Hostname: page-component-77f85d65b8-zzw9c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-03-27T18:02:28.669Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Capacities for peace, and war, are old and related to Homo construction of worlds and communities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2024

Agustín Fuentes Open the ORCID record for Agustín Fuentes [Opens in a new window] ,
Nam Kim Open the ORCID record for Nam Kim [Opens in a new window]  and
Marc Kissel Open the ORCID record for Marc Kissel [Opens in a new window]
Agustín Fuentes*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA afuentes2@princeton.edu https://anthropology.princeton.edu/people/faculty/agustin-fuentes
Nam Kim
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA nckim2@wisc.edu https://www.anthropology.wisc.edu/staff/kim-nam-c/
Marc Kissel
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, USA kisselm@appstate.edu https://anthro.appstate.edu/directory/dr-marc-kissel
*
*Corresponding author.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The capacities required for both peace and war predate 100,000 years ago in the genus Homo are deeply entangled in the modes by which humans physically and perceptually construct their worlds and communities, and may not be sufficiently captured by economic models.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 47 , 2024 , e8
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Brooks, A. S., Yellen, J., Potts, R., Behrensmeyer, A. L., Deino, A. L., Leslie, D. E., … Clark, J. B. (2018). Long-distance stone transport and pigment use in the earliest Middle Stone Age. Science (New York, N.Y.), 360(6384), 90–94.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dapschauskas, R., Göden, M. B., Sommer, C., & Kandel, A. W. (2022). The emergence of habitual ochre use in Africa and its significance for the development of ritual behavior during the Middle Stone Age. Journal of World Prehistory, 35, 233–319. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-022-09170-2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuentes, A. (2017a). Human niche, human behaviour, human nature. Interface Focus, 7, 20160136. http://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2016.0136CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fuentes, A. (2017b). The creative spark: How imagination made humans exceptional Dutton/Penguin. Dutton Books/Penguin Press.Google Scholar
Fuentes, A. (2019). Why we believe: Evolution and the human way of being. Yale University Press/Templeton Press.Google Scholar
Hrdy, S. B., & Burkart, J. M. (2020). The emergence of emotionally modern humans: Implications for language and learning. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 375(1803), 20190499. http://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0499CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kim, N. C. (2012). Angels, illusions, hydras, and chimeras: Violence and humanity. Reviews in Anthropology, 41(4), 239–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, N. C. (2020). A pathway to emergent social complexity and state power: A view from southeast Asia. In Bondarenko, D. M., Kowalewski, S., & Small, D. (Eds.), The evolution of social institutions (pp. 225–253). Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, N. C., & Kissel, M. (2018). Emergent warfare in our evolutionary past. Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kissel, M., & Fuentes, A. (2021). The ripples of modernity: How we can extend paleoanthropology with the extended evolutionary synthesis. Evolutionary Anthropology, 30(1), 84–98. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/evan.21883CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kissel, M., & Kim, N. C. (2019). The emergence of human warfare: Current perspectives. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 168, 141–163. http://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23751CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacDonald, K., Scherjona, F., van Veena, E., Vaesena, K., & Roebroeks, W. (2021). Middle Pleistocene fire use: The first signal of widespread cultural diffusion in human evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118(31), e2101108118. http://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2101108118CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spikins, P., Dytham, C., French, J., & Seren, J.-W. (2021). Theoretical and methodological approaches to ecological changes, social behaviour and human intergroup tolerance 300,000 to 30,000 BP. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 28, 53–75. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-020-09503-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitehead, N. L. (2004). On the poetics of violence. In Whitehead, N. L. (Ed.), Violence (pp. 55–77). School of American Research Press.Google Scholar