Coalitionary Quotes

“From the evolutionary perspective, revenge is retaliation that is intended either to destroy an enemy or to foster deterrence against him, as well as against third parties. This, of course, applies to non-physical and non-violent, as well as to physical and violent, action.”
― Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization

“Indeed, want and hunger were not the only reasons for fighting. Plenty and scarcity are relative not only to the number of mouths to be fed but also to the potentially ever-expanding and insatiable range of humans needs and desires. It is as if, paradoxically, human competition increases with abundance, as well as with deficiency, taking more complex forms and expressions, widening social gaps and enhancing stratification.”
― Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization

“Humans have far longer memories than do animals and, thus revenge -the social settling of accounts with those who offended them- assumes a wholly new level with them.”
― Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization

“However, contrary to the fashion in much of the gender studies, cultural norms play, and diverge, along a scale set by our inborn dispositions. (Needless to say, the subject is extremely complex and, as we see later, it becomes even more complex with the new opportunities, interactions, and tensions created by accelerated cultural evolution.) The fact remains that among hunter-gatherers, in the 'human state of nature’, women’s participation in warfare was extremely marginal. Even more tan hunting in which women also marginally engaged in a few societies, fighting was a male preserve and the most marked sex difference.”
― Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization

“...the evidence suggests that hunter-gatherers in their evolutionary natural environment and evolutionary natural way of life, shaped in humankind's evolutionary history over millions of years, widely engaged in fighting among themselves. In this sense, rather than being a late cultural 'invention', fighting would seem to be, if not 'natural', then certainly not 'unnatural' to humans.”
― Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization

“As Thomas Malthus pointed out, a new equilibrium between resource volume and population numbers would eventually be reached, recreating the same tenuous ratio of subsistence that has been the fate of most pre-industrial societies throughout human history.”
― Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization

“In communities in which spiritual life was permeated -as it invariably was- with supernatural beliefs, sacred cults and rituals, and the practice of magic, this was a potent force. All known hunter-gatherer societies -as with any other human society- exhibit the universal human quest for ordering and manipulating the cosmos.”
― Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization

“Revenge has probably been the most regular and prominent cause of fighting cited in anthropological accounts of pre-state societies. Violence was activated to avenge injuries to honour, property, women, and kin. If life was taken, revenge reached its peak, often leading to a vicious circle of death and counter-death.”
― Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization

“Trophy heads served much the same social purpose for primitive warriors as medals, decorations, or marks of fallen enemy aircraft do for modern ones.”
― Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization

“Even if some women were physically and mentally capable of participating in a warrior's group, this very rarely happened.”
― Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization

“Perpetration of serious violence and crime is in fact the most distinctive sex difference there is, cross-culturally.”
― Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization

“No formal criterion or 'definition' should obscure the fact that the early state did not emerge full blown and in a clear-cut form. Its formation was a process rather than a one-time event, which regularly took generations and centuries to unfold.”
― Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization

“Forms of power flow and translate into each other, or, to put it in a less reified matter, possessors of power move to expand and guard it, among other things by gaining hold and tightening their grip on the various levers of power. No effective state power can maintain control, defend its realm against outsiders, or safeguard against usurpation without a substantial underpinning of force.”
― Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization