War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage Reprint Edition

by Lawrence H. Keeley (Author)

76 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0195119121

ISBN-10: 0195119126

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The myth of the peace-loving "noble savage" is persistent and pernicious. Indeed, for the last fifty years, most popular and scholarly works have agreed that prehistoric warfare was rare, harmless, unimportant, and, like smallpox, a disease of civilized societies alone. Prehistoric warfare, according to this view, was little more than a ritualized game, where casualties were limited and the effects of aggression relatively mild. Lawrence Keeley's groundbreaking War Before Civilization offers a devastating rebuttal to such comfortable myths and debunks the notion that warfare was introduced to primitive societies through contact with civilization (an idea he denounces as "the pacification of the past").
Building on much fascinating archeological and historical research and offering an astute comparison of warfare in civilized and prehistoric societies, from modern European states to the Plains Indians of North America, War Before Civilization convincingly demonstrates that prehistoric warfare was in fact more deadly, more frequent, and more ruthless than modern war. To support this point, Keeley provides a wide-ranging look at warfare and brutality in the prehistoric world. He reveals, for instance, that prehistorical tactics favoring raids and ambushes, as opposed to formal battles, often yielded a high death-rate; that adult males falling into the hands of their enemies were almost universally killed; and that surprise raids seldom spared even women and children. Keeley cites evidence of ancient massacres in many areas of the world, including the discovery in South Dakota of a prehistoric mass grave containing the remains of over 500 scalped and mutilated men, women, and children (a slaughter that took place a century and a half before the arrival of Columbus). In addition, Keeley surveys the prevalence of looting, destruction, and trophy-taking in all kinds of warfare and again finds little moral distinction between ancient warriors and civilized armies. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, he examines the evidence of cannibalism among some preliterate peoples.
Keeley is a seasoned writer and his book is packed with vivid, eye-opening details (for instance, that the homicide rate of prehistoric Illinois villagers may have exceeded that of the modern United States by some 70 times). But he also goes beyond grisly facts to address the larger moral and philosophical issues raised by his work. What are the causes of war? Are human beings inherently violent? How can we ensure peace in our own time? Challenging some of our most dearly held beliefs, Keeley's conclusions are bound to stir controversy.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The evidence that Mr. Keeley marshals is vivid, varied, and often complex."--The New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Lawrence H. Keeley is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has contributed articles to Scientific American and Nature, and has appeared in documentaries that have run on PBS, The Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel. He lives in Oak Park, Illinois with his wife and son.

Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press; Reprint edition (December 18, 1997)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0195119126
ISBN-13: 978-0195119121
Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 0.6 x 5.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 76 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #303,518 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #132 in Books > Textbooks > Social Sciences > Military Sciences
- #663 in Books > Textbooks > Social Sciences > Anthropology
- #677 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Anthropology > General

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Civilization Vindicated

July 23, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

The default position of much social science has been that the societies existing prior to human history were largely peaceful and cooperative. When they did fight with one another the `fighting' was more a kind of ritual or rough play. Ultra-violence was something practiced by modern, `civilized' man. Hobbes's views were, in effect, trumped by Rousseau's.

Lawrence H. Keeley's book was written to counter that view and it does so with hard facts and common sense. Not only was the warfare of prehistory often nearly constant; it was extremely violent and vast in its effects. The percentage of a population that could be obliterated was far greater than the percentages resulting from modern, `civilized' warfare.

To tell his story, Keeley utilizes a worldwide canvas, studying warfare from New Guinea to the American northern plains. He discusses the anthropology of war, the prevalence of war and its importance, the tactics and weapons employed in war, the forms of combat, the differences between primitive and civilized war, casualty rates, profits and losses, the potential causes of war, the desirability and fragility of peace and the manner in which the ancient images and ethnographic evidence have been transmuted by contemporary (and earlier) social science. Subsidiary material such as cannibalism is also given due attention.

The book is readable, the evidence compelling. This is a book that should be part of the repertoire of every practicing social scientist and every political commentator. I became aware of it when one of the latter recommended it on a news broadcast. This is not a screed or a half-baked bit of special pleading. This is an extensive, nearly exhaustive Oxford University Press monograph. Check it out.

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Odysseus at home

Everything you never imagined about war in human history, and why.

November 25, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This is one of the best books on the topic I have ever read. It is well written and accompanied by a profusion of charts and tables with lots of data that supports the thesis that the author proposes, i.e., that there was war before civilization, contrary to the opinion of many many researchers and scholars. The prevailing trend was based on a worldview that considered the emergence of war as a consequence (unintended, anyway) of the complexities that the new forms of organization (protostates and empires) brought with them. With the empires appeared the war and with the war the armies, in an infinite and unstable cycle of peace and war.

Now, what professor Keeley did, or better, what he discovered at some moment during the exercise of his career as an archaeologist, was that he was wrong in following the prevalent opinion. In his words: "Like most archaeologists trained in the postwar period, I emerged from the first stage of my education so inculcated with the assumption that warfare and prehistory did not mix that I was willing to dismiss unambiguous 'physical' evidence to the contrary."

After some findings in Stuttgart - Germany that revealed that several "men, women and children," have been "killed by blows to the head inflicted by characteristicly Early Neolithic axes," the prevalent opinion began to stagger. "The resistance," he adds, "that we archaeologists showed to the notion of prehistoric war, and the ease whit which it was overcome when the relevant evidence was recognized, impressed me and convinced me that a book on this subject would be worthwhile."

Thus, after twelve chapters you got everything you need in order to decide what to think. Anyway, the problem with accepting that the epoch we live in right now has been the most pacific of all is really hard to assimilate. Just think about it for a moment and then you can say to yourself "this is impossible." But is it?

Page after page, the author exposes you to the intricacies and multi layered aspects of the human behavior, so the book is more than counting corpses and bones with holes and injury marks in them. In fact, it is about the reason behind our tendency to fight before talking. The impulse that pushes us into fight everywhere and every time. That's why the narration covers a full spectrum that goes from evolution to biology to sociology to politics and the like.

If you are interested in history, in warfare, in topics about violence, aggressiveness, "human condition in extremes," "political intrigues," and so on, this is your book. Also if you want to know about that idealized world that existed before the cities (and the wars between them) destroyed the pastoral landscapes, this is your book.

If you teach or if you study about war or strategy, this is your book also.

You won't forget it for a long time, I guess. In fact I finished the reading some months ago but the book is still with me.

And a final advice: read it after or before "Sex and war" by Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden. Both of them are genuine contributions.

Five stars.

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Integrity Reviews

Superb, a wonderful achievement

January 27, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Keeley provides the best available book on the nature of war in primitive societies. The scholarship cited is extraordinarily detailed and yet very readably presented. It would do an injustice to the balance and knowledge of the author to attempt to inadequately summarize many of his conclusions in this review, but the main one may be attempted: devastating levels of chronic warfare were present in the vast majority of primitive societies on which data is available from archeological and ethnographic analysis. Warfare was actually, adjusted for population size, more destructive of life in many primitive societies than even such horrible events in modern societies as the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. The peaceful savage is indeed a myth. Mankind's propensity for war seems deeply embedded in human nature, but so too is the desire for peace. War is not invariably inevitable. Keeley offers thoughts on factors that may predispose to warfare and possible mechanisms for reducing its occurrence, but there are no simple answers to one of the greatest of human challenges - the avoidance or mitigation of war.

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Patrick L. Boyle

Devastating critique of the "Romance of the Primitive"

April 21, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

The thesis of this book is simple. Those who have written about how warfare among primitive peoples was seldom and largely symbolic are wrong.. Keeley demolishes the contention that the noble savages' seldom fought.

Some other reviewers think he should have had more references - but that's absurd. Nearly one third of the pages are notes, references and appendices. This is a serious and well documented book.

Although this book is not very old the idea that hunter-gatherers were peaceful is already out of favor. So in a way the whole purpose of the book is a little obsolete. I can clearly remember when the Maya for example were conceived of as a race of philosophers who sat around in the jungle contemplating the stars and thinking sweet thoughts about life, the nature of man and immortality. But almost no still believes that kind of horse-pucky anymore. Keeley's approach is probably now the mainstream.

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