We've been fighting with each other for millennia

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2023-10-10 02:00

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European scientists looking at the exhumed skeletons of Middle Eastern people say we have been violently fighting one another for thousands of years. The team looked at the bones of over 3,500 people who lived between 12,000 and 400 BCE in the Middle East, and say that we have been assaulting, murdering, enslaving, torturing, oppressing, cruelly punishing or violently feuding with each other over the millennia, and that violence peaked around 4,500 - 3,300 years ago. There was a big decline in violence during the Early and Middle Bronze Ages (3300–1500 BCE), before a further increase through the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age (1500–400 BCE), they say.

Media release

From: Springer Nature

Skeletons reveal early human conflicts

Archaeological evidence from the Middle East suggests interpersonal violence has fluctuated over time, with a peak around 4,500–3,300 years ago. These findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, are based on an analysis of over 3,500 skeletons, and shed new light on the history of conflict in early human societies.

Our understanding of long-term trends in interpersonal violence (such as assault, murder, slavery, torture, despotism, cruel punishment or violent feuds) is hampered by a lack of evidence across different time periods. It has been suggested that interpersonal violence has declined over millennia, and more rapidly since the Enlightenment (17th–18th centuries CE); however, this has been challenged. Homicide records are only available for recent time periods and reporting biases in existing conflict records limits our understanding further back in time.

Giacomo Benati and colleagues used a dataset detailing skeletal remains from 3,539 individuals dating to between 12000–400 BCE, from 7 Middle Eastern countries (Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan). They assessed the volume of interpersonal violence by looking at the share of the skeletons that showed evidence of cranial trauma or weapon-related wounds. They suggest that interpersonal violence peaked 4,500–3,300 years ago, during the Chalcolithic period. They then find a decline in violence during the Early and Middle Bronze Ages (3300–1500 BCE), before a further increase through the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age (1500–400 BCE).

The authors suggest that violence in the Chalcolithic period may coincide with the first centralized proto-states and a shift from occasional feuding to large-scale organized conflict. They note that the transition to the Iron Age saw a 300-year drought, population dispersal and resource stress, which may have had a role in violence incidents. They conclude that their findings broaden our understanding of interpersonal violence in early human societies.

Journal/
conference: Nature Human Behaviour

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: University of Barcelona, Spain

Funder: We acknowledge funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), Collaborative Research Centre ResourceCultures—SFB 1070/3—Project number 215859406 (J.B. and G.B.) and from the Maria Zambrano 2021 programme (G.B.).

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