Book Review: War Before Civilization by Lawrence H. Keeley

Book: War Before Civilization: The myth of the peaceful savage by Lawrence H. Keeley (Amazon link here).

Overview: The title pretty well sums it up: the peaceful, noble savage is a myth of Western romantic culture. Instead, conflict, whether characterized as warfare or armed banditry, was rampant and a normal part of life. Your odds of dying a violent death in such societies is much, much higher than in a modern society, even putting together deaths from violent crime and warfare. Primitive societies only become peaceful when "peace" is imposed on them by an outside power, such as the colonial empires of the 19th and 20th centuries. Peaceful coexistence is a byproduct of civilization.

Impression: I read this book on the Kindle. I originally had downloaded a sample, which provided the author's introduction and, later, purchased the whole book.

Based on the introduction, which discussed neolithic and copper age sites in Europe, I was under the impression that the book would discuss specifics of primitive warfare--i.e., details of fortifications, discussion of weapons and tactics, and so. While such details crop up--for instance, the distribution of arrow points at different locations around an enclosure showing where most of the fighting occurred--the book itself was an argument to dispel the long-held belief, even among anthropologists and ethnographers, that primitive tribes are inherently peaceful and that organized warfare is a relic of civilization.

However, as the author goes on to demonstrate from both archaeological evidence and ethnographic evidence from modern tribes, the opposite is true. Organized conflict has always been with us, and "peace" is actually the byproduct of strong civilizations. The "peaceful savage" is based on observations made of tribes and peoples that had already been pacified by the West. The author notes, for instance, three independent cross-cultural surveys of recent tribal and state societies from the around the globe showed only 1/5 of the societies "infrequently or never" engaged in warfare, and the majority of those were groups that "might more accurately be classified as defeated refugees than as pacifists." Another survey indicated that "90 percent of the cultures in the sample unequivocally engaged in warfare and that the remaining 10 percent were not total strangers to violent conflict." Although some cultures were pacifistic, they did so my fleeing territory rather than engaging in combat.

The author gives some other specific examples, such as the Kung ("Bushmen") of the Kalahari, during the period of 1920-1955, had a homicide rate four times that of the United States; and during the 50's and 60's, they had homicide rates of 20 to 80 times that of most industrialized countries. In that regard, the author notes that "[b]efore local establishment of the Bechuanaland/Botswana police, the Kung also conducted small-scale raids and prolonged feuds between bands and against Tswana herders intruding from the east." He notes other examples, such as a Copper Eskimo community first contacted in the early 20th century where every adult male had been involved in a homicide, to that Yaghan of Tierra del Fuego whose murder rate in the late 19th century was 10 times as high as the United States. Later, he notes that "the homicide rate of the prehistoric Illinois villagers would have been 1,400 times that of modern Britain or about 70 times that of the United States in 1980." But this raises an important point: "the seeming peacefulness of such small hunter-gatherer groups may therefore be more a consequence of the tiny size of their social units and the large scale implied by our normal definition of warfare than of any real pacifism on their part." In other words, when dealing with small groups, you cannot usefully separate a "raid" using a small number of people from a "battle." They are one and the same.

The author also addresses the issue of whether it is unfair to compare homicide rates in a small culture against a major nation, without taking into account warfare statistics. The author writes:

Let us undertake such a comparison for one simple society, the Gebusi of New Guinea. Calculations show that the United States military would have had to kill nearly the whole population of South Vietnam during its nine-year involvement there, in addition to its [the United States'] internal homicide rate, to equal the homicide rate of the Gebusi.

In short, "the overwhelming majority of known societies have made war. Therefore, while it is not inevitable, war is universally common and usual," and "frequent, even continuous warfare is as characteristic of tribal societies as of states." "The only reasonable conclusion is that wars are actually more frequent in nonstate socieities than they are in state societies--especially modern nations." The cure to warfare, then, is not less civilization, but more civilization.

Notable Points: There are several notable issues or points to be taken from the book for our purposes as preppers:

First, pre-state peoples existed in tribes, clans, family bands, or some other level of social organization larger than families, but small than a city state. Thus, if civilization were to break down, we should expect that people would organize in, at a minimum, at the level of family or tribal groups (clans or gangs, if you prefer), or larger groups.

Second, raids and ambushes for the purpose of obtaining resources (sometimes including raids to obtain women or children) and revenge killings, would be common. The archaeological evidence the author examined from Europe showed that every single village possessed fortifications. If we were to lose rule of law, it may be necessary, therefore, to plan to live in fortified villages and settlements that would not be easy to infiltrate or attack, and would provide some protection against small arms fire or a mass attack.

Third, it was interesting to me that the author noted a distinct difference between "shock" weapons--axes, spears, and so on--and fire weapons--arrows and darts. The latter were largely inferior in their lethality, but obviously superior as far as staying out of the range of the enemies shock weapons. I would note that this is consistent with studies performed after WWI showing that bayonets were more lethal than bullets or shrapnel. However, the author notes that the increased power of firearms made firearms a type of "shock" weapon. For our purposes, then, I would offer the following: two-feet of steel is going to be deadlier than a rifle or handgun; a large caliber hunting round will be more effective than FMJ or weaker weapons; don't use bows and arrows for fighting.

Fourth, "organized" battles are rare and require the combatants to agree to fight. Most combat will be raids or skirmishes.

Fifth, small numbers of casualties per encounter add up. A prolonged series of battles could result in the extinction of a tribe.

Sixth, while there were "rules" of war among related groups or tribes, "unrestricted warfare, without rules and aimed at annihilation, was practiced against outsiders." Age and sex is no guarantee of protection.

Seventh, raids and ambushes are the most effective forms of warfare. From the author:

Raids characteristically kill only a few people at a time; they kill a higher proportion of women than do battles or even the routs that follow them; they kill individuals or small groups caught in isolated circumstances away from major population concentrations; and because the victims are outnumbered, surprised, and often unarmed, their wounds are often inflicted as they try to flee.

However, the cumulative effect of raids makes them more effective at wiping out another tribe over a period of time.

Eighth, primitive (guerrilla) warfare techniques were generally superior to the "mass" warfare of modern armies. "Primitive (and guerrilla) warfare consists of war stripped to its essentials: the murder of enemies; the theft or destruction of their sustenance, wealth, and essential resources; and the inducement in them of insecurity and terror. It conducts the basic business of war without recourse to ponderous formations or equipment, complicated maneuvers, strict chains of command, calculated strategies, time tables, or other civilized embellishments." It is true total war. However, the author notes that modern forces, when they adopt primitive warfare, can exploit their advantages to defeat primitive warriors by exploiting their clear advantage--logistics. The civilized warrior has a logistic chain that allows them to constantly attack and harass tribal warriors during the depths of winter, during planting or harvest, and so on when the tribal warrior is most vulnerable.