The Anthropology of War

Download or read book The Anthropology of War written by Jonathan Haas and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1990-07-12 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book brings together a group of authors who are addressing the nature and causes of warfare in simpler, tribal societies. The authors represent a range of different opinions about why humans engage in warfare, why wars start, and the role of war in human evolution. Warfare in cultures from several different world areas is considered, ranging over the Amazon, the Caribbean, the Andes, the Southwestern United States, Southeast Asia, Polynesia, and Malaysia. To explain the origins and maintenance of war in tribal societies, different authors appeal to a broad spectrum of demographic, environmental, historical and biological variables. Competing explanatory models of warfare are presented head to head, with overlapping bodies of data offered in support of each.