Despite the popular perception that organised violence is as old as the human species, in historical terms, warfare is a relatively recent phenomenon. Once we conceptually decouple individual aggression from the sociological processes of war and collective violence, it is possible to realise that a great majority of our predecessors were not involved in these brutal practices. Since for 99 per cent of their history, Homines sapientes have lived in tiny, egalitarian, nomadic hunting and gathering bands that lacked social organisation and normative cohesion, they had neither the means nor the interest or will to engage in protracted violent conflicts. Hence, rather than being a throwback to the primitive past, organised violence is a direct product of social development. As Eckhardt's (1992: 3) comprehensive data sets demonstrate well, civilisation and warfare emerged together and the ‘later civilisations have been more militaristic than earlier civilisations, regardless of population’. In contrast to Elias's (2000 [1939]) diagnosis, rather than taming our supposedly innate aggressiveness, the civilising process in fact creates institutional conditions for the proliferation of violence on a much grander scale. Since neither biological composition nor cultural upbringing prepare human beings for violent acts, the only reliable way to make men and women engage or support fighting, killing and dying is to utilise the mobilising and justifying powers of social organisations and ideologies. Without organised action and the doctrines that legitimise such action there would be no warfare.