Iset’s Reviews > Warfare in Neolithic Europe: An Archaeological and Anthropological Analysis > Status Update

No, for the simple reason that groups were not that far apart! People probably didn't have contact with groups that far away from themselves, except maybe through travelling traders.

Most conflicts would have been between neighbouring groups, and the reasons could be many. Competition for land (which held important resources; could be food sources, could be decent flint outcropping to make tools, could be even for shells or other decorative items which traded well and conveyed high status)... if one group is going hungry they might attack their neighbours to steal food and animals, or even if they're not hungry and are simply greedy... some attacks were revenge raids for some long ago forgotten slight which trigger a tit-for-tat sequence of raids... could be for spiritual beliefs that a neighbouring group put a curse on them or murdered a tribe member through magic ill-intent.... some just to increase your own group's status by warriors proving themselves and stealing valuable goods.

Raiding for women was a reason, but it wouldn't have been the primary reason, unless a group was short of women. So like the primary reason might have been revenge or increasing the group's prestige or some such; and whilst you're at it let's get some slaves. Women seem to have been almost always taken with children. Probably because those two groups are the most vulnerable and the most useful (you could say that old people are among the most vulnerable, but not as useful). The children might be slaves with the idea that taking them young inculcates docility... or the children might be adopted by a group that needs more warriors and workers. Same for the women; could be slaves, or could be more fully integrated as wives of equal status to local women, in a group that needs more members in its ranks.

Travelin wrote: "Thank you for that that considered response. This new review says that a somewhat controversial book makes the claim that raids were for slaves, not women or land.

https://www.goodreads.com/revie..."

Raids were for slaves - in the Bronze Age, 2000 BCE. Raids were not so much for slaves in the Stone Age Neolithic, 6000 BCE, because communities were small, no such thing as states or countries existed yet, and these small communities couldn't muster up the manpower to make vast conquests or control vast numbers of adult slaves. In the Bronze Age, states and countries could actually muster armies to undertake such a thing, and they actually had a need for slaves to fuel monumental building projects, such as temples in both Egypt and Mesopotamia. This was not the case in the Neolithic - population numbers were often too low to undertake monument building, even supplemented with slaves, and most communities were subsistence - growing just enough for everyone in the community to live off. Stratification of social hierarchy only came later, in the Bronze Age, freeing some people up to specialise in other jobs whilst a very few people farmed much larger tracts of land - another reason (outside of monument building) why Bronze Age states raided for slaves. But in the Neolithic there is very little stratification, and pretty much every family farms their own little strip of land, which they gain food from.