Peace

by Adolf, Antony

  Given the absence of developed reasoning and language skills in primates – with whom we otherwise share 99 percent of our genes – their capacity for peaceful coexistence most likely has a biological basis, reinforced by environmental adaptation and enculturation processes necessary to pass on peace instincts from one generation to the next. Primatologist Frans de Waal, author of the path-breaking Peacemaking among Primates (1990), sees peaceful coexistence among primates whether in the wild or in captivity as stemming from intuitions necessary for survival or, in a word, peace instincts. Whenever two or more primates compete for a single resource, both the value of the resource itself relative to the risk of harm or death and the value of their relationship with the competitor must be taken into consideration if the individual and group are to survive. “Sometimes the resource may not be worth the straining of a cooperative relationship, even if an individual could easily win the fight.”5 Peace instincts, distinct from inner peace in being less of a conscious state than a predisposition of which one can be unaware, play important roles in the everyday lives of primates. As with humans, two constant sources of social tension in primate groups are the drives for and necessity of food and reproduction, which spur conflicts between individuals of the same and other species. However, where primates have developed species-specific processes geared towards resolving conflicts and reducing tensions, humans have developed culture-specific processes to accomplish the same. Primatology, then, reflects and adds to the tools of peace studies disciplines that examine other periods.

  For example, mating often “works to ease anxiety or tensions and to calm excitement” and so to “increase tolerance, which makes food-sharing smooth.”6 Another primate approach to peaceful coexistence is found in restorative behavior, which occurs after conflicts regardless of the amount and direction of previous aggression. The restorative behavior of rhesus monkeys includes a dramatic increase in lip-smacking and embracing during post-conflict reunions as compared to control contacts, whereas reconciling stumptail monkeys engage in the hold-bottom ritual, where one individual presents its hindquarters and the other clasps the other’s haunches. Stumptail post-conflict behavior is called explicit reconciliation because conspicuous behavior rarely performed outside this context refers directly to the conflict, while peacemaking among rhesus is called implicit reconciliation because ordinary behavior is simply modified, thus only indirectly referring to the same. The restorative behavior of chimpanzees involves kissing, embracing, outstretched-hand invitations, and gentle touching. In contrast, reconciliation among bonobos typically involves mutual penis thrusting between males, genitor-genital rubbing between females and ventro-ventral and -dorsal mating between sexes. So for chimpanzees, post-conflict peacemaking means taking part in what may be called affective reconciliation, while for bonobos doing likewise means engaging in sexual reconciliation. A distinction emerges between two complementary kinds of peace-oriented activities among primates and later humans: one aims at sustaining peaceful coexistence, the other at restoring it after a temporary breach. The two together take on the characteristics of an instinctual imperative for peace.

  Despite that its performance differs dramatically between species, in each case primate peacemaking through tension relief and restorative behavior serves the function of reconciling the parties involved in a conflict, reinforcing their peace instincts. If primates have developed ways to relieve tensions and use restorative behavior to sustain peaceful coexistence, what can this tell us about the history of peace among humans? Peace and peacemaking predate humanity in the sense that they evolved from those of primates from which our species descends. Taking a wider view, “evolution has led intra-species aggression, in the overwhelming number of species. . . to a non-lethal and non-violent form of behavior.”7 Humans inherited these innate peaceful capacities and learned abilities from primates, and only afterwards developed them distinctively for ourselves. Moreover, inter-species disparities in primate peacemaking parallel sharp contrasts between their equivalents among human cultural groups. One can easily imagine what would happen if a chimpanzee attempted to make peace with a bonobo, or a rhesus monkey with a stumptail, if neither party changes their peacemaking behavior: misinterpretation would lead to serious misunderstandings, putting the whole peace process in jeopardy. As heuristic models, such hypothetical situations among primate species are of great import to actual peace and peacemaking among different human cultures in that each demands the recognition of and adaptation to different conditions and participants to be successful.

  Prehistoric Evolutions of Peace

  Broadening primate instincts and social behavior into the early human realm, between our appearance as a species and our earliest prehistoric remains, several significant signs point to peace also being an advantageous, necessary and prevalent feature of human life and survival, even taking into account isolated evidence to the contrary. A standard definition of the earliest hominids posits two criteria: habitual bipedalism and a smaller dental apparatus relative to primates. Surprisingly, these two features may unlock the secrets of the origins of war and peace, confirming that peaceful cultural characteristics were prevalent throughout our early past and at least could have predated warlike ones. Walking upright, made possible by locking knees and a specific spinal structure, may arguably be the earliest origins of organized warfare as we know it, making its appearance with Homo erectus roughly 1.5 million years ago (MYA). Significantly smaller molars than primates, perhaps the earliest physiological evidence for peace among humans, as will be explained, made their appearance almost a million years earlier than walking upright, during the transition from ape-like Australopithecines to toolmaking Homo habilis. This second morphological modification in early humans, first chronologically, points to drastic changes in social relations and technology from those of earlier primates.

  Early human social life probably resembled that of primates, who also form long-term relationships, actively engage in bonding and form strategic coalitions. However, primates are mostly nomadic and use their larger teeth for protection and as safeguards against changing food sources. Homo habilis’ smaller molars are ineffective ways to threaten and masticate food from unpredictable sources. Such a pronounced adaptation implies that social relations and food sources had become and/or were made more stable and secure. Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt’s The Biology of Peace and War: Men, Animals, and Aggression (1979) suggests there is one way this anatomical change could have occurred: the development, over many generations, of cooperation and peaceful coexistence along with tool-making. The social patterns that permitted smaller molars, arguably the earliest evidence for peace, extend to more than 3 MYA, thus predating the possibility of recognizable warfare, walking upright, by at least 1.5 million years. Since the first humans who migrated out of the African continent came after the arrival of Homo erectus, it follows that a physiological basis for the existence of peace can be established before humans began populating the world. Even when violence becomes part of our paleontological record, in only four out of more than 110 Pleistocene (2.5–2 MYA) hominid fossil sites, “the known data is not sufficient to document warfare,” taken as systemic rather than sporadic.8

  Some archaeologists see the earliest evidence of warfare in fortifications around Jericho about 9500 years ago, probably for control over hunting-trading routes. Others see the first documented war, most likely over disputed hunting grounds, taking place in Bavaria roughly 8500 years ago, as evidenced in the Ofnet cave in Southern Germany, where decapitated skulls of women and children were found. Although lack of proof cannot in itself prove the absence of war in prehistory – as these sites show, war no doubt did exist in some form and for some time – the tremendous time lapse between the first available evidence of peace and that of war distinguished from violence is highly suggestive. The imagined warlike qualities of early humans put forth by influential social theorists such as Thomas Hobbes thus prove to be less than factual, while romantic theories of peace
such as that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, resting on peacefulness as the defining characteristic of early human societies, turn out to be no less fanciful. In his review of the relevant literature, Sponsel put forth the provocative principle that the potential for peace is latent in humanity or, more succinctly, that “peace is natural.”9 But to say that peace is natural in no way implies that it was or is easy, effortless or straightforward. Conversely, Charles Darwin and followers advance that it is precisely because peace is natural that its fulfillment requires overcoming the stressors, obstacles and complexities intrinsic to nature.

  “Survival of the fittest,” an expression coined not by Darwin but Herbert Spencer, is seen by theorists of evolution today as constantly working on at least two related levels, both of which are inextricable from the evolution of peace and peacemaking among humans from prehistory to today.10 The expression commonly conveys individual organisms’ ability to compete with other organisms of the same species for mates and with individual organisms of other species as well as their own for limited resources. But the expression also refers to “super-organisms,”a term also coined by Spencer to designate groups that function as organic wholes, such as ant colonies and human societies.11 Survival of the fittest in relation to super-organisms means that the most competitive ones for resources on an inter-group level are those that function best on an intragroup level. Peace-related factors in optimal internal cooperation and external competitiveness include sympathy, mutual aid and social cohesion, as exemplified inhuman evolution. In The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin proposed that sympathy was and is what gives our species its definite super-organic advantage over others. “Those communities,” he explains, “which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.”12 By this statement and others, Darwin opened the door to an evolutionary perspective on peaceful traits increasing the likelihood of survival. Peter Kropotkin was one of the first to elaborate upon this perspective in Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902). Building on Darwin’s work, his major contribution lies in the evolutionary model of mutual aid he put forth: “the fittest are not the physically strongest, nor the cunningest, but those who learn to combine so as mutually to support each other, strong and weak alike, for the welfare of the community.”13 Mutual aid and competition are complementary forces in natural selection in that they bring about interdependencies between individuals within a super-organism which simultaneously benefit the peace and survival of a species. Peace is problematic precisely because it is national.

  A more recent analysis of human evolution relative to war begins by acknowledging that sympathy and mutual aid have been invaluable traits in defense and offense at all stages of humanity’s evolution in bolstering social cohesion.14 For most species, social cohesion simply signifies super-organic unity when faced with scarcity and adversity; for humans, it has the added significance of being united in principles, interests and goals. Social cohesion is an evolutionary advantageous trait insofar as it fosters day-to-day and strategic cooperation, making human groups and individuals more competitive relative to other species. Sympathy, mutual aid and social cohesion are now widely recognized by biologists as primary human evolutionary peace processes under the rubric of mutualism, the principle of interdependence as a condition of individual and group survival and welfare. The neologism survival of the peaceful, then, denotes that peaceful individual and group traits are more than bio-genetically advantageous; culturally, they are necessary for humanity’s survival. In other words, just as individual human beings are how the fittest genetic systems are propagated, human societies are the vehicles through which the most peaceful cultures do the same because two imperatives in addition to the instinctual have jointly shaped human evolution and the evolution of peace.15

  On the one hand, bio-genetic imperatives such as food and reproduction maximize self-interested behavior. On the other, cultural imperatives such as sympathy and mutual aid maximize pro-social behavior. Some socio-biologists have rationalized why self-interestedness works with, not against, pro-sociality by postulating a theory of reciprocal altruism, the truism that I scratch your back because and only because you scratch mine. However, by focusing on bio-genetic imperatives to the neglect of cultural ones, reciprocal altruism only partially resolves the “conflict between altruism as a necessary condition of social peace and self-care as a necessary condition of individual preservation.”16 A seminal anthropological analysis outlines group traits that usually either enhance or inhibit peaceful cultural imperatives.17 Traits generally present in peaceful cultures include dynamically structured groups, ubiquitous face-to-face interactions, established enculturation mechanisms, collective action through group consensus and an overall egalitarian ethos. Traits generally absent from peaceful cultures include inter- and intra-group feuding, endemic external threats, social stratification, centralized authority and military or police organizations. Concurrently, cultural transformation theory proposes that two social structures underlie peaceful and non-peaceful cultures, respectively.18 The partnership structure is non-hierarchical and egalitarian, generating cooperative and nurturing societies. The dominator structure rests on hierarchies backed by authoritarian threat and force, beginning with male and female, generating cultures of fear and repression.

  Although bio-genetic imperatives have historically caused dominator social structures to spring up temporarily, cultural imperatives ensure the survival of partnership social structures in the long-run. So while peace is advantageous in the bio-genetic survival of all species, it must prevail in order for human cultures to survive. To be more precise, both bio-genetic and cultural imperatives have and will continue to play a catalytic role in the evolution of humanity and peace, without which we would not have survived as we did, if we would have at all. In conjunction with bio-genetics and culture, feeding behavior and habitat were driving forces behind human evolution. The development of gathering, hunting and agriculture can be taken as extending the evolution of peace from a survival strategy into one of subsistence as well. Sometime after 1.7 MYA, the first home bases appear in the archaeological record. The structure of this semi-sedentary social system was threefold, arranged around: (a) field camps for short stays on food expeditions, (b) collecting or kill sites where food production took place, and (c) home bases proper, where food was collectively consumed. Compared to eons of quasi-primate nomadism that came before, home bases were perhaps the most important social units in prehistoric times, and certainly are in the evolution of peace, because they integrated traits central to peaceful human behavior and social life from then till now, including “reciprocity systems, exchange, kinship, subsistence, division of labor, and language.”19 Pragmatic proposals for peace since that have not drawn upon one or more of these traits are few and far between.

  The earliest mode of subsistence based on the home base social structure, gathering, laid the foundations of two features integral to future peace and peacemaking: conscientiousness and language-use. With gathering, humans stopped eating on the spot with whoever happened to be participating in the expedition; instead, we began making premeditated decisions to take others into consideration, to be patient and self-restrained, because we consciously had secure enough relationships to make the trade-offs worthwhile. Gathering could only be effective if information was shared, which is why both linguistic communication and the larger brain size language-use requires are considered its derivations. The symbolic systems used later in peacemaking were thus not add-ons to peaceful human behavior, but extensions of it. Synthesizing scavenging and tool-making, early hunting economies were usually mixed with gathering. This hunter-gatherer mode of subsistence is unique to our species, represents 99 percent of our existence so far, and so may be “the single most important factor in the emergence of mankind,” as well as in the evolution of peace.20 Some of the earliest evidence of hunting was found in Boxgrove, England, where about 500,000 years ago hunters trappe
d many large game animals between a watering hole and a cliff, where they were finally killed. Violence aside, these tactics display at least two other elements essential to ensuing peace and peacemaking: planning and organization. The choice between using such tactics for food or against other humans was based on bio-genetic and cultural imperatives of survival, and our existence attests to the choice made more often.

  Planning and organization were also necessary in the emergence of agricultural modes of subsistence, such as the seasonal growing of crops and the herding of domesticated animals, which only began roughly 10,000 years ago. Early agriculture advanced two other traits central to the evolution of peace: stable surpluses and the effective management they require. Regular use of coercive force becomes part of the structure of human societies only after the advent of agriculture and its cultural characteristics. But this statement should not be mistaken for saying that agriculture is the origin of warfare. On the contrary, like hunter-gatherers before them, prehistoric agriculturally based societies most likely lacked the time, resources and leadership necessary to sustain or withstand extended modern warlike endeavors. By making food surpluses more stable than hunting and gathering alone, agriculture facilitated rather than impeded subsistence peace among prehistoric and modern humans. It is thus both plausible and probable that prehistoric subsistence societies were as predominantly peaceful. Standing armies and police organizations only make their appearance about 5000 years ago, when irrigation and trade intensified agricultural practices. But the former would not have been possible or necessary had not the latter led to a material abundance permitting settlements tens to thousands times greater than home bases – the first cities, states and civilizations, on which more below.