History teacher once claimed that war was nonexistent in pre-agriculture societies due to it being economically unsustainable
That depends a bit on how you define war. Simply ambushing the neighboring tribe and killing all males isn’t war in the traditional sense. It doesn’t drag on.
Indeed. Archaeological study of the grounds surrounding Stonehenge shows evidence of what appears to be a prolonged conflict between two neighbouring settlements, which lasted several hundred years- during which time there were no new religious monuments made in the area (suggesting that most energies were devoted to this conflict). There’s evidence of several major battles.
Stonehenge almost certainly wasn’t erected by a hunter-gatherer society. Its main monuments date to about 2500 BC, which in a British context is late Neolithic or early Bronze Age (i.e. post-agricultural), and are generally attributed to the Grooved ware culture.
Forager economics may have existed at the edge of agricultural civilization well after the transition, of course, but from associated artifacts, among other things, we can be pretty sure that the European megaliths were put up by sedentary agriculturalists.
An attack at night can allow an evenly matched tribe to kill the other one. That puts some pressure on a tribe that fears getting ambushed to ambush first.
That depends a bit on how you define war. Simply ambushing the neighboring tribe and killing all males isn’t war in the traditional sense. It doesn’t drag on.
Well there are lots of longrunning feuds and conflicts in hunter gatherer societies, where both tribes are about evenly matched for each other.
Indeed. Archaeological study of the grounds surrounding Stonehenge shows evidence of what appears to be a prolonged conflict between two neighbouring settlements, which lasted several hundred years- during which time there were no new religious monuments made in the area (suggesting that most energies were devoted to this conflict). There’s evidence of several major battles.
(Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04hc5v7)
Stonehenge almost certainly wasn’t erected by a hunter-gatherer society. Its main monuments date to about 2500 BC, which in a British context is late Neolithic or early Bronze Age (i.e. post-agricultural), and are generally attributed to the Grooved ware culture.
Forager economics may have existed at the edge of agricultural civilization well after the transition, of course, but from associated artifacts, among other things, we can be pretty sure that the European megaliths were put up by sedentary agriculturalists.
An attack at night can allow an evenly matched tribe to kill the other one. That puts some pressure on a tribe that fears getting ambushed to ambush first.