ABSTRACT
This chapter divided into non-complex and complex forager societies to reflect the recent suggestion that the short chronology of warfare began with the emergence of sociopolitically complex hunter-gatherers. Nonetheless, it reveal the presence of significant violence and conflict between social groups and contribute to the perception of an unbroken line of violence between early hominins and historic hunter-gatherers, indicating a long chronology for warfare. Violence and warfare, of course, are far from unusual in the modern world and has also been the subject of centuries of writing and theorizing by philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists, and other social scientists. The chapter demonstrates an increase in violence during the Holocene coincident with increased sociopolitical complexity, it documents an unbroken line of violence between the Middle Paleolithic and the Mesolithic. The antiquity of violence and warfare and what they reveal about human nature are compelling issues, as is evidenced by their long hold on discourse across specialties.
