ABSTRACT
Social anthropology is particularly concerned with the social conditions which facilitate or encourage war and militarism. Early, and not so early, anthropologists have often assumed that a study of society in its most primitive forms was likely to yield insights into human interaction that could not be found elsewhere. The Jivaro (or Shuara, as they call themselves) are a relatively small tribal group who live in the tropical rain forest in that rather ill-defined area of the Amazonian basin which borders Ecuador and Peru. Alliances with other kindred groups (jivaria) often existed as military expedients, if that is not too grand a term to use about such small-scale warfare. In a number of African kingdoms tribal wars were not only common but often took place on an intratribal basis as conflicts over succession. In West Africa, the situation among the tribes of the south-west, especially the Yoruba, was quite different from that of the Hausa-Fulani Emirates in the north.
