Cavalos de frisa - Chevau de frise

Algumas fotos de cavalos de frisa

Some photos of Chevau de frise

Stone walls and chevaux-de-frise at the hillfort of Las Cogotas (Ávila) (Photo: A.J. Lorrio).
In/Em
The Celts in Iberia: An Overview
Alberto J. Lorrio, Universidad de Alicante Gonzalo Ruiz Zapatero, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
E-Keltoi -Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies - Volume 6 - The Celts in the Iberian Peninsula

Band of stone chevaux-de-frise in the hillfort of Passo Alto, Alentejo, Portugal. (Photo A. M. Soares.)

In/Em
The Celts of the Southwestern Iberian Peninsula
Luis Berrocal-Rangel, Departamento de Prehistoria y Arqueología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
E-Keltoi -Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies - Volume 6 - The Celts in the Iberian Peninsula

Dún Aengus, County Galway
In/Em
www.irishmegaliths.org.uk/seanchlocha7.htm

Dún Aengus, County Galway

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In/Em Wikipedia

French: Cheval de frise means "Frisian horse". The Frisians, having little cavalry of their own, relied heavily on such anti-cavalry obstacles. The term also came to be used for any spiked obstacle, such as broken glass embedded in mortar on the top of a wall.

Les chevaux de Frise sont un type de barrière utilisée depuis le Moyen Âge. Si l'origine du nom reste incertaine, ils semblent l'avoir reçu pendant la guerre de Quatre-Vingts Ans, ou révolte des Pays-Bas. C'est avec eux que les assiégés de la ville de Groningue, très proche de la Frise, réussirent à contrer les assauts de la cavalerie espagnole (le nom donné en allemand ou dans les langues scandinaves aux chevaux de frise est d'ailleurs cavaliers espagnols).

Nunes (2005, p. 84) define cavalos de frisa como: "Obstáculo com a forma de uma estrutura cilíndrica ou octavada atravessada por estacas aguçadas, usado para impedir passagens.".

NUNES, António Lopes Pires (2005) – Dicionário de arquitectura militar. Vale de Cambra: Caleidoscópio.

Harding (2003, p. 300) descreve a inovação técnica encontrada na fortificação de Dún Aonghasa na República da Irlanda: "…Fuera de los muros hay una extensa zona de chevaux de frise o campos frísios (piedras angulares aguladas hincadas), interpretados por lo general como un médio para impedir el ataque a caballo".

HARDING, A. F. (2003) – Sociedades Europeas en la edad del Bronce. Barcelona: Editorial Barcelona. 1.ª Edición.

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SOARES, António M. Monge (2000) – O Passo Alto: uma fortificação única do Bronze Final do Sudoeste. Revista Portuguesa de Arqueologia. Lisboa: Instituto Português da Arqueologia. 5: 2, p. 293-312.

Abstract
Prospecções superficiais e escavações arqueológicas no povoado do Passo Alto (Vila Verde de Ficalho, Serpa) permitiram atribuir uma cronologia segura à única ocupação deste povoado, bem como possibilitaram uma caracterização do sistema defensivo construído no mesmo. O povoado, situado na confluência de dois ribeiros, é constituído por dois núcleos, separados por cerca de 250 metros sem quaisquer vestígios arqueológicos. Os artefactos arqueológicos encontrados, de que se destaca a cerâmica de ornatos brunidos, levam a atribuir-lhe uma cronologia dentro do Bronze Final. As boas condições naturais de defesa são complementadas por uma muralha na zona de mais fácil acesso ao povoado. Esta é feita de terra calcada com pequenas pedras, a que se devia sobrepor uma parte em pedra. Adossada à face interna da muralha existe uma possível plataforma construída com terra calcada, tal como aquela. Um campo de cavalos de frisa no exterior da muralha constitui uma linha de defesa adicional junto da possível entrada e torna este sistema defensivo, com esta cronologia, único no Sudoeste.. Archaeological surveys and excavations carried out at the settlement of Passo Alto (Vila Verde de Ficalho, Serpa, Portugal) allowed to assign its only phase of occupation to the Late Bronze Age and, at the same time, to investigate and to characterize the built defensive complex. The settlement is located at the confluence of two rivers and it is formed by two loci 250 m apart. The finds, namely pattern-burnished pottery, indicate a Late Bronze Age chronology for the Passo Alto. The good natural defences of the settlement are complemented with a rampart on the easiest approach to the site. This feature is an earthen wall, also built possibly with stones in its upper part, and with an earthen platform placed against its inner side. Outside the rampart, a broad band of chevaux de frise provides an additional line of defence on the approach to the possible entrance. This defensive complex with a Late Bronze Age chronology is unique in the Southwest of the Iberian Peninsula.

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Na área plana de mais fácil acesso ao povoado, muito próximo da muralha mas no seu exterior, encontra-se um numeroso conjunto de blocos de xisto de forma mais ou menos prismática ou tabular alongada, muitos deles ainda in situ, fincados no solo, erectos, com uma altura de cerca de meio metro a um metro. Poderá, assim, deduzir-se que no povoado do Passo Alto existia um complexo defensivo,
constituído por uma muralha e por uma faixa de cavalos de frisa, na área de mais fácil acesso,que protegiam, na sua vizinhança imediata, estruturas eventualmente metalúrgicas (de que os blocos de rocha vitrificada serão indício) e, mais longe, a duas ou três centenas de metros, a zona habitacional, protegida também pelas margens abruptas do Chança e do Vidigão.

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Neste polimorfismo de habitats e de sistemas defensivos (na sucessão, aliás, do polimorfismo que apresentam as necrópoles do Bronze Inicial e Pleno do Sudoeste), destaca-se a utilização de cavalos de frisa no Passo Alto. Este tipo de sistema complementar de defesa é conhecido dos povoados das zonas montanhosas que bordejam a Meseta ibérica, sendo aí datável da Idade do Ferro, do século VI a.C. ou de momentos posteriores, podendo atingir o período republicano. Segundo Harbison (1968) a finalidade destas pedras fincadas “was not only to impede enemy cavalry, but also to render the attacking foot-soldier more vulnerable by forcing him to chamber over these stones before he could reach the walls”. Na realidade, em vários casos assim poderá ser, embora em muitos outros seja difícil admitir o seu uso contra a cavalaria. É o que acontece, por exemplo, quando os cavalos de frisa se implantam entre os fossos, como é o caso do Castro de Carvalhelhos (Santos Júnior, 1957), uma vez que a cavalaria já estava impedida de atingir as posições onde eles se encontram devido, precisamente, à existência desses fossos profundos. De igual modo, é difícil de imaginar que manobras de cavalaria os cavalos de frisa do Passo Alto impediriam, dada a sua posição junto à muralha, no estreito corredor quase planoque lhe dava acesso. No Sudoeste peninsular são conhecidos mais quatro povoados que apresentam este sistema de defesa — o Castillo de las Peñas, na serra de Aroche, Huelva (Toscano, 1997; Pérez Macías et al., 1997; Berrocal-Rangel, 2003), o Castrejón de Capote (Berrocal-Rangel, 1992, 2003), o Castro de Batalla del Pedruégano (Berrocal-Rangel, 1999, 2003) e o povoado de Reina (Berrocal-Rangel,2003). Enquanto estes três últimos, situados na província de Badajoz, têm uma primeira ocupação que é pré-romana, mas correspondente à II Idade do Ferro, e à qual podem ser atribuídos os cavalos de frisa aí existentes, já o Castillo de las Peñas sofreu várias ocupações, desde a Pré-história até à Idade Média, entre elas uma do Bronze Final. Os povoados desta época na serra de Aroche apresentam uma cultura material com grande similitude à da dos povoados alentejanos da mesma altura (Pérez Macías, 1996) e seria muito interessante um eventual paralelismo cronológico entre os cavalos de frisa do Passo Alto e os do Castillo de las Peñas. Contudo, este último é um povoado de altura, aparentemente sem muralhas, e possivelmente o único da serra de Aroche onde existe uma ocupação sem solução de continuidade entre o Bronze Final e a Época Romana, talvez devido à fertilidade das suas imediações, propiciada pela água abundante aí existente (Toscano, 1997, p. 149). A cronologia do campo de cavalos de frisa do Castillo de las Peñas continua,assim, uma questão em aberto e possivelmente nunca será possível datá-lo de um modo fiável. Além destes povoados do Sudoeste e dos cerca de quarenta conhecidos na área envolvente da Meseta com cavalos de frisa de cronologias dentro da Idade do Ferro ou até mais recentes,existe na Península Ibérica um outro povoado fortificado, o de Els Vilars de Arbeca, na Catalunha, também com cavalos de frisa, o que constitui uma característica única para o Nordeste peninsular. A construção do seu sistema defensivo — muralha com torres, fosso e barreira de cavalos de frisa — foi datada pelo radiocarbono entre 800/775 – 700/675 cal BC, encontrando-se o fosso e os cavalos de frisa já colmatados por terra no século VI/V a.C. (Alonso et al., 2000),isto é, quando começam a surgir nas outras áreas da Península Ibérica a maior parte dos sistemas defensivos que utilizam as pedras fincadas.
Num esquema difusionista em voga nos anos sessenta (Harbison, 1968) os campos de cavalos de frisa mais antigos, e que utilizariam a madeira em vez da pedra, seriam os centro-europeus,donde se difundiriam para sul e oeste, passando a utilizar a pedra em vez da madeira. Na Península Ibérica seriam tanto mais recentes quanto mais a ocidente se situassem os castros. No entanto,este esquema difusionista falha em vários pontos (Estallo e Sánchez, 1989). Em França, são raríssimas as barreiras de cavalos de frisa. O único povoado conhecido que utiliza este sistema defensivo em pedra, o povoado de Pech Maho, tem uma primeira ocupação a qual é muito mais recente que a correspondente à da erecção de muitas das barreiras de cavalos de frisa existentes nos povoados da Meseta. Por outro lado, os cavalos de frisa aparecem também na Irlanda, no País de Gales e na Escócia, sendo-lhes atribuída geralmente uma datação dentro da Idade do Ferro. Noentanto,escavações recentes nas ilhas Aran (Irlanda), no povoado fortificado de Dún Aonghasa, permitiram atribuir ao campo de cavalos de frisa aí existente uma datação dentro do Bronze Final ou, quando muito, na transição do Bronze Final para a Idade do Ferro (Cotter, 1995).
Por outro lado, e regressando ao Sudoeste Peninsular, segundo Pérez Macías (1996), uma análise do povoamento no primeiro quartel do primeiro milénio a.C. permite verificar que, a partir do século VIII, se observa no Alentejo, na serra de Huelva e na província de Badajoz uma descida brusca do número de povoados. Ainda que alguns deles continuem no período orientalizante, a maior parte destes são também abandonados, podendo o momento de abandono atingir, nestes casos e quando muito, o século VII a.C. Tirando algumas (poucas) excepções, como Medellín, o Alto do Castelinho da Serra ou o Castillo de las Peñas, não se encontra qualquer evidência firme de povoamento após aquela data até ao aparecimento, em meados do século V a.C., de outras populações, os célticos do Sudoeste, sem precedentes na Idade do Bronze desta área. Também nos onze povoados do Bronze Final da margem esquerda do Guadiana indicados na Fig. 19 se verifica o seu abandono anteriormente ao aparecimento de quaisquer manifestações atribuíveis à Idade do Ferro. Mesmo o povoado da Misericórdia (Soares, 1996), onde além de uma ocupação atribuível ao Bronze Final, é reconhecível uma outra imputável à II Idade do Ferro, deverá existir um hiato entre elas. No povoado do Passo Alto não foi encontrado até hoje, quer em prospecção de superfície quer em escavação, qualquer artefacto atribuível ao período orientalizante e, muito menos, à II Idade do Ferro. A admitir-se uma data posterior ao século VIII a.C. para a construção do campo de cavalos de frisa do Passo Alto seria muito estranho que os seus autores não tivessem deixado quaisquer vestígios a não ser os próprios cavalos de frisa...
O possível significado das pedras vitrificadas que se observam no povoado do Passo Alto foi já objecto de discussão quando da publicação preliminar dos resultados obtidos em 1984(Soares, 1988, p. 97). A intervenção de 1987 e novos dados entretanto conhecidos para o povoado da Misericórdia e para outros povoados do Alentejo contribuíram com algumas achegas para uma maior aproximação ao problema. Anteriormente às escavações no Passo Alto, duas explicações surgiam para a ocorrência das pedras vitrificadas neste povoado, designadamente i) a de que resultariam da ruína e derrube da muralha, que teria de ser constituída também por material lenhoso, o qual ao sofrer uma combustão originaria a vitrificação dos xistos ou ii) a de que seriam originadas por actividades pirotécnicas, muito possivelmente metalúrgicas, levadas a efeito no local. No primeiro caso estaríamos perante restos de uma muralha vitrificada, tal como ocorre, por vezes, nas Ilhas Britânicas em povoados da Idade do Ferro (os “vitrified forts”)ou, mais perto de nós, nos Castelos de Monte Novo (Évora), um grande povoado também da Idade do Ferro que apresenta alguns troços de muralha vitrificada (Gibson et al., 1998, p. 211). No Passo Alto não é esse o caso. A relação das pedras vitrificadas, existentes numa zona bem delimitada, com a muralha é apenas a de proximidade, não apresentando os blocos de xisto atribuíveis ao derrube da muralha qualquer vestígio da acção do fogo, além de que, na base da muralha de terra, se podem observar pequenos fragmentos soltos de rocha vitrificada. Este facto interpreta-se como indicando que as actividades que deram origem à vitrificação das pedras seriam anteriores à construção do sistema defensivo. Note-se, no entanto, que não se dispõe de quaisquer dados que permitam ter uma ideia da dimensão dessa anterioridade. Por outro lado,materiais vitrificados de aspecto em tudo semelhante ao observado no Passo Alto — porosos,muito leves, de cores muito variáveis mas geralmente escuras, muitas vezes com a textura origi- nal dos xistos reconhecível — foram encontrados no povoado da Misericórdia em estreita relação com diversas fornalhas aí existentes (Soares, 1996). Também na zona de Odemira, freguesia de São Martinho das Amoreiras, no Cerro das Alminhas, um povoado do Bronze Final, foram encontrados, numa área limitada, em estreita ligação com uma estrutura de funcionalidade ainda desconhecida, mas possivelmente metalúrgica, materiais vitrificados em tudo semelhantes aos do Passo Alto e da Misericórdia (Jorge Vilhena, com. pessoal). A explicação mais plausível para estas estruturas é a de que estejam relacionadas com actividades metalúrgicas, embora a ausência de verdadeiras escórias seja estranha e difícil de interpretar.
Tendo em atenção tudo o que atrás foi referido, poder-se-á afirmar que toda a cultura material revelada pelas intervenções no povoado do Passo Alto, incluindo não só os artefactos mas também o sistema defensivo e as actividades metalúrgicas (?) que aí se desenvolveram, é compatível com uma cronologia do Bronze Final do Sudoeste, nele se integrando plenamente. Se o início do povoado se coloca no século X ou no IX é uma questão em aberto, já a data do seu abandono não deverá ultrapassar os inícios do século VIII a.C., dada a ausência de quaisquer materiais orientalizantes. Deverá, por conseguinte, ter sido um povoado com uma ocupação curta, o que parece ser comprovado pela escassez de artefactos recolhidos em prospecção superficial e, principalmente, em escavação, e pela sua homogeneidade. O campo de cavalos de frisa do Passo Alto, paralelizável cronologicamente com o de Els Vilars, integra-se consequentemente nas primeiras manifestações conhecidas deste tipo de sistema defensivo.

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Nota: só estão reproduzidas as partes do texto que discutem os cavalos de frisa

Talheim

The Leviathan - Thomas Hobbes (Chapters XIII to XV)

CHAPTER XIII

OF THE NATURAL CONDITION OF MANKIND AS CONCERNING THEIR FELICITY AND MISERY
NATURE hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and mind as that, though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned together the difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he. For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself.
And as to the faculties of the mind, setting aside the arts grounded upon words, and especially that skill of proceeding upon general and infallible rules, called science, which very few have and but in few things, as being not a native faculty born with us, nor attained, as prudence, while we look after somewhat else, I find yet a greater equality amongst men than that of strength. For prudence is but experience, which equal time equally bestows on all men in those things they equally apply themselves unto. That which may perhaps make such equality incredible is but a vain conceit of one's own wisdom, which almost all men think they have in a greater degree than the vulgar; that is, than all men but themselves, and a few others, whom by fame, or for concurring with themselves, they approve. For such is the nature of men that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent or more learned, yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves; for they see their own wit at hand, and other men's at a distance. But this proveth rather that men are in that point equal, than unequal. For there is not ordinarily a greater sign of the equal distribution of anything than that every man is contented with his share.
From this equality of ability ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our ends. And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their end (which is principally their own conservation, and sometimes their delectation only) endeavour to destroy or subdue one another. And from hence it comes to pass that where an invader hath no more to fear than another man's single power, if one plant, sow, build, or possess a convenient seat, others may probably be expected to come prepared with forces united to dispossess and deprive him, not only of the fruit of his labour, but also of his life or liberty. And the invader again is in the like danger of another.
And from this diffidence of one another, there is no way for any man to secure himself so reasonable as anticipation; that is, by force, or wiles, to master the persons of all men he can so long till he see no other power great enough to endanger him: and this is no more than his own conservation requireth, and is generally allowed. Also, because there be some that, taking pleasure in contemplating their own power in the acts of conquest, which they pursue farther than their security requires, if others, that otherwise would be glad to be at ease within modest bounds, should not by invasion increase their power, they would not be able, long time, by standing only on their defence, to subsist. And by consequence, such augmentation of dominion over men being necessary to a man's conservation, it ought to be allowed him.
Again, men have no pleasure (but on the contrary a great deal of grief) in keeping company where there is no power able to overawe them all. For every man looketh that his companion should value him at the same rate he sets upon himself, and upon all signs of contempt or undervaluing naturally endeavours, as far as he dares (which amongst them that have no common power to keep them in quiet is far enough to make them destroy each other), to extort a greater value from his contemners, by damage; and from others, by the example.
So that in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory.
The first maketh men invade for gain; the second, for safety; and the third, for reputation. The first use violence, to make themselves masters of other men's persons, wives, children, and cattle; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their persons or by reflection in their kindred, their friends, their nation, their profession, or their name.
Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man. For war consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of time is to be considered in the nature of war, as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain, but in an inclination thereto of many days together: so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is peace.
Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
It may seem strange to some man that has not well weighed these things that Nature should thus dissociate and render men apt to invade and destroy one another: and he may therefore, not trusting to this inference, made from the passions, desire perhaps to have the same confirmed by experience. Let him therefore consider with himself: when taking a journey, he arms himself and seeks to go well accompanied; when going to sleep, he locks his doors; when even in his house he locks his chests; and this when he knows there be laws and public officers, armed, to revenge all injuries shall be done him; what opinion he has of his fellow subjects, when he rides armed; of his fellow citizens, when he locks his doors; and of his children, and servants, when he locks his chests. Does he not there as much accuse mankind by his actions as I do by my words? But neither of us accuse man's nature in it. The desires, and other passions of man, are in themselves no sin. No more are the actions that proceed from those passions till they know a law that forbids them; which till laws be made they cannot know, nor can any law be made till they have agreed upon the person that shall make it.
It may peradventure be thought there was never such a time nor condition of war as this; and I believe it was never generally so, over all the world: but there are many places where they live so now. For the savage people in many places of America, except the government of small families, the concord whereof dependeth on natural lust, have no government at all, and live at this day in that brutish manner, as I said before. Howsoever, it may be perceived what manner of life there would be, where there were no common power to fear, by the manner of life which men that have formerly lived under a peaceful government use to degenerate into a civil war.
But though there had never been any time wherein particular men were in a condition of war one against another, yet in all times kings and persons of sovereign authority, because of their independency, are in continual jealousies, and in the state and posture of gladiators, having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another; that is, their forts, garrisons, and guns upon the frontiers of their kingdoms, and continual spies upon their neighbours, which is a posture of war. But because they uphold thereby the industry of their subjects, there does not follow from it that misery which accompanies the liberty of particular men.
To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice and injustice are none of the faculties neither of the body nor mind. If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his senses and passions. They are qualities that relate to men in society, not in solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition that there be no propriety, no dominion, no mine and thine distinct; but only that to be every man's that he can get, and for so long as he can keep it. And thus much for the ill condition which man by mere nature is actually placed in; though with a possibility to come out of it, consisting partly in the passions, partly in his reason.
The passions that incline men to peace are: fear of death; desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a hope by their industry to obtain them. And reason suggesteth convenient articles of peace upon which men may be drawn to agreement. These articles are they which otherwise are called the laws of nature, whereof I shall speak more particularly in the two following chapters.

CHAPTER XIV

OF THE FIRST AND SECOND NATURAL LAWS, AND OF CONTRACTS
THE right of nature, which writers commonly call jus naturale, is the liberty each man hath to use his own power as he will himself for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life; and consequently, of doing anything which, in his own judgement and reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto.
By liberty is understood, according to the proper signification of the word, the absence of external impediments; which impediments may oft take away part of a man's power to do what he would, but cannot hinder him from using the power left him according as his judgement and reason shall dictate to him.
A law of nature, lex naturalis, is a precept, or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same, and to omit that by which he thinketh it may be best preserved. For though they that speak of this subject use to confound jus and lex, right and law, yet they ought to be distinguished, because right consisteth in liberty to do, or to forbear; whereas law determineth and bindeth to one of them: so that law and right differ as much as obligation and liberty, which in one and the same matter are inconsistent.
And because the condition of man (as hath been declared in the precedent chapter) is a condition of war of every one against every one, in which case every one is governed by his own reason, and there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him in preserving his life against his enemies; it followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to every thing, even to one another's body. And therefore, as long as this natural right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man, how strong or wise soever he be, of living out the time which nature ordinarily alloweth men to live. And consequently it is a precept, or general rule of reason: that every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war. The first branch of which rule containeth the first and fundamental law of nature, which is: to seek peace and follow it. The second, the sum of the right of nature, which is: by all means we can to defend ourselves.
From this fundamental law of nature, by which men are commanded to endeavour peace, is derived this second law: that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself. For as long as every man holdeth this right, of doing anything he liketh; so long are all men in the condition of war. But if other men will not lay down their right, as well as he, then there is no reason for anyone to divest himself of his: for that were to expose himself to prey, which no man is bound to, rather than to dispose himself to peace. This is that law of the gospel: Whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that do ye to them. And that law of all men, quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris.
To lay down a man's right to anything is to divest himself of the liberty of hindering another of the benefit of his own right to the same. For he that renounceth or passeth away his right giveth not to any other man a right which he had not before, because there is nothing to which every man had not right by nature, but only standeth out of his way that he may enjoy his own original right without hindrance from him, not without hindrance from another. So that the effect which redoundeth to one man by another man's defect of right is but so much diminution of impediments to the use of his own right original.
Right is laid aside, either by simply renouncing it, or by transferring it to another. By simply renouncing, when he cares not to whom the benefit thereof redoundeth. By transferring, when he intendeth the benefit thereof to some certain person or persons. And when a man hath in either manner abandoned or granted away his right, then is he said to be obliged, or bound, not to hinder those to whom such right is granted, or abandoned, from the benefit of it: and that he ought, and it is duty, not to make void that voluntary act of his own: and that such hindrance is injustice, and injury, as being sine jure; the right being before renounced or transferred. So that injury or injustice, in the controversies of the world, is somewhat like to that which in the disputations of scholars is called absurdity. For as it is there called an absurdity to contradict what one maintained in the beginning; so in the world it is called injustice, and injury voluntarily to undo that which from the beginning he had voluntarily done. The way by which a man either simply renounceth or transferreth his right is a declaration, or signification, by some voluntary and sufficient sign, or signs, that he doth so renounce or transfer, or hath so renounced or transferred the same, to him that accepteth it. And these signs are either words only, or actions only; or, as it happeneth most often, both words and actions. And the same are the bonds, by which men are bound and obliged: bonds that have their strength, not from their own nature (for nothing is more easily broken than a man's word), but from fear of some evil consequence upon the rupture.
Whensoever a man transferreth his right, or renounceth it, it is either in consideration of some right reciprocally transferred to himself, or for some other good he hopeth for thereby. For it is a voluntary act: and of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some good to himself. And therefore there be some rights which no man can be understood by any words, or other signs, to have abandoned or transferred. As first a man cannot lay down the right of resisting them that assault him by force to take away his life, because he cannot be understood to aim thereby at any good to himself. The same may be said of wounds, and chains, and imprisonment, both because there is no benefit consequent to such patience, as there is to the patience of suffering another to be wounded or imprisoned, as also because a man cannot tell when he seeth men proceed against him by violence whether they intend his death or not. And lastly the motive and end for which this renouncing and transferring of right is introduced is nothing else but the security of a man's person, in his life, and in the means of so preserving life as not to be weary of it. And therefore if a man by words, or other signs, seem to despoil himself of the end for which those signs were intended, he is not to be understood as if he meant it, or that it was his will, but that he was ignorant of how such words and actions were to be interpreted.
The mutual transferring of right is that which men call contract.
There is difference between transferring of right to the thing, the thing, and transferring or tradition, that is, delivery of the thing itself. For the thing may be delivered together with the translation of the right, as in buying and selling with ready money, or exchange of goods or lands, and it may be delivered some time after.
Again, one of the contractors may deliver the thing contracted for on his part, and leave the other to perform his part at some determinate time after, and in the meantime be trusted; and then the contract on his part is called pact, or covenant: or both parts may contract now to perform hereafter, in which cases he that is to perform in time to come, being trusted, his performance is called keeping of promise, or faith, and the failing of performance, if it be voluntary, violation of faith.
When the transferring of right is not mutual, but one of the parties transferreth in hope to gain thereby friendship or service from another, or from his friends; or in hope to gain the reputation of charity, or magnanimity; or to deliver his mind from the pain of compassion; or in hope of reward in heaven; this is not contract, but gift, free gift, grace: which words signify one and the same thing.
Signs of contract are either express or by inference. Express are words spoken with understanding of what they signify: and such words are either of the time present or past; as, I give, I grant, I have given, I have granted, I will that this be yours: or of the future; as, I will give, I will grant, which words of the future are called promise.
Signs by inference are sometimes the consequence of words; sometimes the consequence of silence; sometimes the consequence of actions; sometimes the consequence of forbearing an action: and generally a sign by inference, of any contract, is whatsoever sufficiently argues the will of the contractor.
Words alone, if they be of the time to come, and contain a bare promise, are an insufficient sign of a free gift and therefore not obligatory. For if they be of the time to come, as, tomorrow I will give, they are a sign I have not given yet, and consequently that my right is not transferred, but remaineth till I transfer it by some other act. But if the words be of the time present, or past, as, I have given, or do give to be delivered tomorrow, then is my tomorrow's right given away today; and that by the virtue of the words, though there were no other argument of my will. And there is a great difference in the signification of these words, volo hoc tuum esse cras, and cras dabo; that is, between I will that this be thine tomorrow, and, I will give it thee tomorrow: for the word I will, in the former manner of speech, signifies an act of the will present; but in the latter, it signifies a promise of an act of the will to come: and therefore the former words, being of the present, transfer a future right; the latter, that be of the future, transfer nothing. But if there be other signs of the will to transfer a right besides words; then, though the gift be free, yet may the right be understood to pass by words of the future: as if a man propound a prize to him that comes first to the end of a race, the gift is free; and though the words be of the future, yet the right passeth: for if he would not have his words so be understood, he should not have let them run.
In contracts the right passeth, not only where the words are of the time present or past, but also where they are of the future, because all contract is mutual translation, or change of right; and therefore he that promiseth only, because he hath already received the benefit for which he promiseth, is to be understood as if he intended the right should pass: for unless he had been content to have his words so understood, the other would not have performed his part first. And for that cause, in buying, and selling, and other acts of contract, a promise is equivalent to a covenant, and therefore obligatory.
He that performeth first in the case of a contract is said to merit that which he is to receive by the performance of the other, and he hath it as due. Also when a prize is propounded to many, which is to be given to him only that winneth, or money is thrown amongst many to be enjoyed by them that catch it; though this be a free gift, yet so to win, or so to catch, is to merit, and to have it as due. For the right is transferred in the propounding of the prize, and in throwing down the money, though it be not determined to whom, but by the event of the contention. But there is between these two sorts of merit this difference, that in contract I merit by virtue of my own power and the contractor's need, but in this case of free gift I am enabled to merit only by the benignity of the giver: in contract I merit at the contractor's hand that he should depart with his right; in this case of gift, I merit not that the giver should part with his right, but that when he has parted with it, it should be mine rather than another's. And this I think to be the meaning of that distinction of the Schools between meritum congrui and meritum condigni. For God Almighty, having promised paradise to those men, hoodwinked with carnal desires, that can walk through this world according to the precepts and limits prescribed by him, they say he that shall so walk shall merit paradise ex congruo. But because no man can demand a right to it by his own righteousness, or any other power in himself, but by the free grace of God only, they say no man can merit paradise ex condigno. This, I say, I think is the meaning of that distinction; but because disputers do not agree upon the signification of their own terms of art longer than it serves their turn, I will not affirm anything of their meaning: only this I say; when a gift is given indefinitely, as a prize to be contended for, he that winneth meriteth, and may claim the prize as due.
If a covenant be made wherein neither of the parties perform presently, but trust one another, in the condition of mere nature (which is a condition of war of every man against every man) upon any reasonable suspicion, it is void: but if there be a common power set over them both, with right and force sufficient to compel performance, it is not void. For he that performeth first has no assurance the other will perform after, because the bonds of words are too weak to bridle men's ambition, avarice, anger, and other passions, without the fear of some coercive power; which in the condition of mere nature, where all men are equal, and judges of the justness of their own fears, cannot possibly be supposed. And therefore he which performeth first does but betray himself to his enemy, contrary to the right he can never abandon of defending his life and means of living.
But in a civil estate, where there a power set up to constrain those that would otherwise violate their faith, that fear is no more reasonable; and for that cause, he which by the covenant is to perform first is obliged so to do.
The cause of fear, which maketh such a covenant invalid, must be always something arising after the covenant made, as some new fact or other sign of the will not to perform, else it cannot make the covenant void. For that which could not hinder a man from promising ought not to be admitted as a hindrance of performing.
He that transferreth any right transferreth the means of enjoying it, as far as lieth in his power. As he that selleth land is understood to transfer the herbage and whatsoever grows upon it; nor can he that sells a mill turn away the stream that drives it. And they that give to a man the right of government in sovereignty are understood to give him the right of levying money to maintain soldiers, and of appointing magistrates for the administration of justice.
To make covenants with brute beasts is impossible, because not understanding our speech, they understand not, nor accept of any translation of right, nor can translate any right to another: and without mutual acceptation, there is no covenant.
To make covenant with God is impossible but by mediation of such as God speaketh to, either by revelation supernatural or by His lieutenants that govern under Him and in His name: for otherwise we know not whether our covenants be accepted or not. And therefore they that vow anything contrary to any law of nature, vow in vain, as being a thing unjust to pay such vow. And if it be a thing commanded by the law of nature, it is not the vow, but the law that binds them.
The matter or subject of a covenant is always something that falleth under deliberation, for to covenant is an act of the will; that is to say, an act, and the last act, of deliberation; and is therefore always understood to be something to come, and which judged possible for him that covenanteth to perform.
And therefore, to promise that which is known to be impossible is no covenant. But if that prove impossible afterwards, which before was thought possible, the covenant is valid and bindeth, though not to the thing itself, yet to the value; or, if that also be impossible, to the unfeigned endeavour of performing as much as is possible, for to more no man can be obliged.
Men are freed of their covenants two ways; by performing, or by being forgiven. For performance is the natural end of obligation, and forgiveness the restitution of liberty, as being a retransferring of that right in which the obligation consisted.
Covenants entered into by fear, in the condition of mere nature, are obligatory. For example, if I covenant to pay a ransom, or service for my life, to an enemy, I am bound by it. For it is a contract, wherein one receiveth the benefit of life; the other is to receive money, or service for it, and consequently, where no other law (as in the condition of mere nature) forbiddeth the performance, the covenant is valid. Therefore prisoners of war, if trusted with the payment of their ransom, are obliged to pay it: and if a weaker prince make a disadvantageous peace with a stronger, for fear, he is bound to keep it; unless (as hath been said before) there ariseth some new and just cause of fear to renew the war. And even in Commonwealths, if I be forced to redeem myself from a thief by promising him money, I am bound to pay it, till the civil law discharge me. For whatsoever I may lawfully do without obligation, the same I may lawfully covenant to do through fear: and what I lawfully covenant, I cannot lawfully break.
A former covenant makes void a later. For a man that hath passed away his right to one man today hath it not to pass tomorrow to another: and therefore the later promise passeth no right, but is null.
A covenant not to defend myself from force, by force, is always void. For (as I have shown before) no man can transfer or lay down his right to save himself from death, wounds, and imprisonment, the avoiding whereof is the only end of laying down any right; and therefore the promise of not resisting force, in no covenant transferreth any right, nor is obliging. For though a man may covenant thus, unless I do so, or so, kill me; he cannot covenant thus, unless I do so, or so, I will not resist you when you come to kill me. For man by nature chooseth the lesser evil, which is danger of death in resisting, rather than the greater, which is certain and present death in not resisting. And this is granted to be true by all men, in that they lead criminals to execution, and prison, with armed men, notwithstanding that such criminals have consented to the law by which they are condemned.
A covenant to accuse oneself, without assurance of pardon, is likewise invalid. For in the condition of nature where every man is judge, there is no place for accusation: and in the civil state the accusation is followed with punishment, which, being force, a man is not obliged not to resist. The same is also true of the accusation of those by whose condemnation a man falls into misery; as of a father, wife, or benefactor. For the testimony of such an accuser, if it be not willingly given, is presumed to be corrupted by nature, and therefore not to be received: and where a man's testimony is not to be credited, he is not bound to give it. Also accusations upon torture are not to be reputed as testimonies. For torture is to be used but as means of conjecture, and light, in the further examination and search of truth: and what is in that case confessed tendeth to the ease of him that is tortured, not to the informing of the torturers, and therefore ought not to have the credit of a sufficient testimony: for whether he deliver himself by true or false accusation, he does it by the right of preserving his own life.
The force of words being (as I have formerly noted) too weak to hold men to the performance of their covenants, there are in man's nature but two imaginable helps to strengthen it. And those are either a fear of the consequence of breaking their word, or a glory or pride in appearing not to need to break it. This latter is a generosity too rarely found to be presumed on, especially in the pursuers of wealth, command, or sensual pleasure, which are the greatest part of mankind. The passion to be reckoned upon is fear; whereof there be two very general objects: one, the power of spirits invisible; the other, the power of those men they shall therein offend. Of these two, though the former be the greater power, yet the fear of the latter is commonly the greater fear. The fear of the former is in every man his own religion, which hath place in the nature of man before civil society. The latter hath not so; at least not place enough to keep men to their promises, because in the condition of mere nature, the inequality of power is not discerned, but by the event of battle. So that before the time of civil society, or in the interruption thereof by war, there is nothing can strengthen a covenant of peace agreed on against the temptations of avarice, ambition, lust, or other strong desire, but the fear of that invisible power which they every one worship as God, and fear as a revenger of their perfidy. All therefore that can be done between two men not subject to civil power is to put one another to swear by the God he feareth: which swearing, or oath, is a form of speech, added to a promise, by which he that promiseth signifieth that unless he perform he renounceth the mercy of his God, or calleth to him for vengeance on himself. Such was the heathen form, Let Jupiter kill me else, as I kill this beast. So is our form, I shall do thus, and thus, so help me God. And this, with the rites and ceremonies which every one useth in his own religion, that the fear of breaking faith might be the greater.
By this it appears that an oath taken according to any other form, or rite, than his that sweareth is in vain and no oath, and that there is no swearing by anything which the swearer thinks not God. For though men have sometimes used to swear by their kings, for fear, or flattery; yet they would have it thereby understood they attributed to them divine honour. And that swearing unnecessarily by God is but profaning of his name: and swearing by other things, as men do in common discourse, is not swearing, but an impious custom, gotten by too much vehemence of talking.
It appears also that the oath adds nothing to the obligation. For a covenant, if lawful, binds in the sight of God, without the oath, as much as with it; if unlawful, bindeth not at all, though it be confirmed with an oath.

CHAPTER XV

OF OTHER LAWS OF NATURE
FROM that law of nature by which we are obliged to transfer to another such rights as, being retained, hinder the peace of mankind, there followeth a third; which is this: that men perform their covenants made; without which covenants are in vain, and but empty words; and the right of all men to all things remaining, we are still in the condition of war.
And in this law of nature consisteth the fountain and original of justice. For where no covenant hath preceded, there hath no right been transferred, and every man has right to everything and consequently, no action can be unjust. But when a covenant is made, then to break it is unjust and the definition of injustice is no other than the not performance of covenant. And whatsoever is not unjust is just.
But because covenants of mutual trust, where there is a fear of not performance on either part (as hath been said in the former chapter), are invalid, though the original of justice be the making of covenants, yet injustice actually there can be none till the cause of such fear be taken away; which, while men are in the natural condition of war, cannot be done. Therefore before the names of just and unjust can have place, there must be some coercive power to compel men equally to the performance of their covenants, by the terror of some punishment greater than the benefit they expect by the breach of their covenant, and to make good that propriety which by mutual contract men acquire in recompense of the universal right they abandon: and such power there is none before the erection of a Commonwealth. And this is also to be gathered out of the ordinary definition of justice in the Schools, for they say that justice is the constant will of giving to every man his own. And therefore where there is no own, that is, no propriety, there is no injustice; and where there is no coercive power erected, that is, where there is no Commonwealth, there is no propriety, all men having right to all things: therefore where there is no Commonwealth, there nothing is unjust. So that the nature of justice consisteth in keeping of valid covenants, but the validity of covenants begins not but with the constitution of a civil power sufficient to compel men to keep them: and then it is also that propriety begins.
The fool hath said in his heart, there is no such thing as justice, and sometimes also with his tongue, seriously alleging that every man's conservation and contentment being committed to his own care, there could be no reason why every man might not do what he thought conduced thereunto: and therefore also to make, or not make; keep, or not keep, covenants was not against reason when it conduced to one's benefit. He does not therein deny that there be covenants; and that they are sometimes broken, sometimes kept; and that such breach of them may be called injustice, and the observance of them justice: but he questioneth whether injustice, taking away the fear of God (for the same fool hath said in his heart there is no God), not sometimes stand with that reason which dictateth to every man his own good; and particularly then, when it conduceth to such a benefit as shall put a man in a condition to neglect not only the dispraise and revilings, but also the power of other men. The kingdom of God is gotten by violence: but what if it could be gotten by unjust violence? Were it against reason so to get it, when it is impossible to receive hurt by it? And if it be not against reason, it is not against justice: or else justice is not to be approved for good. From such reasoning as this, successful wickedness hath obtained the name of virtue: and some that in all other things have disallowed the violation of faith, yet have allowed it when it is for the getting of a kingdom. And the heathen that believed that Saturn was deposed by his son Jupiter believed nevertheless the same Jupiter to be the avenger of injustice, somewhat like to a piece of law in Coke's Commentaries on Littleton; where he says if the right heir of the crown be attainted of treason, yet the crown shall descend to him, and eo instante the attainder be void: from which instances a man will be very prone to infer that when the heir apparent of a kingdom shall kill him that is in possession, though his father, you may call it injustice, or by what other name you will; yet it can never be against reason, seeing all the voluntary actions of men tend to the benefit of themselves; and those actions are most reasonable that conduce most to their ends. This specious reasoning is nevertheless false.
For the question is not of promises mutual, where there is no security of performance on either side, as when there is no civil power erected over the parties promising; for such promises are no covenants: but either where one of the parties has performed already, or where there is a power to make him perform, there is the question whether it be against reason; that is, against the benefit of the other to perform, or not. And I say it is not against reason. For the manifestation whereof we are to consider; first, that when a man doth a thing, which notwithstanding anything can be foreseen and reckoned on tendeth to his own destruction, howsoever some accident, which he could not expect, arriving may turn it to his benefit; yet such events do not make it reasonably or wisely done. Secondly, that in a condition of war, wherein every man to every man, for want of a common power to keep them all in awe, is an enemy, there is no man can hope by his own strength, or wit, to himself from destruction without the help of confederates; where every one expects the same defence by the confederation that any one else does: and therefore he which declares he thinks it reason to deceive those that help him can in reason expect no other means of safety than what can be had from his own single power. He, therefore, that breaketh his covenant, and consequently declareth that he thinks he may with reason do so, cannot be received into any society that unite themselves for peace and defence but by the error of them that receive him; nor when he is received be retained in it without seeing the danger of their error; which errors a man cannot reasonably reckon upon as the means of his security: and therefore if he be left, or cast out of society, he perisheth; and if he live in society, it is by the errors of other men, which he could not foresee nor reckon upon, and consequently against the reason of his preservation; and so, as all men that contribute not to his destruction forbear him only out of ignorance of what is good for themselves.
As for the instance of gaining the secure and perpetual felicity of heaven by any way, it is frivolous; there being but one way imaginable, and that is not breaking, but keeping of covenant.
And for the other instance of attaining sovereignty by rebellion; it is manifest that, though the event follow, yet because it cannot reasonably be expected, but rather the contrary, and because by gaining it so, others are taught to gain the same in like manner, the attempt thereof is against reason. Justice therefore, that is to say, keeping of covenant, is a rule of reason by which we are forbidden to do anything destructive to our life, and consequently a law of nature.
There be some that proceed further and will not have the law of nature to be those rules which conduce to the preservation of man's life on earth, but to the attaining of an eternal felicity after death; to which they think the breach of covenant may conduce, and consequently be just and reasonable; such are they that think it a work of merit to kill, or depose, or rebel against the sovereign power constituted over them by their own consent. But because there is no natural knowledge of man's estate after death, much less of the reward that is then to be given to breach of faith, but only a belief grounded upon other men's saying that they know it supernaturally or that they know those that knew them that knew others that knew it supernaturally, breach of faith cannot be called a precept of reason or nature.
Others, that allow for a law of nature the keeping of faith, do nevertheless make exception of certain persons; as heretics, and such as use not to perform their covenant to others; and this also is against reason. For if any fault of a man be sufficient to discharge our covenant made, the same ought in reason to have been sufficient to have hindered the making of it.
The names of just and unjust when they are attributed to men, signify one thing, and when they are attributed to actions, another. When they are attributed to men, they signify conformity, or inconformity of manners, to reason. But when they are attributed to action they signify the conformity, or inconformity to reason, not of manners, or manner of life, but of particular actions. A just man therefore is he that taketh all the care he can that his actions may be all just; and an unjust man is he that neglecteth it. And such men are more often in our language styled by the names of righteous and unrighteous than just and unjust though the meaning be the same. Therefore a righteous man does not lose that title by one or a few unjust actions that proceed from sudden passion, or mistake of things or persons, nor does an unrighteous man lose his character for such actions as he does, or forbears to do, for fear: because his will is not framed by the justice, but by the apparent benefit of what he is to do. That which gives to human actions the relish of justice is a certain nobleness or gallantness of courage, rarely found, by which a man scorns to be beholding for the contentment of his life to fraud, or breach of promise. This justice of the manners is that which is meant where justice is called a virtue; and injustice, a vice.
But the justice of actions denominates men, not just, but guiltless: and the injustice of the same (which is also called injury) gives them but the name of guilty.
Again, the injustice of manners is the disposition or aptitude to do injury, and is injustice before it proceed to act, and without supposing any individual person injured. But the injustice of an action (that is to say, injury) supposeth an individual person injured; namely him to whom the covenant was made: and therefore many times the injury is received by one man when the damage redoundeth to another. As when the master commandeth his servant to give money to stranger; if it be not done, the injury is done to the master, whom he had before covenanted to obey; but the damage redoundeth to the stranger, to whom he had no obligation, and therefore could not injure him. And so also in Commonwealths private men may remit to one another their debts, but not robberies or other violences, whereby they are endamaged; because the detaining of debt is an injury to themselves, but robbery and violence are injuries to the person of the Commonwealth.
Whatsoever is done to a man, conformable to his own will signified to the doer, is not injury to him. For if he that doeth it hath not passed away his original right to do what he please by some antecedent covenant, there is no breach of covenant, and therefore no injury done him. And if he have, then his will to have it done, being signified, is a release of that covenant, and so again there is no injury done him.
Justice of actions is by writers divided into commutative and distributive: and the former they say consisteth in proportion arithmetical; the latter in proportion geometrical. Commutative, therefore, they place in the equality of value of the things contracted for; and distributive, in the distribution of equal benefit to men of equal merit. As if it were injustice to sell dearer than we buy, or to give more to a man than he merits. The value of all things contracted for is measured by the appetite of the contractors, and therefore the just value is that which they be contented to give. And merit (besides that which is by covenant, where the performance on one part meriteth the performance of the other part, and falls under justice commutative, not distributive) is not due by justice, but is rewarded of grace only. And therefore this distinction, in the sense wherein it useth to be expounded, is not right. To speak properly, commutative justice is the justice of a contractor; that is, a performance of covenant in buying and selling, hiring and letting to hire, lending and borrowing, exchanging, bartering, and other acts of contract.
And distributive justice, the justice of an arbitrator; that is to say, the act of defining what is just. Wherein, being trusted by them that make him arbitrator, if he perform his trust, he is said to distribute to every man his own: and this is indeed just distribution, and may be called, though improperly, distributive justice, but more properly equity, which also is a law of nature, as shall be shown in due place.
As justice dependeth on antecedent covenant; so does gratitude depend on antecedent grace; that is to say, antecedent free gift; and is the fourth law of nature, which may be conceived in this form: that a man which receiveth benefit from another of mere grace endeavour that he which giveth it have no reasonable cause to repent him of his good will. For no man giveth but with intention of good to himself, because gift is voluntary; and of all voluntary acts, the object is to every man his own good; of which if men see they shall be frustrated, there will be no beginning of benevolence or trust, nor consequently of mutual help, nor of reconciliation of one man to another; and therefore they are to remain still in the condition of war, which is contrary to the first and fundamental law of nature which commandeth men to seek peace. The breach of this law is called ingratitude, and hath the same relation to grace that injustice hath to obligation by covenant.
A fifth law of nature is complaisance; that is to say, that every man strive to accommodate himself to the rest. For the understanding whereof we may consider that there is in men's aptness to society a diversity of nature, rising from their diversity of affections, not unlike to that we see in stones brought together for building of an edifice. For as that stone which by the asperity and irregularity of figure takes more room from others than itself fills, and for hardness cannot be easily made plain, and thereby hindereth the building, is by the builders cast away as unprofitable and troublesome: so also, a man that by asperity of nature will strive to retain those things which to himself are superfluous, and to others necessary, and for the stubbornness of his passions cannot be corrected, is to be left or cast out of society as cumbersome thereunto. For seeing every man, not only by right, but also by necessity of nature, is supposed to endeavour all he can to obtain that which is necessary for his conservation, he that shall oppose himself against it for things superfluous is guilty of the war that thereupon is to follow, and therefore doth that which is contrary to the fundamental law of nature, which commandeth to seek peace. The observers of this law may be called sociable, (the Latins call them commodi); the contrary, stubborn, insociable, forward, intractable.
A sixth law of nature is this: that upon caution of the future time, a man ought to pardon the offences past of them that, repenting, desire it. For pardon is nothing but granting of peace; which though granted to them that persevere in their hostility, be not peace, but fear; yet not granted to them that give caution of the future time is sign of an aversion to peace, and therefore contrary to the law of nature.
A seventh is: that in revenges (that is, retribution of evil for evil), men look not at the greatness of the evil past, but the greatness of the good to follow. Whereby we are forbidden to inflict punishment with any other design than for correction of the offender, or direction of others. For this law is consequent to the next before it, that commandeth pardon upon security of the future time. Besides, revenge without respect to the example and profit to come is a triumph, or glorying in the hurt of another, tending to no end (for the end is always somewhat to come); and glorying to no end is vain-glory, and contrary to reason; and to hurt without reason tendeth to the introduction of war, which is against the law of nature, and is commonly styled by the name of cruelty.
And because all signs of hatred, or contempt, provoke to fight; insomuch as most men choose rather to hazard their life than not to be revenged, we may in the eighth place, for a law of nature, set down this precept: that no man by deed, word, countenance, or gesture, declare hatred or contempt of another. The breach of which law is commonly called contumely.
The question who is the better man has no place in the condition of mere nature, where (as has been shown before) all men are equal. The inequality that now is has been introduced by the laws civil. I know that Aristotle in the first book of his Politics, for a foundation of his doctrine, maketh men by nature, some more worthy to command, meaning the wiser sort, such as he thought himself to be for his philosophy; others to serve, meaning those that had strong bodies, but were not philosophers as he; as master and servant were not introduced by consent of men, but by difference of wit: which is not only against reason, but also against experience. For there are very few so foolish that had not rather govern themselves than be governed by others: nor when the wise, in their own conceit, contend by force with them who distrust their own wisdom, do they always, or often, or almost at any time, get the victory. If nature therefore have made men equal, that equality is to be acknowledged: or if nature have made men unequal, yet because men that think themselves equal will not enter into conditions of peace, but upon equal terms, such equality must be admitted. And therefore for the ninth law of nature, I put this: that every man acknowledge another for his equal by nature. The breach of this precept is pride.
On this law dependeth another: that at the entrance into conditions of peace, no man require to reserve to himself any right which he is not content should he reserved to every one of the rest. As it is necessary for all men that seek peace to lay down certain rights of nature; that is to say, not to have liberty to do all they list, so is it necessary for man's life to retain some: as right to govern their own bodies; enjoy air, water, motion, ways to go from place to place; and all things else without which a man cannot live, or not live well. If in this case, at the making of peace, men require for themselves that which they would not have to be granted to others, they do contrary to the precedent law that commandeth the acknowledgement of natural equality, and therefore also against the law of nature. The observers of this law are those we call modest, and the breakers arrogant men. The Greeks call the violation of this law pleonexia; that is, a desire of more than their share.
Also, if a man he trusted to judge between man and man, it is a precept of the law of nature that he deal equally between them. For without that, the controversies of men cannot be determined but by war. He therefore that is partial in judgement, doth what in him lies to deter men from the use of judges and arbitrators, and consequently, against the fundamental law of nature, is the cause of war.
The observance of this law, from the equal distribution to each man of that which in reason belonged to him, is called equity, and (as I have said before) distributive justice: the violation, acception of persons, prosopolepsia.
And from this followeth another law: that such things as cannot he divided be enjoyed in common, if it can be; and if the quantity of the thing permit, without stint; otherwise proportionably to the number of them that have right. For otherwise the distribution is unequal, and contrary to equity.
But some things there be that can neither be divided nor enjoyed in common. Then, the law of nature which prescribeth equity requireth: that the entire right, or else (making the use alternate) the first possession, be determined by lot. For equal distribution is of the law of nature; and other means of equal distribution cannot be imagined.
Of lots there be two sorts, arbitrary and natural. Arbitrary is that which is agreed on by the competitors; natural is either primogeniture (which the Greek calls kleronomia, which signifies, given by lot), or first seizure.
And therefore those things which cannot be enjoyed in common, nor divided, ought to be adjudged to the first possessor; and in some cases to the first born, as acquired by lot.
It is also a law of nature: that all men that mediate peace he allowed safe conduct. For the law that commandeth peace, as the end, commandeth intercession, as the means; and to intercession the means is safe conduct.
And because, though men be never so willing to observe these laws, there may nevertheless arise questions concerning a man's action; first, whether it were done, or not done; secondly, if done, whether against the law, or not against the law; the former whereof is called a question of fact, the latter a question of right; therefore unless the parties to the question covenant mutually to stand to the sentence of another, they are as far from peace as ever. This other, to whose sentence they submit, is called an arbitrator. And therefore it is of the law of nature that they that are at controversy submit their right to the judgement of an arbitrator.
And seeing every man is presumed to do all things in order to his own benefit, no man is a fit arbitrator in his own cause: and if he were never so fit, yet equity allowing to each party equal benefit, if one be admitted to be judge, the other is to be admitted also; and so the controversy, that is, the cause of war, remains, against the law of nature.
For the same reason no man in any cause ought to be received for arbitrator to whom greater profit, or honour, or pleasure apparently ariseth out of the victory of one party than of the other: for he hath taken, though an unavoidable bribe, yet a bribe; and no man can be obliged to trust him. And thus also the controversy and the condition of war remaineth, contrary to the law of nature.
And in a controversy of fact, the judge being to give no more credit to one than to the other, if there be no other arguments, must give credit to a third; or to a third and fourth; or more: for else the question is undecided, and left to force, contrary to the law of nature.
These are the laws of nature, dictating peace, for a means of the conservation of men in multitudes; and which only concern the doctrine of civil society. There be other things tending to the destruction of particular men; as drunkenness, and all other parts of intemperance, which may therefore also be reckoned amongst those things which the law of nature hath forbidden, but are not necessary to be mentioned, nor are pertinent enough to this place.
And though this may seem too subtle a deduction of the laws of nature to be taken notice of by all men, whereof the most part are too busy in getting food, and the rest too negligent to understand; yet to leave all men inexcusable, they have been contracted into one easy sum, intelligible even to the meanest capacity; and that is: Do not that to another which thou wouldest not have done to thyself, which showeth him that he has no more to do in learning the laws of nature but, when weighing the actions of other men with his own they seem too heavy, to put them into the other part of the balance, and his own into their place, that his own passions and self-love may add nothing to the weight; and then there is none of these laws of nature that will not appear unto him very reasonable.
The laws of nature oblige in foro interno; that is to say, they bind to a desire they should take place: but in foro externo; that is, to the putting them in act, not always. For he that should be modest and tractable, and perform all he promises in such time and place where no man else should do so, should but make himself a prey to others, and procure his own certain ruin, contrary to the ground of all laws of nature which tend to nature's preservation. And again, he that having sufficient security that others shall observe the same laws towards him, observes them not himself, seeketh not peace, but war, and consequently the destruction of his nature by violence.
And whatsoever laws bind in foro interno may be broken, not only by a fact contrary to the law, but also by a fact according to it, in case a man think it contrary. For though his action in this case be according to the law, yet his purpose was against the law; which, where the obligation is in foro interno, is a breach.
The laws of nature are immutable and eternal; for injustice, ingratitude, arrogance, pride, iniquity, acception of persons, and the rest can never be made lawful. For it can never be that war shall preserve life, and peace destroy it.
The same laws, because they oblige only to a desire and endeavour, mean an unfeigned and constant endeavour, are easy to be observed. For in that they require nothing but endeavour, he that endeavoureth their performance fulfilleth them; and he that fulfilleth the law is just.
And the science of them is the true and only moral philosophy. For moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good and evil in the conversation and society of mankind. Good and evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions, which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men are different: and diverse men differ not only in their judgement on the senses of what is pleasant and unpleasant to the taste, smell, hearing, touch, and sight; but also of what is conformable or disagreeable to reason in the actions of common life. Nay, the same man, in diverse times, differs from himself; and one time praiseth, that is, calleth good, what another time he dispraiseth, and calleth evil: from whence arise disputes, controversies, and at last war. And therefore so long as a man is in the condition of mere nature, which is a condition of war, private appetite is the measure of good and evil: and consequently all men agree on this, that peace is good, and therefore also the way or means of peace, which (as I have shown before) are justice, gratitude, modesty, equity, mercy, and the rest of the laws of nature, are good; that is to say, moral virtues; and their contrary vices, evil. Now the science of virtue and vice is moral philosophy; and therefore the true doctrine of the laws of nature is the true moral philosophy. But the writers of moral philosophy, though they acknowledge the same virtues and vices; yet, not seeing wherein consisted their goodness, nor that they come to be praised as the means of peaceable, sociable, and comfortable living, place them in a mediocrity of passions: as if not the cause, but the degree of daring, made fortitude; or not the cause, but the quantity of a gift, made liberality.
These dictates of reason men used to call by the name of laws, but improperly: for they are but conclusions or theorems concerning what conduceth to the conservation and defence of themselves; whereas law, properly, is the word of him that by right hath command over others. But yet if we consider the same theorems as delivered in the word of God that by right commandeth all things, then are they properly called laws.

The (Violent) Origin of Sports - Alex S. Key

In the blog Psychology Today, December 29, 2008, 3:29pm from Basic Instincts

All human activities can be traced back to basic instincts...? This is an ambitious claim. Many aspects of everyday life must first be explained to justify such a claim, including our attraction to sports.
It is occasionally easy to see a link between an activity and a basic instinct. However, when we are tempted to say that something is "for fun," it means that we are missing a deeper explanation. Fun, along with other feelings, serve basic instincts. The question is how.
My earlier articles cover some initial implications of this claim. It is easy to associate eating with survival. Though we sometimes eat "for fun," most of us intuitively sense our subconscious minds using pleasure and pain to get us to eat. For sex, the link is slightly less intuitive. We often have sex just for fun, but occasionally we take a philosophical step back and appreciate that the second basic instinct--reproduction--is behind our desire. But what of sports? What basic instinct could they possibly serve?
To help answer this question, we must look into our sordid past. One of the most shocking chapters in the human story is how widespread mass murder or genocide was, even prior to modern warfare. It happened regularly and globally. In the book War Before Civilization, Professor Lawrence Keeley shattered the false belief that primitive life was peaceful compared with today. Native American tribes--before the time of the European colonies--performed genocide. Crow Creek in South Dakota was the site of a brutal killing in the early 1300s. Archaeologists found a mass grave containing the remains of five hundred men, women, and children who had been slaughtered and scalped. This occurred a century and a half before Columbus arrived. Based on the small number of young female bodies found in the grave, scientists believe that many of the women were taken to become slaves and forced mates.
The first evidence Keeley discovered of war in Europe dated back to 5000 BCE in Belgium. He excavated villages that were surrounded by deep, nine-foot ditches designed to protect the ancient villagers. Fences--called palisades--made of sharpened wooden stakes lined the back of the ditches. Following Keeley's first discovery, new interest was sparked in European archaeology. By 1987, fifty enclosed sites had been discovered in Germany alone. In Stuttgart, an ancient mass grave was found that contained the bones of thirty-four men, women, and children killed by axe-blows.
This may, at first, appear to have no bearing on sports, but let's start by considering how often such acts occurred. Most of the battles over the past five thousand years have been forgotten--as have those over the past five million. Usually, no evidence remains or can be found, but remote tribes in South America and New Guinea provide valuable clues into our ancient past. These tribes--even today--lead primitive lifestyles that serve as windows into prehistoric times. How do humans live without the influence of modern society? Almost all tribal societies take part in a kind of warfare called raiding. Professor Andy Thomson at the University of Virginia describes this as "male-bonded coalition violence with deadly force against innocents." It is mainly performed by men. As Thomson says, "The women are off the hook on this one!"
The chance of being killed at the hands of a man in the Jivaro tribe of South America is sixty percent. This means that, at the moment you are born, there is a good chance you will not die of hunger, disease, heart attack, stroke, diabetes, an accident, snake bite, or carnivore attack. The chance of being killed by another human during a raid is greater than all other factors combined, despite the natural dangers of jungle life. For the Yanomamo tribe, the rate is a little lower--at under forty percent. This rate is similar to the mass murder rate of the Mae Enga tribe in New Guinea. The Gebusi tribe in the lowland area of New Guinea is far less violent. In fact, it is one of the least violent tribes that was studied, but the killing rate is still fifteen percent. What about modern man during the twentieth century? Surely the impact of two world wars has created a high rate of human-caused death in Europe? Not quite. Despite modern warfare with the latest bombs resulting in a hundred million deaths at the hands of man, the rate only comes to around one percent. If the rate was at tribal levels, two billion people would have been slaughtered in Europe during the last century, instead of a hundred million. In other words, the death rate would have been twenty times greater. Imagine forty world wars instead of two! Imagine a constant world war.
What does all this prove with regard to sports? All will soon be revealed, but the story first becomes even more sordid, as if that were possible...
Scientists believe that raiding is even older than our species. Jane Goodall--the first person to study the social activities of apes--was also the first person to witness raid warfare in nature. War is one of the saddest parts of the human story, but it is not strictly human. It is from nature. It existed long ago in its darkest form--the form of genocide. Groups of male chimps in Africa gather together before launching a sneak attack on a neighboring group. Males, females, and younglings are brutally murdered by the chimp raiders. No mercy is shown. In the book Demonic Males, Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson wrote, "Scientists have so far witnessed the extinction of two entire ape communities." That means ape genocide. They go on to note, "Chimpanzee-like violence preceded and paved the way for human war, making humans the dazed survivors of a continuous, five-million-year habit of lethal aggression."
The parallel with humans is absolute, right down to the female prisoners. Humans are not the only creatures that take young women as forced mates. In other words, raiding not only serves survival by killing others before they get a chance to kill you, it also serves reproduction through forced mating. It is an awful legacy. Not all species kill each other because not all species compete with each other. As our ancient ape ancestors became successful, they found themselves competing for space and food. A similar situation occurred in the cat kingdom. Many species of cat, including tigers and the average, fluffy house cat, will slaughter kittens or cubs from foreign litters. Mice are similar. They became their own opponents. Natural selection has always been about competition, and occasionally that competition is within a species.
Five million years of raiding can shed light on many modern human activities and desires. This finally brings us to the subject of sports. Have you ever wondered why men in particular are fond of sports, including spectator sports? Very little is learned while watching a baseball game, other than--trivially--who wins and loses. That information could easily be caught on the news, later. Why are the "winning games" important to our animal brains? Why do they draw our attention? Why are they "fun"? The answer is possibly that raiding is nature's original team sport. The human desire to play or watch sports has arisen from the ancient violence.
Women are not excluded from this reasoning, since women are very much stakeholders during raid warfare if not always participating directly, but the percentages differ. The percentage of time primal women or female apes spend killing during times of raid warfare is lower than their male counterparts. Likewise, as you would expect, women on average spend less time playing or watching sports than men. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 30% more men participate in sports on an average weekend than do women, and for a longer duration--2 hours for men versus 1.4 hours for women.
Watching apes charge through the jungle, taking swipes at their opponents, is like watching an American football play in action. In fact, the word "blitz" is used to describe a play in American football where a sudden all-out attack is launched on the opponent. It echoes the word "blitzkrieg" that described the lightning raids of the Germans during World War II, conquering Czechoslovakia, Holland, and France.
Over the last five million years, part of our brain evolved a talent for raiding. A desire came with that talent. Even chimps play physical group games as they unknowingly prepare for future battles. Today, you experience that desire as a need to compete, play sports, or tackle war games on your X-Box. Sports and action games absorbed that primal human trait originally geared towards survival and reproduction. An occasional hour of Call of Duty or Quake is a harmless echo of a recent violent past. Strategy games are similar. They exercise a part of the brain that evolved during countless raids.
Today, soccer hooliganism is a clear remnant of the violent origin of sports. Other examples include little league parents becoming aggressive and occasionally violent; hockey players resorting to fist fights; biting our nails as we hope or pray for our favorite team to win; and intense sadness or momentary depression if they lose. The first of these even has its own term: Little League Parent Syndrome or LLPS. When our feelings get the better of us, it is easy to say to ourselves, "It's just a game," but perhaps a little more difficult to live by those words.
Knowing the origin of competition and sports may help us maintain more balance amid the ever-growing array of modern trappings that cater to our evolved desires, such as video games and monster truck shows. It may help us select sports and other activities that improve our health through exercise, rather than pursuing the "coach-potato" activities of purely spectator sports. The knowledge may help us avoid quiz shows we might otherwise watch just to see who wins, and instead pursue educational activities, like immersing ourselves in a good book. After five million years, it is not surprising that many human urges are remnants of primate and early human warfare. Today, however, we can choose reading instead of raiding.

* Includes excerpts from The Third Basic Instinct.

Note: figures removed

THE BIRTH OF WAR - R. Brian Ferguson

In Natural History Jul/Aug 2003, Vol. 112, Issue 6

Thirty years ago all the anthropologists studying war would have fit into one small room. Granted--and guaranteed--that room would frequently erupt in heated debate, but few outside would notice or care. Tribal warfare? Exotic, maybe, but so what? Anthropologists see war as potentially lethal violence between two groups, no matter how small the groups or how few the casualties. But how much light could such a broad definition of conflict, or cases of pre-civilized human strife, shed on modern warfare, the struggles that have flared in Iraq, Kosovo, Rwanda, Vietnam, Korea--and on and on?
How times have changed! The anthropological study of war has expanded and matured. Ideas from academic debates are finding their way into foreign policy journals and, yes, the mass media. The questions raised by anthropologists and the once-academic disputes within the discipline have become important public issues, to be debated by pundits and politicians.
To appreciate how much things have changed, consider how the understanding of one famous ethnographic case has been transformed: that of the Yanomami of Venezuela and Brazil. Following the publication of Napoleon A. Chagnon's study Yanomamö: The Fierce People, in 1968, the book began to appear frequently and prominently on lists of readings for college students in introductory anthropology--often the only anthropology they would ever learn. And what an object lesson! Engaged in endless wars over women, status, and revenge, the Yanomami were supposed to exemplify the natural human condition of eons past. Some people took Chagnon's work to imply that aggression is in our genes--disturbing news if true.
In 1974 the anthropologist Marvin Harris offered a different view. Yanomami warfare, Harris argued, was an adaptive response from a population stressed by limited food resources, specifically game animals. But detailed examination of Yanomami ecology failed to support Harris's hypothesis.
In 1995, in Yanomami Warfare: A Political History, I described how the Yanomami have been coping with European intrusions since the 1700s. As I read the evidence, Yanomami wars were tightly linked to changes in the European presence. Recent wars, including the ones described by Chagnon, seemed to have been fought over access to steel tools and other goods distributed by Westerners. Yet despite such basic disagreements within anthropology, the discussion of the Yanomami remained confined to academic circles.
Then came a media frenzy. In the fall of 2000, Patrick Tierney, a journalist, published Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon. The book essentially blamed Chagnon himself for instigating war. Now it was the anthropologists' turn to be fierce. Opponents and defenders of Chagnon exchanged bitter broadsides. Not a few anthropologists felt that the resident missionaries, for all their good intentions, were more at fault than any anthropologists. One outcome of the episode, though, is that no one paying attention to this controversy still claims that Yanomami wars can be understood without taking into account the tribe's highly disrupted historical circumstances.
What is more, studies that go far beyond the Yanomami are questioning the idea that war has always been part of the human condition. It looks as if, all around the world, what has been called primitive or indigenous warfare was generally transformed, frequently intensified, and sometimes precipitated by Western contact. A collection of historical studies that I edited in 1992 with Neil L. Whitehead, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin--Madison, concludes that such changes often took place in far-flung "tribal zones," even before literate observers arrived on the scene. Indigenous warfare recorded in recent centuries cannot be taken as typical of prehistoric tribal peoples (see War in the Tribal Zone: Expanding States and Indigenous Warfare). We need archaeology to tell us about ancient war.
In 1996 the issue took a new turn with Lawrence H. Keeley's book War before Civilization. Keeley, an archaeologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, compiled archaeological cases of some of the worst violence known, thereby creating the impression that these examples were typical, that humans have always made war. As he told the journal Science, "War is something like trade or exchange. It is something that all humans do." Here I must unequivocally disagree: in my view the global archaeological record contradicts the idea that war was always a feature of human existence; instead, the record shows that warfare is largely a development of the past 10,000 years.
In the new book Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage (written with the writer Katherine E. Register), Steven A. LeBlanc, an archaeologist at Harvard University, confidently asserts that wherever good archaeological evidence exists, there is "almost always" evidence of warfare, that "everyone had warfare in all time periods." LeBlanc has a theory for his sweeping conclusion. Contrary to a commonly held view, he argues, pre-state peoples were never "true conservationists." They degraded their resources, and as their numbers grew, they suffered food scarcity and were drawn into war. Basically, it's Malthus with ethnographic detail.
But what kind of archaeological evidence could show that war was waged? Lots. The best evidence comes from collections of skeletons, which can still bear witness to the violence of war: the embedded points of spears, arrows, or other weapons [see photograph on opposite page], depression fractures or scalp marks on skulls, "parry fractures" of forearms, and solitary skulls or bodies missing skulls (strongly suggesting that war trophies were taken). Mass burials or the absence of burial, as well as disproportionately few battle-age men in cemeteries, are also signs of war. Of course, such finds, particularly if the evidence is a single skeleton, could represent a murder, an execution, or an accident--hence a "false positive" as a piece of evidence about early tribal warfare. But nothing like tribal warfare could be going on without leaving some signs in a good collection of skeletons. If the collection comprises multiple examples of such evidence, it pretty conclusively demonstrates war.
Settlement patterns--such things as defensive walls and defendable locations or nucleated populations with empty buffer zones--also provide significant evidence of warfare. Violent destruction of a settlement is a telling clue. Specialized war weapons may be lacking--after all, war can be fought with such ordinary tools as adzes or hunting spears. But implements such as maces and daggers are usually for killing people, and when found, they are fairly definitive. Paintings or carvings on walls can provide graphic evidence of combat. Many peoples did not leave recoverable representations of human beings, but if such depictions are preserved, they can make a persuasive case. In short, when and where the archaeological recovery is good, with many settlements and many skeletons, war can usually be detected--not in every single case, certainly, but in a good number of them. That is the basis for supposing that archaeology can contribute to some of our most basic questions about war.
I am midway through a global survey of such early evidence. What does the record show? Many hominid remains once thought to establish the most ancient evidence of homicide or cannibalism were actually gnawed by predators or just suffered postmortem breakage [see "The Scavenging of 'Peking Man,'" by Noel T: Boaz and Russell L. Ciochon, March 2001]. Some cases of ancient cannibalism have been confirmed, but there is nothing to tell us that the remains in question were casualties of war..
The earliest persuasive evidence of warfare uncovered so far comes from a graveyard along the Nile River in Sudan. Brought to light during an expedition in the mid-1960s led by Fred Wendorf, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, this graveyard, known as Site 117, has been roughly estimated at between 12,000 and 14,000 years old. It contained fifty-nine well-preserved skeletons, twenty-four of which were found in close association with pieces of stone that were interpreted as parts of projectiles. Notably, the people of Site 117 were living in a time of ecological crisis. Increased rainfall had made the Nile waters run wild, and the river dug its way deeply into a gorge. The adjacent flood plain was left high and dry, depriving the inhabitants of the catfish and other marshland staples of their diet. Apart from Site 117, only about a dozen Homo sapiens skeletons 10,000 years old or older, out of hundreds of similar antiquity examined to date, show clear indications of interpersonal violence.
In northern Australia, rock art depicts what appear to be duels between two or a few individuals as early as 10,000 years ago. Large group confrontations--war--appear by 6,000 years ago. Climate change was a factor here too, as rising sea levels gradually submerged a vast plain that once connected Australia and New Guinea.
The ancient Middle East provides some of the best evidence for the emergence of war from a warless background. Extensive remains have been found of the Natufian hunter-gatherers, who lived between about 12,800 and 10,500 years ago in what are now Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Careful analysis of 370 skeletons has turned up only two that show any signs of trauma, and nothing to suggest military action. The first walls of Jericho (dating from between 10,500 and 9,300 years ago) were once taken as conclusive evidence of war, but they are now understood to have been built for flood control, not defense.
There is a certain ironic logic, given recent events, that the regular practice of warfare that has continued without interruption down to the present began about 10,000 years ago in what is now northern Iraq. Evidence from three early farming sites, the earliest from Qermez Dere, includes maces, arrowheads found associated with skeletons, defendable locations, and village defensive walls. That's war--the true "mother of all battles."
Signs of war appear beginning 8,000 years ago along mountain routes through southern Turkey. Along the southern Anatolian coast, a specialized fort--not just a walled village--has been unearthed at Içel; the fort was built around 6,300 years ago, then destroyed and later resettled by a different culture. The early record along the Nile in what is now Egypt was wiped out by the river's erosion, but when the record picks up again, about 6,300 years ago, maces similar to those found in Mesopotamia are present. Far upriver, near Khartoum, what may have been maces show up 2,000 years earlier, even before agriculture began in that area.
In Central Asia, east of the Caspian Sea, the remains of settled hunter-gatherers and early farmers show no signs of war, but war was clearly going strong by 5,000 years ago. In the high country of what is now Pakistan, farmers began to put up walls at least 6,000 years ago.
The archaeological record in China shows that though millet was under cultivation at least 8,000 years ago, no signs of war appeared for more than a thousand years after that. Starting 7,000 years ago, in one Neolithic cultural tradition, deep ditches were dug around villages, some accompanied by palisades. Elsewhere in China, except for a single skeleton with a point embedded in its thigh, there are no hints of war until at least 4,600 years ago. Then, rammed earthen walls and other signs of war occur throughout the core areas of historical China. One village well contained layers of scalped and decapitated skeletons.
In Japan, intensive agriculture came in with migrants from the mainland about 2,300 years ago. Archaeologists have excavated some 5,000 skeletons that predate the intrusion, and of those only ten show signs of violent death. In contrast, out of about 1,000 post-migration excavated skeletons, more than a hundred show such signs.
Evidence from Europe offers a clear window into pre-agricultural practices. There is no firm evidence of war for thousands of years during Paleolithic times--though some scholars see suggestive indications in a few places. After 10,500 years ago, however, as the population of foragers became larger and more settled, several sites show individual violence, and others show the more collective casualties that signal war. Still, the evidence of violence is present at only a small minority of all excavated sites. Beginning around 6,500 years ago, however, fortifications, embedded points, and even clear signs of village slaughters become common. By the Bronze Age, 2,000 years later, war and weaponry had become a veritable cult.
North America presents a highly complex and regionally divergent picture. Kennewick Man, a skeleton unearthed in Washington state and considered between 7,500 and 9,200 years old, contains an embedded stone point. But because the skeleton is an isolated find, the injury is difficult to interpret. On the coast of the Pacific Northwest, skeletal trauma and other signs of conflict begin to appear about 4,200 years ago in the northern regions, but show up farther south only many centuries later. Many of the excavated skeletons from the ancient eastern woodlands show signs of violence. In a few cases multiple individuals were involved, including one site in Florida dating from more than 7,000 years ago. Still, such cases remained extremely unusual until 5,000 years ago. In the southern Great Plains, out of 173 skeletons reported from before A.D. 500, only one indicates homicide, a woman killed by two blows to the head. The first clear evidence of warfare in the Southwest dates from less than 2,000 years ago, and it is quite dramatic. At least two-thirds and perhaps all of the ninety-odd individuals interred in a cave in southern Utah were killed.
Roughly speaking, that is where my survey leaves off. But my preliminary work leads me to expect no major surprises from Africa, Mesoamerica, Oceania, or South America. In sum, if warfare were prevalent in early prehistoric times, the abundant materials in the archaeological record would be rich with the evidence of warfare. But the signs are not there; here it is not the case that "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
So how did peaceful tribal peoples of the distant past turn into the war-prone societies observed in recent centuries? Specific causes are elusive, but I see five preconditions that, in varying combinations, contributed to the onset of warfare in prehistoric times. One was a shift from a nomadic existence to a sedentary one, commonly though not necessarily tied to agriculture. With a vested interest in their lands, food stores, or especially rich fishing sites, people no longer could walk away from trouble.
Another precondition was a growing regional population and probably, in consequence, more competition for resources. Third was the development of social hierarchy, an elite, perhaps with its own interests and rivalries. Fourth was an increasing long-distance trade, particularly in prestige goods: something else worth fighting over. Finally, the first appearance or later intensification of war was often associated with a severe climatic change that broke down the subsistence base.
Raymond C. Kelly, an anthropolgist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, in his book Warless Societies and the Origin of War, has detected what may be another important pattern in the origins of war. In examining the ethnographic literature to compare hunter-gatherers who make war with those who do not, he finds a pattern: Among the few known cases of warless societies of hunter-gatherers, social organizations do not extend beyond family and a loose, flexible network of kin. In contrast, hunter-gatherer societies that make war have larger and more defined groupings such as clans. The existence of bounded groups makes for a sense of collective injury and desire for collective retaliation.
Over the millennia, tribal warfare became more the rule than the exception. As the preconditions for warfare (permanent settlements, population growth, greater social hierarchy, increased trade, and climatic crises) became more common, more tribal peoples in more areas adopted the practice. That development in itself spread warmaking to other groups. Once ancient states arose, they employed "barbarians" on their peripheries to expand their empires and secure their extensive trade networks. Finally, the European expansion after 1492 set native against native to capture territory and slaves and to fight imperial rivalries. Refugee groups were forced into others' lands, manufactured goods were introduced and fought over (as with the Yanomami), and the spread of European weapons made fighting ever more lethal.
When I began studying war in the mid-1970s, I was trained in an approach called cultural ecology, which argued along the lines that Steven LeBlanc does today. Population pressure on food resources--land, game, herd animals--was seen as the usual cause of indigenous warfare. In some cases the theory did work. Among the peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast prior to the depopulation of the nineteenth century, groups fought to gain access to prime resource locations, such as estuaries with good salmon streams. But in far more cases around the world, such as that of the Yanomami, warfare could not be linked to food competition.
Today, under the rubric "environmental security," many nonanthropologists who work on issues of international security embrace that ecological view. Recent outbreaks of violence, they argue, may be rooted in scarcities of subsistence goods, fueled by growing populations and de-graded resources (such as too little and eroded cropland). But when you examine the cases for which that interpretation seems superficially plausible-the conflicts of the past several years in Chiapas, Mexico, for instance, or in Rwanda--they fail to confirm the "ecological" theory.
We anthropologists are just beginning to bring our experience to bear in the environmental security debate. What we find is that if a peasant population is suffering for lack of basic resources, the main cause of that scarcity is an unequal distribution of resources within the society, a matter of politics and economics, rather than the twin bugbears of too many people and not enough to go around.
Anthropology can offer an alternative view on such terrible disasters as the Rwandan genocide or the civil wars in the Balkans. Case studies of modern-day conflicts show that a broad range of factors may be interacting, including subsistence needs and local ecological relations, but also political struggles over the government, trends in globalization, and culturally specific beliefs and symbols. Moreover, when hard times come, they are experienced differently by different kinds of people. Who you are usually determines how you're doing and where your interests lie: identity and interest are fused. Once a conflict gets boiling and the killing starts, all middle grounds get swept away, and a person's fate can depend on such simple labels as ethnic, religious, or tribal identity. The slaughter of Tutsis in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 is only one of the latest examples of that horrific effect. But such differences are not the cause of the conflict.
My view is that in most cases--not every single one--the decision to wage war involves the pursuit of practical self-interest by those who actually make the decision. The struggle can be joined over basic subsistence resources, but it can just as easily erupt over goods available only to elites. The decision involves weighing the costs of war against other potential hazards to life and well-being. And most definitely, it depends on one's position in the internal political hierarchy: from New Guinean "big men" to kings and presidents, leaders often favor war because war favors leaders.
Of course, those who push toward war do not make their case in terms of their own selfish interests. Around Amazonian campfires and within modern councils of state, their arguments invoke collective dangers and benefits. But even more, those advocating war always define it in terms of the highest applicable values, whether that involves the need to retaliate against witchcraft, defend the one true religion, or promote democracy. That is the way to sway the undecided and build emotional commitment. And always, it is the other side that somehow brought war on.
Such drumbeating is not only, or even primarily, cynical manipulation. Perhaps owing to a basic human need for self-justification, those who start wars usually seem to believe in the righteousness of their chosen course. It is that capability that makes human beings such a dangerous species.