ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates the arguments that feuding and war are comparatively recent human innovations using data on a set of simple foragers that have been consistently overlooked: the hunters and gatherers of New Guinea. It argues that there are problems with some of the definitional and theoretical underpinnings to Douglas Fry's argument. The chapter shows that even when people set these reservations aside, they can plausibly infer from the New Guinea evidence that warfare could just as likely have predated the Holocene as emerged during its course. It explains about the hunter-gatherer scholars that have overlooked a suite of ethnographically known forager groups that appear to have exploited considerably richer environments than those of the standard forager file: the hunter-gatherers and fisher-gatherers of New Guinea. The New Guinea data are congruent with a long rather than a short chronology of war: a conclusion within the ultimate analysis, Fry might actually agree.
