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Carol, and Melvin, Ember are well respected anthropologists...but, they don't necessarily represent the consensus view. They've been consistent in their more war like view, over 40years. I don't agree with her overall view, and it is mostly due to definitions. She divides 'foragers' into hunter/gatherers and 'complex hunter/gatherers'. Complex hunter/gatherers include semi-nomadic pastoral or agrarian and even static fish cultures. She states that complex hunter/gatherers are far more aggressive/violent than basic hunter/gatherers...I agree...I don't agree that they are hunter/gatherers at all. She also defines anything above a single death as 'warfare'...I think that is a pretty loose definition, she states that personal feuds are included in warfare as well...I don't.In the statement you highlighted (and in previous statements), the loose definitions are obvious in that she mentions specifically economic motivations and taking of land. There is no economy or land ownership in H/G cultures.We are talking communities that range in size from an extended family to a few dozen people...no more than a hundred at the extreme. War isn't a real possibility when there is no competition for resources and all the combatants on your side are family (any one who dies will be family). There was a discovery a decade or so of the remains of 27 bodies that were ~10,000 years old. This set the anthropology world on fire as proof of H/G warfare. In the last several years, there has been several papers published that dispute that the remains are all contemporary with each other, and that the claims of blunt force trauma as cause of death on several of the remains isn't supported by forensic science. So, this one of a kind discovery of a mere 27 casualties of a H/G war probably isn't any of those things.
Carol, and Melvin, Ember are well respected anthropologists...but, they don't necessarily represent the consensus view. They've been consistent in their more war like view, over 40years. I don't agree with her overall view, and it is mostly due to definitions. She divides 'foragers' into hunter/gatherers and 'complex hunter/gatherers'. Complex hunter/gatherers include semi-nomadic pastoral or agrarian and even static fish cultures. She states that complex hunter/gatherers are far more aggressive/violent than basic hunter/gatherers...I agree...I don't agree that they are hunter/gatherers at all. She also defines anything above a single death as 'warfare'...I think that is a pretty loose definition, she states that personal feuds are included in warfare as well...I don't.
In the statement you highlighted (and in previous statements), the loose definitions are obvious in that she mentions specifically economic motivations and taking of land. There is no economy or land ownership in H/G cultures.
We are talking communities that range in size from an extended family to a few dozen people...no more than a hundred at the extreme. War isn't a real possibility when there is no competition for resources and all the combatants on your side are family (any one who dies will be family). There was a discovery a decade or so of the remains of 27 bodies that were ~10,000 years old. This set the anthropology world on fire as proof of H/G warfare. In the last several years, there has been several papers published that dispute that the remains are all contemporary with each other, and that the claims of blunt force trauma as cause of death on several of the remains isn't supported by forensic science. So, this one of a kind discovery of a mere 27 casualties of a H/G war probably isn't any of those things.
