Constant Battles: Why We Fight [Paperback]

Steven Le Blanc (Author), Katherine E. Register (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0312310900 | ISBN-13: 978-0312310905 | Edition: Reprint

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this detailed if strident book, Harvard archaeologist LeBlanc and his co-author dismantle the notion of the noble savage, a myth that "implies that if we can just...remember our ancient abilities to be one with the natural environment, warfare will stop and ecological balance will be regained." LeBlanc begins by describes his own field experiences, in which he and his colleagues routinely ignored "clear evidence for warfare"; later, following the lead of some "fanatical sociobiologists" at Harvard, he began formulating an academic stance focused on what he saw as humanity's ecologically disastrous and inherently violent true nature. It took him more than 25 years to fully change his mind, he says, and still more evidence is needed to prove his hypothesis. And the myth, he says, is entrenched in popular culture as well as science--most people envision prehistoric people as peace-seeking nature lovers. LeBlanc insists repeatedly that it is not only foolish, but also dangerous, to believe in an Edenic past when the evidence reveals overpopulation and violence wherever we look. Like many scientists before him, LeBlanc looks to technology as the answer to ancient problems. "For the first time in history," he writes, "we have a real ability to provide adequate resources for everyone living on the planet." But by not fully addressing the fact that technology has yet to solve may of our contemporary social ills, LeBlanc almost falls into the thrall of another myth-that of a gleaming future that seems drafted from science fiction.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Timely reading... LeBlanc's short book makes accessible to general readers controversial ideas well-known in (archaeology)... (and) offers a serious critique of both 'rational choice' by our leaders for short-term ends and of environmental neglect in a market economy as leading to disaster."
-St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"In a provocative and simulating book, Steven LeBlanc places warfare at the center of human existence. He sees it as a constant battle over scarce resources from the earliest days of our history. In so doing, he gives us hope for the future, in a world where we have the potential to feed everyone. He gives us an important contribution to a growing debate over the causes and future of war."
-Brian Fagan, professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of The Little Ice Age

"Timely reading offers a serious critique of 'rational choice' by our leaders for short-term ends as leading to disaster." (William H. Leckie, Jr. St. Louis Post-Dispatch )

"Constant Battles is a well-armed rebuttal to the notion that our ancestors all just got along." (The Wall Street Journal )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; Reprint edition (August 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312310900
• ISBN-13: 978-0312310905
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.8 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #764,144 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

73 of 79 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Ignoble savages April 2, 2004

By Russell Finley

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Do not read this book if you are wedded to the idea that we humans once lived in harmony with our natural environment. LeBlanc argues that we were slaughtering each other over scarce resources long before the invention of agriculture or the advent of complex societies. Although not the first to pooh-pooh the idea of the peaceful, noble savage, he is one of the first to do so using prehistoric archaeological evidence.

LeBlanc makes a strong case that virtually all ancient societies collapsed from an endless cycle of overpopulation, resource depletion, and warfare. My favorite example, among many, was Troy. Archaeologists had a hard time finding it because Homer's description placed it near a bay. The Greek islands were not always the barren, desolate rocks that you see today. They were turned into stone by human activities: the elimination of forests, non-sustainable farming, and overgrazing (which continues to this day.) The bay that once fronted Troy was filled in by silt from the denuded hillsides centuries ago leaving the ruins stranded many miles from the sea.

The author argues that overpopulation, followed by resource depletion and warfare, was more than just common; it was inevitable. Given the option to do so, people eventually went after their neighbor's resources.

LeBlanc points out that there is a strong tendency for researchers to whitewash their archaeological findings. I have to agree with him. Years ago, when I first read of the bronze age iceman mummy discovered in the Alps, the researchers had suggested that he was probably a peaceful sheepherder who had been caught in an unexpected blizzard. The polished bronze ax found in his possession was too soft to cut down trees. It must have had religious or ritual significance.... That was all before they found the arrow in the iceman's back. In addition, his knife has the blood of four other individuals on it. He also has defensive wounds on his arms. LeBlanc sees the iceman's bronze artifact for what it really is-a deadly battle-ax. Considering how rare prehistoric human remains are, I am astounded that so many of them show signs of violent death at the hands of other humans. This is exactly the point LeBlanc is making.

This book has a few technical problems that should have been resolved by its editors. For example, the word infanticide is used ten times in just three paragraphs on pages 48 and 49. We are told more than once that Nanook of the North starved to death. We are also told at least seven different times that, according to the fossil record, about 25 percent of all males died at the hands of other males.

In the end, LeBlanc's findings beg the question: are we genetically locked into this cycle of overpopulation, environmental degradation, and violence? LeBlanc falls victim to his own whitewash when he tries to answer it. Believing that warfare is ultimately the result of conflict over scarce resources, he optimistically concludes that with modern technology and knowledge we will eventually free ourselves from resource scarcity and therefore warfare.

This is where LeBlanc and I part ways. We may one day free ourselves from resource scarcity, but it would be a stretch to suggest that modern war is the result of it. Hundreds of thousands of years of warlike behavior can only mean one thing: our aggressive behavior has been selected for by evolutionary pressure. Like wasps, we have a strong natural predilection to respond in a specific manner when someone hits our nest with a stick. Just sixty-two years ago, our nation was hit with a stick and we responded by incinerating the men, women, and children of two cities with nuclear weapons. Our nest was hit by another stick on 9/11/2001. I rest my case.

LeBlanc concludes, "For the first time in history, technology and science enable us to understand Earth's ecology and our impact on it, to control population growth, and to increase the carrying capacity in ways never before imagined. The opportunity for humans to live in long term balance with nature is within our grasp..."

I agree with LeBlanc's tenet that technology and knowledge hold the key to the planet's future. However, time is running out, especially for the planet's biodiversity. I am going to plug my own book here, "Poison Darts-Preserving the Biodiversity of Our World" because it is all about how to do it, not why we should or even if we should. Human nature is not going to change any time soon.

I highly recommend this book. Read more ›

76 of 92 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Mixed Bag August 27, 2003

By E. N. Anderson VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

First the good news: LeBlanc's main message is right. People in almost all societies have fought, and very often it's all about resources. Traditional societies of all sorts, from hunter-gatherers to early states, often overused their environments badly, and then either tried to cope by taking resources from the neighbors, or weakened themselves to the point where the neighbors could scarf up on them. LeBlanc urges us contemporary humans to take heed, and clean up our ecological act so that we can reduce (hopefully eliminate) the danger of war.
So far, so good. Thus, on balance, this is a good book and a very valuable one. LeBlanc notes that whatever innate aggressions humans have, their actual wars are typically over land and resources, and thus are preventable. We all need to hear this, in an age when politicians and writers love to naturalize war and aggression as inevitable. (Yes, I know, war isn't just about resources, but it usually involves much concern about them.)

The problems come with LeBlanc's exaggeration and sometimes shaky scholarship (on which see exchange of letters in ARCHAEOLOGY for Sept.-Oct 2003). First, while the myth of the ecologically harmonious "savage" was once common and is still with us, the myth of the peaceful savage seems quite rare. LeBlanc cites only one source for it, and he's wrong about that one. He cites Rousseau (hardly an anthropologist). In fact Rousseau never used the term "noble savage" (it's from Dryden), and R's "savage" was the chimpanzee, of whose sometimes-violent behavior R was well aware. (He tells some stories of their attacks on Africans.) Anthropologists know traditional people are often warlike. H. H.... Turney-High's foundational review PRIMITIVE WAR (oddly, not cited by LeBlanc) established a baseline on that, many decades ago. Lloyd Warner (whom LeBlanc does cite) noted that Australian Aboriginals waged war about as often as Europeans, with casualty rates (and rhetoric!) comparable to WWI. Raymond Kelly and Brian Ferguson claim no "warfare" for simpler societies (in recent books) but it's a definitional difference; they define warfare as formal, huge-scale, organized conflict, and don't count the small but bloody feuds and battles almost universal among traditional peoples. I really don't know of anyone who thinks simpler societies were peaceful, but my panel of popular-culture experts (a.k.a. my family) assure me that the New Age and Goddess-worshiping set does indeed so believe. (I assume that Diana Muir's comments on anthropologists, in another Amazon review, refer to textbook accounts of ecological harmony; they certainly don't apply to the anthro literature on war.)
On ecology, while LeBlanc is right that lots of people mess their environments up, he exaggerates it, and uses a ridiculously strict definition of "conservation" that makes it virtually synonymous with "preservation." This would rule out modern soil conservation, water conservation, duck conservation, game animal conservation, etc. Traditional people everywhere figure out how to manage their environments well enough to let them survive; they sometimes overuse resources, and even ruin whole ecosystems, but usually they do well enough--though not well enough to prevent occasional war.
All this would be trivial if it weren't for the very strong possibility that LeBlanc's book will be misunderstood, by superficial readers, as a claim that "savages" are the treacherous, destructive bloodthirsty, violent, cruel, endlessly-warring beasts that they were said to be in all the earlier literature--from Thomas Hobbes to Hollywood cowboys-and-Indians movies. (Hollywood's recent glorification of the Indian is small recompense for nearly 100 years of portraying Indians as mindless butchers of cowboys and settlers.) In my experience, for every person who believes in the peaceful, harmonious savage, there are hundreds who believe in the Hobbesian one. These people usually follow Hobbes in assuming that we civilized folk have nothing to learn from "savages" except that we need a powerful king or dictator to keep us in line. If I read LeBlanc aright, this is NOT what he is saying, and readers should be warned not to make too much of his lurid title and occasionally (though not usually) exaggerated claims. Read more ›

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Judicious Reappraisal of Earlier Human Societies June 14, 2007

By Marty

Format:Paperback

From the above reviews of LeBlanc's "Constant Battles," we can clearly see that the "noble savage" interpretation of pre-history engenders strong emotional responses, more in the vein of current TV political shows where name calling is the norm and less in the vein of academic discourse where there should be an appeal to facts and clear reasoning. In fact, in approaching this subject, it might be best to try and put both emotions and political views, if not aside, at least in the background.

LeBlanc is quite clear in stating his own academic history with this topic, the need for this and other studies on the topic, his methodology and his copious citations from peer reviewed scholarship. In addition, he points out that a very large portion of previous scholarship on early human societies assumed a great deal about the pacifist nature of these societies in the face of often clear but nearly universally overlooked evidence as to the bellicose nature of humans and our simian relatives, the chimpanzees.

To these ends, then, LeBlanc provides readers with an amply researched and argued thesis about the ubiquitous nature of warfare among human societies that is often triggered by a given group exceeding their own territory's "carrying capacity." In fact, this thesis is one that is echoed by Jared Diamond in his "Collapse" where Diamond provides clear cut evidence that much contemporary war is caused by environmental distress squeezing out carrying capacity.

Btw, one reviewer refers to the "Human Resource Area Files" when its proper title is, in fact, the "Human Relations Area Files...." You know, lads, if you are going to muster evidence, at least get the names of your witnesses correct and do not lie by saying that LeBlanc ignores peer reviewed literature when he actually cites it throughout this useful volume. I, as a professor who teaches early art and culture, find this book a refreshing addition to my course material. But, then again, I would expect this from LeBlanc, who has a Ph.D. in Archeology and is currently at Harvard. Read more ›