A
recent paper in the journal Nature reported the discovery of what may be the
oldest massacre in human history. What could have triggered the fury of one
group against another? Perhaps the competition for natural resources
increasingly scarce?
Until quite
recently historians and anthropologists were unanimous in determining the start
of the competition between clans and groups of people at a time when the man
became sedentary and began to develop a strong sense of ownership about space
and objects that belonged to him. The discovery in Kenya of an accumulation of
skeletons belonging to individuals apparently killed violently and left
unburied, dating back at least 10,000 years ago. This discovery, therefore,
puts back the hands of the beginning of collective violence, or the war in the
modern meaning we attribute to this word.
Competing for
resources? Since it is quite clearly groups of hunter-gatherers is conceivable
that such violence, which was also addressed to the weaker members of the
community competitor, women and children, has been triggered by a competition
that had as its object the natural resources, food. An encroachment on the
territory of another hunt group, or perhaps being inside an ecological niche
that, suddenly, it was no longer able to support the existence of both groups.
The Younger
Dryas as the end of Eden? Among the 10.800 to 10.200 14C y.a. Europe
experienced a period of colder climate and wetter than previously; signs of
climate change are also evident in Africa, where we are witnessing a regression
of forests in the central sector of the continent and to a progressive
desertification of large areas. The oscillation of the belt of the monsoon
reports since then more and more important periods of drought leading to the
formation of the Sahara as we can see today.
This
coincidence between the massacre and the climatic variation may be casual, such
as reporting a result of the progressive food shortages in some areas of
Africa. This situation may have led to the coexistence of different human groups
in territories smaller and smaller; coexistence would increase the possibility
of the outbreak of conflicts, resulted in acts of violence of one group over
another.
The interest
of this discovery lies mainly in the fact that it is an act of war in its most
"pure" meaning: the man lives immersed in its natural environment and
its violence is unleashed, obviously, from a number of primary needs; only
later the war will load of symbolic meanings; war, ten thousand years ago, is
still, probably for the above, a response to environmental stimuli, a reflex
action, yet far from condemnation, or justification, that the
"culture" will produce in thousands of years of evolution.
