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A Profoundly Heartening View Of Human Nature, Beyond War Offers A Hopeful Prognosis For A Future Without War. Douglas P. Fry Convincingly Argues That Our Ancient Ancestors Were Not Innately Warlike--and Neither Are We. He Points Out That, For Perhaps Ninety-nine Percent Of Our History, For Well Over A Million Years, Humans Lived In Nomadic Hunter-and-gatherer Groups, Egalitarian Bands Where Warfare Was A Rarity. Drawing On Archaeology And Fascinating Recent Fieldwork On Hunter-gatherer Bands From Around The World, Fry Debunks The Idea That War Is Ancient And Inevitable. For Instance, Among Aboriginal Australians, Warfare Was An Extreme Anomaly. Fry Also Points Out That Even Today, When War Seems Ever Present, The Vast Majority Of Us Live Peaceful, Nonviolent Lives. We Are Not As Warlike As We Think, And If We Can Learn From Our Ancestors, We May Be Able To Move Beyond War To Provide Real Justice And Security For The World.
This book investigates whether human warfare is an innate biological imperative or a learned cultural behavior that can be overcome. Douglas P. Fry, an anthropologist specializing in conflict and peace, utilizes archaeological evidence and ethnographic fieldwork to challenge the prevailing narrative of human violence. He argues that for the vast majority of human history, nomadic hunter-gatherer societies functioned as egalitarian groups where warfare was largely absent. By reframing our evolutionary history, the author posits that peace is a viable, evidence-based possibility for modern global society.
What You Will Find
Scholars in the fields of anthropology and conflict resolution frequently cite this work for its rigorous challenge to Hobbesian views of human nature. Readers often note that the text provides a well-documented, optimistic counter-narrative to the assumption that war is an inevitable byproduct of human evolution.
Page Count:
352
Publication Date:
2009-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0199725055
ISBN-13:
9780199725052
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