IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-03176490.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The evolutionary anthropology of war

Author

Listed:
  • Luke Glowacki

    (IAST - Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse)

  • Michael Wilson

    (Unknown)

  • Richard Wrangham

    (Unknown)

Abstract

Evolutionary anthropologists seek to understand the evolution of warfare across multiple timescales, from the roots of warfare in the intergroup aggression of our primate ancestors, to the causes of warfare among contemporary societies today. While warfare remains a contentious subject, considerable evidence supports the view that warfare is a strategy by which coalitions of males cooperate to acquire and defend resources necessary for reproduction. This strategy is not the result of a single "instinct" for war, but is instead an emergent property resulting from evolved psychological mechanisms (such as xenophobia and parochial altruism). These mechanisms are sensitive to ecological and social conditions, such that the prevalence and patterns of warfare vary according to subsistence strategies, military technology, cultural institutions, and political and economic relations. When economic conditions enable intergroup relations to change from zero-sum to positive-sum games, peaceful intergroup relations can emerge.

Suggested Citation

  • Luke Glowacki & Michael Wilson & Richard Wrangham, 2020. "The evolutionary anthropology of war," Post-Print hal-03176490, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03176490
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2017.09.014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gershman, Boris & Mumladze, Tinatin, 2024. "Headhunting and warfare in Austronesia: A phylogenetic comparative analysis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 220(C), pages 768-791.
    2. Boulu-Reshef, Béatrice & Schulhofer-Wohl, Jonah, 2022. "The impact of distance on parochial altruism: An experimental investigation," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    3. Ennio Bilancini & Leonardo Boncinelli & Sebastian Ille & Eugenio Vicario, 2022. "Memory retrieval and harshness of conflict in the hawk–dove game," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 10(2), pages 333-351, October.
    4. Crouse, Kristin N. & Desai, Nisarg P. & Cassidy, Kira A. & Stahler, Erin E. & Lehman, Clarence L. & Wilson, Michael L., 2022. "Larger territories reduce mortality risk for chimpanzees, wolves, and agents: Multiple lines of evidence in a model validation framework," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 471(C).
    5. Mironova, Vera & Whitt, Sam, 2021. "Conflict and parochialism among combatants and civilians: Evidence from Ukraine," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    6. Bilancini, Ennio & Boncinelli, Leonardo & Marcos-Prieto, Pablo, 2024. "Conflict initiation function shapes the evolution of persistent outcomes in group conflict," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    7. Zachary Garfield & Ryan Schacht & Emily Post & Dominique Ingram & Andrea Uehling & Shane Macfarlan, 2021. "The content and structure of reputation domains across human societies: a view from the evolutionary social sciences," Post-Print hal-03368986, HAL.
    8. Cheikbossian, Guillaume, 2021. "The evolutionary stability of in-group altruism in productive and destructive group contests," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 236-252.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03176490. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.