Constant Battles: Why We Fight

by Steven A. LeBlanc, Katherine E. Register

With armed conflict in the Persian Gulf now upon us, Harvard archaeologist Steven LeBlanc takes a long-term view of the nature and roots of war, presenting a controversial thesis: The notion of the "noble savage" living in peace with one another and in harmony with nature is a fantasy. In Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage, LeBlanc contends that warfare and violent conflict have existed throughout human history, and that humans have never lived in ecological balance with nature.

The start of the second major U.S. military action in the Persian Gulf, combined with regular headlines about spiraling environmental destruction, would tempt anyone to conclude that humankind is fast approaching a catastrophic end. But as LeBlanc brilliantly argues, the archaeological record shows that the warfare and ecological destruction we find today fit into patterns of human behavior that have gone on for millions of years.

Constant Battles surveys human history in terms of social organization-from hunter gatherers, to tribal agriculturalists, to more complex societies. LeBlanc takes the reader on his own digs around the world -- from New Guinea to the Southwestern U.S. to Turkey -- to show how he has come to discover warfare everywhere at every time. His own fieldwork combined with his archaeological, ethnographic, and historical research, presents a riveting account of how, throughout human history, people always have outgrown the carrying capacity of their environment, which has led to war.

Ultimately, though, LeBlanc's point of view is reassuring and optimistic. As he explains the roots of warfare in human history, he also demonstrates that warfare today has far less impact than it did in the past. He also argues that, as awareness of these patterns and the advantages of modern technology increase, so does our ability to avoid war in the future.

Genres: History, Anthropology, Nonfiction, War, Politics, Science, Psychology

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 19, 2003

Reviews

[Marsha Altman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good anthropology book about how we view primitive, not-very-complex societies as peaceful and in tune with nature. In reality, forager societies are only peaceful when food is plentiful, which leads to population growth, which leads to food scarcity, followed by famine and warfare. One myth in particular is that the Native American "used every part of the buffalo" while cowboys would be wasteful. In reality, Native Americans had a lot of uses for different parts of the buffalo, but if they didn't need glue or sinew at that particular time they would leave the carcass behind.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides great insight into the environment and human beings' interaction. Written by an archaeologist, the chapters show how humans have never lived a conservationist lifestyle, that people always exceed their environment's carrying capacity (even if it takes hundreds of years to reach this threshold), and that people thus turn to war.

[William Monroe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dispels the myth that man has ever lived in peace.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book if you like anthropology and don't mind having some popular notions about human prehistory and primitive cultures dispelled. LeBlanc argues that

We need to recognize and accept the idea of a nonpeaceful past for the entire time of human existence. Though there were certainly times and places during which peace prevailed, overall such interludes seem to have been short-lived and infrequent. (p. 8)

Hunter gatherers did not live in peaceful harmony with each other up until civilization came around and threw everything into chaos.

The author, an archaeologist, does an excellent job proving the "constant battles" part of his thesis. A high percentage of prehistoric human remains show signs of violence--bones broken fending off blows, stab wounds, embedded arrowheads, spear tips, and axe heads, and signs of scalping and beheading. There were often mass graves, most commonly occupied by men showing signs of violent death at times when the simultaneous death of so many people would be hard to explain by natural causes. Settlements in inconvenient but easily defensible locations surrounded by walls, guard towers, and stockpiling stones that were most likely used as missiles. Plus prehistoric artwork--like the Lascaux Cave drawings--depicting scenes of battle and violence. Not to mention the most primitive forager societies we have encountered in recent times--and that still exist--are extremely violent and tell us of extreme violence in their recent past.

I think he proves the violence part beyond reasonable doubt. LeBlanc then goes on to argue that the cause of warfare is almost always stress on a society's resource base. He also makes a very strong case for this, showing that repeatedly as societies grow during good times they overtax the carrying capacity of their land. Even battles previously thought to be about getting women are actually, LeBlanc explains, due to resource depletion: the scarcity of women was caused by female infanticide brought about by food shortages (males were more valued). Infanticide, by the way, was extremely common, even in Europe until the 18th century, according to the author; the concept is listed on 8 pages in the index.

LeBlanc explains why he thinks it has taken so long for the idea of the "noble savage" living in harmony with nature and with each other to be debunked. In part it is wish-fulfillment, in part the societies that we previously thought were peaceful really weren't. They were often encountered just after either their populations were decimated by disease or had increased their ability to exploit their resources, in both cases relieving the stress on their resource bases. (Think of the Native Americans.)

The book has a few issues, none detrimental to his main argument. I think the estimate of 500,000 people killed in Europe's witch hunts is probably high, though he offers it without comment. A few other statements needed further discussion, but all of his points were backed up with good evidence. Frequent illustrations with good captions added to the work, but they often appear 10 to 20 pages from the text discussing them.

The book is very interesting and goes well with Jared Diamond's books Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse, Robert Wright's Nonzero, and Charles C. Mann's 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. 4/5 stars and highly recommended.

[Megan Alsheikh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure what other people see in this book, but I just really am not pleased in the quality and factuality. There are so many debatable claims LeBlanc makes, and I have more than once noted that he refers to something as "possibly" having happened, or as a "best explanation" and then later using the possibility or best explanation as a factual reference.
As a science major, the statement that really ground my gears the most was,
"In truth, it is possible to eliminate all predators, change the forest composition, and then live in harmony with the environment that is left" (LeBlanc 26).

There are so many things wrong with this statement, for one, to eliminate all predators would be to also eliminate ourselves, as humans are predators.
Second, some may consider malaria carrying misquitos as predators and I find it hard to believe we would be able to wipe them out, otherwise we would have already.
Third, given that we 'eliminate all predators' there would be no way of controlling population growth of non predatory animals, which would then cause us to have a scarcity of food, therefore not living in harmony with our environment.
Overall, I feel as if this book is written in a very demeaning way. I get this "You're all dumb and I'm smarter than you" tone. I haven't met someone who has made a claim that people didn't have wars between their tribes or clans thousands of years ago.
If you are someone who has quite a bit of knowledge in history and science, I would not suggest reading this very much so arguable and inaccurate book.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provides a lot of unusual information on deliberate violent behavior to the members of own species of the primates, humans and their ancestors back to 750,000 years.

Roots of this behavior (food shortage) and genetic predisposition to such behavior, and observations of a careless attitude to ecological balance worldwide and history-wide.

What could and should be done to avoid food shortage, and a contradictory prognosis for survival if this will be accepted, but not world wide: "the strength is in numbers" and "good ant became a dead ant, and a bad grasshopper inherits the Earth" (quotation from memory, not exact).

The reading was exceptionally interesting at the beginning, slowing down in the main part, raising brows after that, disagreeing with a bias (researches with opposite bias would select different data, explanations and recommended course of actions), becoming annoyed, skimmed the rest and put the book down.

I would recommend to take a look at the book, especially beginning. The rest will be up to you.

Details:

Good, honest and sincere beginning, free from despising, patronizing and lecturing, despite a formidable title.

Free flowing, well told story by the author why it took him 25 yrs to allowing himself even to see the obvious signs present at practically old archeological sites, the social conditioning that keeps most of us in the same state.

Small unknown facts about the famous sites, discoveries and theories provide different view, contrary popularized, and give you search terms to look further.

In time, it goes as far as Neandertals 50,000 yrs ago and indirect data 750,000 yrs ago, long before agriculture and nomads conflict.

It seem that unwillingness to control population growth and overuse of available resources, paired with natural disasters, are the roots of evil and were present at any time, leading to surviving battles not for glory and power, but for scarce basic resources.

And flourishing was only short term, after drastic population decline either because of epidemic, starvation or slaughtering.

Terms war and battles tend to put mind on the wrong track, as if a chiefdom, disposable armies and declaration of war were essential.

Beginning of the book was passionate and cheerful, main content of the book is a quiet, smooth providing facts and thoughts about them. Less and less impressive further, longer and longer... Providing credits not only who pioneered, but who inspired this pioneering. Long quotations and unnecessary detailed descriptions.

What became a dead stop for me, his views on the possible way to reach ecological balance, that spoils the whole impression from this partially thoughtful book: obsolete, naive, utopian, as if completely unaware of the real sources of power in any contemporary free market, democratic, religion based society, and a bias.

But the beginning was amazing.

[Alexander Van Leadam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admit to being quite partial to books that set out to change our understanding of some fundamental issues, challenge conventional truths and undermine conventional wisdom. Even small changes of perspective can return new insights, even on the basis of known, widely available information. This book explains warfare as a result of competition between groups brought on by the human failure to live in ecological balance. It dispells the myth of the noble savage and makes a convincing case for our inability to avoid ecological degradation throughout the history of the species. It does end optimistically, suggesting that we are making progress, yet my reader's conclusion is rather pessimistic. I can see growing awareness but few results, while the magnitude of the problems appears to grow.
The only hope could be that the authors are mistaken. Some glaring errors, like writing that the ancient Greeks were descendents of the Trojans or calling all ancient peoples living in Asia Minor "Turks", don't exactly inspire confidence in other facts and arguments in the book. Does this mean that the main conclusion doesn't hold, that warfare is not inevitable?

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an interesting - but hardly surprising - and well-documented point of view. An archeologist who gradually came round to the view that he was looking at a lot of evidence of resource wars over the centuries. Like other animals, when we have access to good resources, we reproduce until we are effectively using them all, and then start warring with the neighbors. But his archeological view of this is fascinating.

[Ogi Ogas · Rating 4 out of 5]

My ratings of books on Goodreads are solely a crude ranking of their utility to me, and not an evaluation of literary merit, entertainment value, social importance, humor, insightfulness, scientific accuracy, creative vigor, suspensefulness of plot, depth of characters, vitality of theme, excitement of climax, satisfaction of ending, or any other combination of dimensions of value which we are expected to boil down through some fabulous alchemy into a single digit.

[Phil Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this after "1491" is probably a good thing as it goes more in depth to some of the topics originally raised specifically in the Americas.

However, when comparing the books, Mann's 1491 completely turns the prevailing understanding of American history (as in the hemisphere) on its head. While Constant Battles seems more like a drawn out essay topic.

[Abigail Blake · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting book that argues humanity has never been peaceful or in ecological balance for long. LeBlanc argues his point and then uses it to stress that we can use history to build a more peaceful and ecologically balanced future.