The Origins of War (500,000 BC–3,000 BC)

Comments · 4.6K

• SA

  @SandRhomanHistory · 2 years ago (edited) · pinned

  Artwork from the channel collected into a coloring book (line art + colored versions):<br><a href="https://amzn.to/4veRAb4">https://amzn.to/4veRAb4</a><br>It also includes some illustrations that haven’t appeared in the videos yet.<br>(Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.)<br><br>We put a lot of effort and poured substantial resources into this video. For example, we licensed a lot more footage and artwork, put much more effort into research, storytelling and editing. All in all, this resulted in much more work but also in a much better video and viewing experience, at least that’s what we think. <br>This only became possible because we finally have more time to focus on YouTube. We recently finished most of our other projects. Roman has finally handed in his master thesis this summer (he received the best possible mark!) and Sandro has finished his diploma as a history teacher (also the best possible mark for his final test lesson). We also finally published our article in an academic collective volume edited by Dr. Kilian Baur and Robert Trautmannsberger. It’s about our experience as content creators here on YouTube. It covers some of the difficulties we faced as content creators (trying to be accurate vs. limited time and resources). The article also explains the methods we developed (or tried) to bring a deeper understanding of history and historiography to YouTube while keeping the content entertaining. The article is open access, so you should be able to read it for free, but it is only available in German. <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110792898-005/html">https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110792898-005/html</a> ) We’re going to teach a part of this in a course at the university of Zurich next semester (2024).<br>In the future we plan to put the same effort in our videos, although some projects might still be a bit less complex. If you want to support us, feel free to buy one of the books that we list below or consider becoming a Patron ( <a href="https://www.patreon.com/sandrhomanhistory">https://www.patreon.com/sandrhomanhistory</a> ). By becoming a Patron, you get access to previews, artwork, content polls and BTC-updates. We really do rely on these income streams. For us, 2023 was one of the worst years, financially speaking, because many sponsors have refused to work with us (partly because of the overall market situation, partly because our clicks were not that great). While we’re not exactly starving or anything like that, we would be grateful for a bit more financial security. We’re also still trying to cover the cost of the artwork that we use in our videos, which would be about $600 / video (at the moment we’re at about $550 / video (about 10% goes to Patreon for their service)). This is important for us because the artwork and licensing of videos and music puts quite a dent in our finances. <br><br>There’s a more extensive bibliography in the description of this video but if you’re interested in some of the more accessible books mentioned in this video, have a look here (affiliated links):<br>Arther Ferrill, The Origins Of War: From The Stone Age To Alexander The Great <a href="https://amzn.to/46yjZf4">https://amzn.to/46yjZf4</a> <br>Lawrence H. Keeley, War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage <a href="https://amzn.to/46r4pl2">https://amzn.to/46r4pl2</a> <br>Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Sapiens: <a href="https://amzn.to/3ta5e3n">https://amzn.to/3ta5e3n</a><br>Frans de Waal, the Age of Empathy. Nature&apos;s Lessons for a Kinder Society: <a href="https://amzn.to/3PW8BnF">https://amzn.to/3PW8BnF</a> <br><br>The two papers on Jebel Sahaba and the Y-chromosome bottleneck can be found here:<br>Crevecoeur, Isabelle et. Al., New insights on interpersonal violence in the Late Pleistocene based on the Nile valley cemetery of Jebel Sahaba, in: Scientific Reports vol. 11 (2021), <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-89386-y">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-89386-y</a> <br>Zeng, T.C., Aw, A.J. &amp; Feldman, M.W. Cultural hitchhiking and competition between patrilineal kin groups explain the post-Neolithic Y-chromosome bottleneck. Nat Commun 9, 2077 (2018). <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04375-6">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04375-6</a>

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• IA

  @iamjollygreen · 4 days ago

  It went more like this...<br>- &quot;Hey! Those people are killing children by roasting them alive to appeasement of their Gods. We must destroy them&quot;.<br>Then WAR.<br>THE END

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• MO

  @Mosgman · 6 days ago

  There was no war before large scale trade and overpopulation, before that there was no reason for large scale conflict.

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• MO

  @mokray_belochka_sps · 8 days ago

  The evolutionary theory of total killing due to disease views extreme violence as a radical biological tool for protecting a population from an invisible, deadly threat. In primitive conditions, when the mechanisms of infection spread were unknown and an epidemic could completely wipe out a clan, humans developed a powerful psychological mechanism of behavioral immunity, which often transformed into physical aggression. The onslaught of an unknown disease caused existential dread and triggered a reaction of total purging, where for the sake of sanitation and the survival of the healthy part of the collective, entire groups of relatives or neighboring communities showing the first symptoms of infection were destroyed. This type of violence was not related to a struggle for resources or power; it was a form of preemptive isolation through death, where the carriers of infection were no longer perceived as humans or relatives, but as a source of biological contamination threatening the reproductive future of the entire clan. Under conditions of migration and contact between tribes, the total extermination of a neighboring group consumed by a plague became a necessary biological strategy to create a sanitary cordon, protecting one&apos;s own territory and offspring from an invisible enemy.

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• MO

  @mokray_belochka_sps · 8 days ago

  There is a well-founded assumption that the first war in human history was exclusively ritualistic in nature and did not look to physically destroy the enemy. These early clashes were more akin to sporting-ritualistic competitions between related communities, where violence was strictly regulated and the main objective was to demonstrate strength, cohesion, and genetic potential for the sake of resource distribution and reproductive success without demographic losses. However, as humanity expanded, climate shifted, and large-scale migrations occurred, clans began to clash with groups whose language, rituals, and appearance they could no longer easily understand. The lack of shared sociocultural codes and the growing scarcity of living space transformed these demonstrative contests into brutal intergroup conflicts, which over time took on the features of total war aimed at the complete extermination of outsiders and the seizure of their territories. In parallel with external violence, primitive communities faced severe internal crises, when during periods of prolonged famine, catastrophic resource scarcity, or under the influence of primitive existential dread before the inexplicable forces of nature, a clan could make the decision to commit collective suicide, seeing it as the only way to end suffering and preserve the integrity of their group in the face of inevitable collapse.

• MO

  @mokray_belochka_sps · 8 days ago

  Considering the evolution of human violence through the prism of biological reproduction and control, the proposed forms of primitive warfare can be clearly correlated with the anthropological realities of early societies. The first form, sporting-competitive or ritual warfare, represents the ultimate demonstration of the quality of male genetic material and combat skills without causing critical damage to demographics. Such clashes occurred between related or neighboring clans under a relative balance of power, where the goal was not to destroy the neighbor, but to redistribute the hierarchy, demonstrate coalition strength, and gain a reproductive advantage in the form of female attention and status. Violence here was strictly regulated, less lethal weapons were used, and the battle stopped after the first blood, since the total destruction of neighbors would expose the borders to third enemies and destroy the channels of bride exchange. The second form, lethal warfare, was waged for the purpose of forcibly establishing control, subduing, or displacing competitors. Violence here was not restrained by rituals, and its goal was to break the enemy&apos;s will to resist, inflict irreparable damage on them, and force them to retreat from hunting grounds. Biologically, suppressing the violence of a hostile group ensured the safety of one&apos;s own offspring, while men of working age were deliberately killed to eliminate a physical threat, and women and resources passed to the victors, maximizing their reproductive success. The third form, total war, was an extreme form of intergroup violence aimed at the complete genetic and physical destruction of a competing population. In the course of such a war, absolutely all members of the other group were destroyed, including the elderly, infants, and pregnant women who posed no physical immediate threat. The biological meaning was the complete elimination of someone else&apos;s gene pool in order to free up an ecological niche for one&apos;s own descendants, since the enemy&apos;s infants were viewed as future avengers, and women as carriers of someone else&apos;s identity. At the same time, paleoanthropologists can clearly distinguish the traces of such combat clashes from domestic murders or ritual executions, where the victim was immobilized, bound, or caught by surprise. A striking example of individual executions or ritual sacrifices are the bog bodies of Iron Age Europe, such as Tollund Man or Grauballe Man, on whose bodies there are no signs of struggle or antemortem fractures, but a leather noose-stranglehold has been preserved on the neck or a throat cut from ear to ear has been recorded. The oldest documented murder in human history is recognized as the skull from Sima de los Huesos in Spain, dating back about 430,000 years, where two distinct identical through-fractures were found on the frontal bone, inflicted by the same blunt object face-to-face, which proves the deliberate finishing off of a restrained person rather than an accidental injury. The find of the Neanderthal Shanidar III in Iraq, aged about 50,000 years, demonstrates a deep narrow incision on the rib from a light projectile weapon of Cro-Magnons that entered the chest cavity from top to bottom, which indicates a treacherous ambush attack or the execution of a sitting prisoner. Finally, the Paleolithic site of Sungir in Russia, aged about 30,000 years, contains a double burial of adolescents, where a girl was found to have a through puncture in the pelvis area, inflicted by a heavy spear strictly perpendicularly from behind, which is a classic marker of ritual murder carried out within the group by decision of the relatives. While in total war archaeologists find men, bound women, and children slaughtered by arrows and thrown without burial into a common pile, an execution or murder is always individualized, and the presence of nooses around the neck or wounds in the back clearly indicates internal violence, lawful punishment, elimination of a competitor for power within the clan, or sacrifice.

• MO

  @mokray_belochka_sps · 8 days ago

  насилие в отношении внутри родовых групп это всегда борьба за власть. война в первобытном смысле происходит из семейного насилия. разве нет? чем больше семья или род тем более вероятно что контроль и управление в ней в условиях охоты будет связано с насилием. К тому же семья разростается от семьи отпочковываются дети семьи. или наоборот нужны женщины. все эти вещи порождают конфликтность. желание обладания власти. например вступление в сексуальные отношения порождают агрессивной поведение. а агрессивное поведение во время секса порождают войну. защита потомства и прочее также несут внутригрупповые конфликтные ситуации

• PA

  @pacn69 · 10 days ago

  Kinda lame that this video is littered with ads

• BA

  @Back2Nature-w4g · 11 days ago

  Its shows that blacks invented war lol they started

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• EV

  @Everett-i2x · 12 days ago

  Fallen angels happened around 6,000 years ago thats the earliest there would have been warfare,

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• KA

  @kaarlimakela3413 · 13 days ago

  There are so many assumptions in play still.

• MA

  @MassSurveillance · 3 weeks ago

  wtf is 500k BCE. That’s before the earliest recorded homo sapien

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