Here's an example of what prehistory can teach us:
There are about 500 known cave art sites in Europe, dating from
30,000+ to 10,000 years ago. The total number of illustrations in these sites
runs into the many thousands.
Of all these illustrations, none depict war or battle scenes.
So does that mean that contrary to widely held belief, war
is not a natural, inevitable element of human nature?
Now, historically, when people fight wars, especially if they
win, they memorialize them, with statues, plaques and paintings.
So if wars were fought in the Paleolithic era, it's likely they
would have been memorialized in cave art.
Also, there are cave illustrations of spears, spear points,
speared animals, even, in rare cases, a speared person. There are no
illustrations of shields.
In cultures where spears are used as weapons of war, invariably,
shields are devised to defend against spear attack.
So the lack of shields in cave art is another indication that
war was unknown in Paleolithic culture. *
Let's remember, these were small populations, running in the
thousands, rather than the 100s of millions we find in Europe and Asia today.
People in Paleolithic times were not organized in societies or states, with defined borders, large
accumulations of resources to be coveted and raided by a neighboring group.
No doubt there was murder in Paleolithic times, likely cannibalism
as well.
But perhaps no war, no organized, sustained attack of one group
against another, perhaps no genocide, no destruction of another people,
settlement, culture. Perhaps.
If so, since the people of those times are thought to be the
same species as us, then war is not an essential human trait, now, any more
than it was then.
So let’s point this out to the generals and political leaders
next time they suggest we solve an international crisis through war.
Because if wars of the 21st century reach their
obvious conclusion, the survivors may end up back in Paleolithic times, but
without the clean, abundant environment of the Stone Age.
* I learned about the absence of war scenes and shields in Ice
Age art from an excellent book called The Nature of Paleolithic Art, by R. Dale
Guthrie.
