Hmmm yes because weapons weren't common in the bronze age. Well that is unless you ignore the massive numbers of bronze age swords and halberds. Two weapons that were only designed for ONE purpose, killing humans. These are found ALL over Europe and Asia. The national museum of Scotland had rooms FULL of them. Strange that if it was only a minority of psychopaths why is there so much art depicting men fighting in bronze age rock art. movements forward? Please explain to me how we have moved forward? Finland - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland#Civil_war_and_early_independence Sweden - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Empire Denmark - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark#History Funny these seem to point to a different story Bruce. The Bear.
hi folks, so I am giving in to temptation and going to get involved in this.... As far as I am aware, the consensus in anthropological and evolutionary psych circles at the moment is that both sides of this argument are correct, that is to say that we are both innately violent and cooperative. Which, if you think about it, makes perfect sense. Individually, as a species we are pretty weak compared to the sorts of beasties that would have been our predators for the vast majority of our evolutionary past (which was anything but rural and agrarian). So being able to cooperate and reciprocate and all of that sort of thing was very useful and probably increased your chances of living considerably. So we seem to have that built in. Of course despite the whole strength in numbers and being able to act as groups thing, we regulalry got hammered by a variety of misforttunes for which the only credible answer was to go very hard and ugly, quickly. So that is probably built in there as well. It doesn't have to be an either/or thing guys. It is probably both. Of course then you have the fun of reconciling those quite different bits of our nature, the solution to which we call society...... A very old bit of which is the formal study of the martial arts.... just my two pence paul
As is often said, "if you are raised up as a hammer; everything looks like a nail". In like manner if you are raised-up to be violent, everything looks like a weapon. Yes, the Bronze Age had weapons of copper/tin alloy. Various cultures around the world including Greece, SHANG China and the Sythians also produced thousands of incredibly beautiful items for ritual, office and daily needs all of which had little or nothing to do with violence and everything to do with communication, understanding and maintanence. The same can be said of the Iron Age. As far as movements forward, the transition to both pastoral and agrarian communities, the development of trade;production of both spoken and written language; cultivation of religious and spiritual thought;cultural mores and taboos as well as standardized community practices were not borne of violence but of the need to co-habitate productivelyboth among people and in relationship to the environment. Best Wishes, Bruce
Well that's not what the curator of the Bronze collection of the National Museum of Scotand says. The swords i've handled are functional and very efficient killing weapons. I tend to read the research of people who have spent their lives studying the evidence and have peer reviewed publications. Bruce can you send me your evidence for your hypothesis and the publication list of Bronze age reasearch that you have written or where you learned these theories? Well you could argue that but for the fact that with agriculture came centralised government structures which were enforced through the use of violence to control the food and wealth of the communities. If we look at the Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks or Romans, your hypothesis of a peaceful pastorical society just simply doesn't hold water. The Bear.
Your original arguement seems to have been that Human beings are intrinsic-ly violent people. You are now backing away to say that they exhibit violent behavior or have violent tendencies. In this regard we have no differences between us. Regarding the curator's comments I have no comment. You have demonstrated a propensity for seeing what you want to see and hearing what you are listening for. In such cases your report is reasonably suspect. As far as the development of government and security, you have things turned around. The development of of societal functions is accepted to have followed the development of agrarian practices. Put another way, societal structure proceeds from goals identified to attain needs. In this way hunting-gathering practices produced group efforts from individual efforts, and individual animal and plant husbandry developed farming and herding communities. Your idea of using violence regarding control must first accept that one has a community and food from the start. In the examples you are giving (IE Egyptians etc etc) the establishment of an agrarian society preceeded by a number of millenia the development of organized fighting systems. This is not merely a "chicken-or-egg" proposition. There is simply no need for aggression and no evidence that violence was an integral part of the agrarian society. In fact evidence in Peru, Israel and Iran supports the view that co-operation and trade consistently develope well before the use of violence. FWIW. Best Wishes, Bruce
So where is your evidence? Have you read Richard Osgood's work? The sheer amount of weapons, armour and fortifications found doesn't indicate a peaceful society. Infact if you lived in peace why would you even develop swords and armour. You would only find dual use weapons like spears and bows which can be used in hunting. Which you do find in some remote isolated tribes but not in the more populated areas. The Bear.
You can pull out all of the resources you care to....so can I. It won't make you anymore right. Roberts History of China (along with a number of others) represents that China was an agrarian culture long before it developed weapons and fortifications. The recent excavations in Peru (arguably the single oldest organized culture on Earth, pre-dating even the Fertile Crescent) reveal fishing nets, hooks, trade relationships and organized architectural patterns..... no weapons..... no fortifications. Cave paintings in Southern France go back thousands of years and there are hundreds of representations of hunting scenes, abstract patterns and totemic beliefs. Not a single representation of combat. The Neanderthal culture of Northern Europe existed for over 100,000 years and has produced thousands of sites and burials. Not one of these sites represents fortifications and there has yet to be one burial found with armour, martial regalia or ranks. Here in the US, the Anasazi indians lefts hundreds of sites and burials indicating agricultural pursuits and organized culture. No weapons or armour. No organized military science. In Australia, the aborigines also back thousands of years and have a rich history of storied exploits and events. No armour; no weapons; no reports of inter-community predation. Nobody says that armour and weapons did not develop as did fortifications and organized tactics. But these came later and Man had to learn how to aggress against one another other. Man is not naturally aggressive but can be made to be aggressive by adding stressors to the environment such as famine, pestilence, illness, over-population and weather. In like manner, other animals can become aggressive but it requires stressors on the community which is typically quiescent in its unstressed condition. In other words one must compell animals to be aggressive, they are not naturally so excepting very rare species. FWIW. Best Wishes, Bruce
See before you write rubbish Bruce, you should check your FACTS. http://www.rupestre.net/tracce/tracce2c.html Oh and neanderthals AREN'T modern humans. They are a different sub-species, oh and why do you think they died out after coming into contact with human? http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2...-cannibalism-anthropological-sciences-journal Hmmm, these peaceful pastoral people you decribe Bruce. The Bear.
I can see that this discussion is not going to go anywhere as long as you re-qualify the focus of your position each time you post. a.) The discussion is not about whether or not we were discussing "modern Humans". You made a statement indicating that Humans are innately violent.You didn't say this or that Human but suggested that ALL Humans are innately violent. I just offered five different civilizations where the sort of organized violence you admire simply was not part and parcel of the social fabric. No response from you except to hold that Neaderthals are a "sub-species" and to raise the suggestion (unproven by the way) that better armed and organized Cro-magnen culture may have hunted Neaderthal. All the same you said nothing of the WEI HO civilization in China, aboriginal cultures and I can add the Indus-Gangetic civilization and the Indonesian Archepeligo civilization as well. Even IF you could make a case for Europeans being particularly violent in their nature, what you are saying is not supported around the Earth. b.) You also cannot make a case for cannibalism in any event as we can only apply such judgements out of context. We do not know how and under what circumstances Humans may have eaten Humans. We do know that even higher primates have an aversion to eating their own unless aberrant circumstances exist. And, if this is your criteria for judging Humans to be innately violent then you will have to include every mammal who has ever participated in aberrant behavior in order to survive. But your original premise was that such behaviors are innate in nature and so would not need extreme circumstances to bring them out. I don't get the impression that you are looking at the Human race through other than a very narrow focus beginning with the Bronze Age and moving forward. Perhaps you, personally enjoy violent behavior and possibly know others who do also. Perhaps the area in which you reside has a high incidence of violence. None of this means that the entire Human race is innately violent. Whether or not people respond in violent ways to stresses in their enviornment in another question. BTW: You may want to check your citations to see which arguement is supported. You just proved my point with your citation regarding POST-Paleolithic rock art. The images as reported in the text are attributable to culture of the 8th and 9th Century BC. This would be a few thousand years after the introduction of agriculture et all to the area, I assure you. Best Wishes, Bruce
Hi Bruce, Bear might not want to do it, but I will . Yes, human beings ARE violent by nature, there is loads of evidence. I can PM you a list of academic references as long as your arm (well, the truth is I don't really know how long your arms are, but...), but as I said earlier we are also cooperative by nature as well. I depends on the context. The relatively recent agricultural history you are both mainly talking about happened long after most of our genetic heretige had been well and truly established. The environment that did produce our genes was a hunter gatherer one, and as such didn't exactly lend itself to a default passivity setting, just as our social needs didnt encourage a species entirely composed of nasty sociopaths. We have exctly the same diverse set of innate potential responses as most animals do. In all honesty, would either of you expect any other species to be exclusively innately violent or not? I am guessing no, you would expect there to be a mixture of innate responses that were basically context dependant. Maybe the issue here is not so much what is innate in our nature, but exactly what that means and entails? (says Komuso, who can't help but notice that two people who's posts he likes to read, and who I have the online version of respect for, are having an oddly heated discussion about the kind of academic nit-picking that I have to deal with at work..... ) paul
Someone gets in my face..I walk away. Because I am passive and laid back by nature. Someone attempts to smack mrs koyo... I am hiding from the police the next day. Hope this had been of help. regards koyo
Anyway, back on topic. I visited Koyo last night at the Makotokai since he graceously offered to demonstrate to me the idea of "free" kata and let me train with them in kata. So never let it be said that The Bear doesn't go and look at the other side of the argument. Initally it was very difficult to adapt my current training to this model. I found I was very tense when trying to perform a set sequence of movements because I wanted to attack any of the openings I saw. Under instruction I began to relax and look for what I was supposed to in the Kata. It was interesting and has given me some new ideas in explaining to my students what to look for in freeplay. Just want to say thanks to Koyo and Gerry of Makotokai for giving me their time. It's always good to be shown how much would I've still go to do. The Bear.
