Warfare Among Foragers 100

Chapter 6 Conflict and Growth Among Tribal Farmers 128

Chapter 7 Complex Societies 157

Chapter 8 War or Peace for the Future? 199.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [247]-264) and index.

ISBN:

0312310897

OCLC:

50948786