The origins of Homo bellicosus (armed violence and warfare in the Stone Age)

Abstract

The purpose of the present paper is to provide a review and analysis of the main archaeological and paleoanthropological markers of armed violence in the period from the appearance of the first stone tools (Lower Paleolithic, ca. 3 mya) through the appearance of metalworking (Eneolithic, ca. 5 kya). This evidence is then used as a basis for assessing the dynamics of armed violence on the chronological scale. Until now this subject has received little attention in Russian scientific literature (in contrast to the Western one). Empirically, the paper is focused on the materials from three Old World continents: Africa, Europe and Asia. Particular attention is given to the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic human skeletal remains bearing the marks of traumas inflicted by weapons, including bones with embedded projectiles. The available evidence makes it possible to try to ascertain the main shifts in the historical dynamics of armed violence during the Stone Age. Its role appears to have substantially increased at least twice: first, at the turn of the Paleolithic and Mesolithic and, second, in the Late Neolithic/Early Eneolithic, that is at the turn of the Stone Age and Early Metal Period. It was exactly during this period that Homo bellicosus for the first time enters the arena of history not as an occasional and secondary actor, but as the main cast. Material and ideological changes and novelties serving to and associated with armed violence and warfare, that can be observed from the end of the Neolithic, are clearly  indicative of the process of militarization of culture.

Keywords:

Stone Age, Old World, armed violence, warfare