Violence and warfare in prehistoric Japan

Tomomi Nakagawa,Takehiko Matsugi,Kohei Tamura,Naoko Matsumoto,Hisashi Nakao,Yui Arimatsu

doi:10.5178/lebs.2017.55

Abstract

The origins and consequences of warfare or large-scale intergroup violence have been subject of long debate. Based on exhaustive surveys of skeletal remains for prehistoric hunter-gatherers and agriculturists in Japan, the present study examines levels of inferred violence and their implications for two evolutionary models, which ground warfare in parochial altruism versus subsistence. The former assumes that frequent warfare played an important role in the evolution of altruism, while the latter sees warfare as promoted by social changes induced by agriculture. Our results are inconsistent with the parochial altruism model but consistent with the subsistence model, although the mortality values attributable to violence between hunter-gatherers and agriculturists were comparable.

Highlights

The “parochial altruism model,” or the evolution of altruism driven by warfare, proposed by Samuel Bowles and colleagues (Bowles, 2009; Choi & Bowles, 2007), has accelerated arguments on the origin of warfare and its evolutionary role in many fields, including psychology (Yamagishi & Mifune, 2016), biology (Rusch, 2014), and anthropology (Fry & Söderberg, 2013)
Nakagawa et al LEBS Vol 8 No.1 (2017) 8-11 and much lower than those from previous studies (Bowles, 2009; Pinker, 2011), with the exception of the Incipient phase of the Yayoi period (22.22%−50%). This is probably due to small sample size: Human skeletal remains were found in only four sites in the phase, though the Itoku site in Kochi prefecture has five injured individuals among ten remains found in total
The present study made an exhaustive survey of archaeological data on human skeletal remains of the Yayoi period in Japan, to examine levels of mortality attributable to violence as a potential indicator of warfare

Summary

Introduction

The “parochial altruism model,” or the evolution of altruism (intra-group cooperation) driven by warfare (large-scale intergroup violence), proposed by Samuel Bowles and colleagues (Bowles, 2009; Choi & Bowles, 2007), has accelerated arguments on the origin of warfare and its evolutionary role in many fields, including psychology (Yamagishi & Mifune, 2016), biology (Rusch, 2014), and anthropology (Fry & Söderberg, 2013). Bowles’s model, based on empirical evidence for the ubiquity of violence among contemporary and prehistoric huntergatherers, assumes that groups with more altruists are more likely to defeat other groups, so the high frequency of warfare could have promoted the evolution of altruism (Bowles, 2009; Pinker, 2011). Nakao et al (2016a,b) carried out such a survey on skeletal remains of prehistoric huntergatherers in Japan, reporting a much lower mortality rate attributable to violence compared to previous studies (e.g., Bowles, 2009), along with an absence of large-scale violence, supporting doubts about the parochial altruism model. Our studies try to test the two models that are independent but based on the prehistoric data of violence and warfare

Methods

Results

Conclusion