Abstract
War features prominently in history, that is, in the records of literate societies. This paper addresses the issue of prehistoric warfare, that is, whether human societies without writing fight wars, and if so how often, under what circumstances, what tactics and technology they use, and how their warfare differs from that of literate societies.
As background, the paper reviews theoretical perspectives on prehistoric warfare and considers categories of data and problems with their interpretation in the absence of primary documents. In particular, researchers continue to invoke the perspectives of the philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau as touchstones of their thoughts on the topic of prehistoric warfare.
The author has no particular training or expertise in anthropology or archeology, but from reviewing the literature suggests that available data supports neither the Hobbesian nor the Rousseauian extreme. Societies without writing sometimes fight and sometimes do not, just as societies with writing do. Hobbes’ war of all against all is as mythical as Rousseau’s peaceful savage. The paper ends with a call for continuing more nuanced interdisciplinary research into the issue of prehistoric warfare and its implications.
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