The Dawn of War

Why do we fight? Is war a consequence of our development, or is it in our DNA? Can we ever truly be at peace with our fellow humans?

From Marathon to Waterloo, Saratoga to the Somme, humans have warred amongst themselves. Even now, kamikaze drones stalk tanks on the Ukrainian steppes and Tuareg nomads battle mercenaries in the Sahara. War, it seems, is everywhere.

Our popular understanding is that war is a product of modernity and civilisation, a tragic recent development, rather than the natural state of the human species. Our prehistoric ancestors, the thinking goes, lived relatively peaceful lives free of conflict or major violence. But this is an optimistic view.

Affirming Churchill’s adage that ‘the story of the human race is war’, evolutionary biologist Nick Longrich draws on cutting-edge archaeology to overturn these existing narratives. He argues that from the Stone Age to the nuclear era, war has been an innate part of the human condition. Not only does this tell us much about our own behaviour and about the societies in which we live, but it may also hold the key to understanding why homo sapiens became the preeminent species on earth.

As Longrich argues, if we want to extinguish war, we must first understand its origins. By analysing how and why we fight, we can shed fresh light on emerging conflicts. Perhaps most importantly, by understanding how war came to be, we can help future generations avoid its evolutionary trap.