Beyond War: The Human Potential for PeaceA profoundly heartening view of human nature, Beyond War offers a hopeful prognosis for a future without war. Douglas P. Fry convincingly argues that our ancient ancestors were not innately warlike - and neither are we. He points out that, for perhaps ninety-nine percent of our history, for well over a million years, humans lived in nomadic hunter-and-gatherer groups, egalitarian bands where warfare was a rarity. Drawing on archaeology and fascinating recent fieldwork on hunter-gatherer bands from around the world, Fry debunks the idea that war is ancient and inevitable. For instance, among Aboriginal Australians, warfare was an extreme anomaly. Fry also points out that even today, when war seems ever present, the vast majority of us live peaceful, nonviolent lives. We are not as warlike as we think, and if we can learn from our ancestors, we may be able to move beyond war to provide real justice and security for the world. |
Contents
1 Charting a New Direction | 1 |
2 Do Nonwarring Societies Actually Exist? | 10 |
The Human Potential for Peace | 21 |
Projecting Mayhem onto the Past | 33 |
5 The Earliest Evidence of War | 50 |
From Nomadic Bands to Modern States | 65 |
The Quest for Fairness | 81 |
Fact or Fantasy? | 100 |
Sex Differences in Aggression | 166 |
The Nomadic Forager Model | 175 |
14 Setting the Record Straight | 193 |
15 A Macroscopic Anthropological View | 201 |
16 Enhancing Peace | 213 |
Organizations to Contact | 235 |
Nonwarring Societies | 237 |
Notes | 239 |
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Common terms and phrases
Aboriginal Australia adaptation American Anthropologist ancestral animal Anthropology assumptions Australian Aborigine australopithecine Balikci band societies behavior Berndt and Berndt Boehm Chapter chiefdoms chimpanzees complex hunter-gatherers conflict management Conflict Resolution coprolite cross-cultural Dart disputes Douglas Fry egalitarian Elman Service ethnographic evidence Evolutionary Psychology example feuding fighting Frans de Waal Fry eds gatherers George Murdock global homicides Homo human evolution human nature Human Potential hunter hunter-gatherer hunter-gatherer bands hunter-gatherer societies Ibid individual intergroup Ju/hoansi justice Keeley killers Kung San lethal Montagnais-Naskapi murder Napoleon Chagnon nomadic band nomadic foragers nomadic hunter-gatherer nonviolent nonwarring Origin Otterbein Oxford University Press Paliyan pattern Peaceful Societies physical aggression Potential for Peace relatives Resolution and Peaceful revenge killings Reyna Robarchek Robert self-redress Semai sex differences sexual selection simple hunter-gatherers simple nomadic Siriono social organization spears species Tonkinson tribal tribes types typical unokais violence warfare warrior woman women World Wrangham Yahgan Yanomamö York Zapotec