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Keeley, Lawrence H. War Before Civilization.  New York: Oxford University Press,   1996.

            The nature and role of warfare in shaping the modern world is an important historical debate.  While no historian would discount the importance of war in molding nation-states and Western civilization from the 14^th century to the present, prehistoric warfare has received little attention from scholars.  In fact, until the 1980s, the thought of prehistoric war was, in many ways, an oxymoron.  Historians, archaeologists, and ethnographers categorized the prehistoric past as “pacified,” an analysis that Lawrence H. Keeley, Professor of Anthropology at University of Illinois at Chicago, challenges in War Before Civilization. In fact, Keeley suggests that warfare in the prehistoric period not only existed, but was far more common, brutal and destructive than academics have recognized.

            Keeley asserts that the evidence of prehistoric warfare has existed since the 1960s, but historians have been interpreting the information incorrectly.  Since archaeology is based on patterns of effects, and since warfare leaves enduring effects, warfare existed in the prehistoric period.  The problem, he believes, rests not with the evidence of warfare, but with the historians and archaeologists who have ignored the signs of warfare in their work.  Two notable historians and archaeologists, Qunicy Wright and Harry Turney-High, dismissed primitive war, claiming deficiencies in tactics and resources prevented primitive war from being effective. Keeley contends their conclusions were born from visions of the past that simply do not match the historical record.

Historians and archaeologists, as humans with passions, appetites, and ideals, have been tied to historical myths about the past, created most notably by Thomas Hobbs and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  Hobbs suggested the past was “solitary, poor, wasting and brutish.”  Western civilization saved those living in primitive conditions from the squalor and wretchedness of their life and surroundings; therefore, primitive societies, historians argued, could not wage effective war because the nation-states and the civilization needed to do so did not exist.  To be sure, the results of confrontation between primitive societies and European technology and organization spoke for themselves, and historians were quick to discount primitive warfare as barbaric, unorganized, and unsophisticated.

Rousseau contrasted Hobbs by arguing that primitive society was the golden age of human civilization, one in which small tribes lived in relative peace and prosperity.  Archaeologists and ethnographers until the 1960s followed a Rousseauian pattern when describing primitive warfare, claiming it only occurred when food was a central issue and the tribe was hungry.  Otherwise, as long as all essential material needs were met, the natural state of primitive societies was peace.  Most of the Rousseauian theories have been discredited since the 1960s by field work throughout the globe, but Keeley laments that the idea of a communist golden age still permeates history texts today.

Keeley argues that the truth may be the median of the two concepts.  Primitive tribes were in fact, as Hobbs suggested, brutal, but primitive life was not “solitary, poor, wasting and brutish.” (6-8) He believes it is more accurate to describe primitive war as brutal and complex, while primitive societies possessed features preferable to Western civilized life.  Yet, evidence collected in archaeological sites throughout the world point to the prevalence of war in all societies, modern and primitive.  Keeley claims sites and tools classified as agricultural are in fact the fortifications and weapons of war.  Contrary to the popular historical interpretation of primitive life, pastoral society often gave way to the cold realities of war.

Keeley attempts to methodically determine the intensity, dangerousness and effectiveness of primitive war through the use of casualty rates and the physical evidence of archaeological digs in an attempt to verify his claim of brutal, total prehistoric war.  Through the evidence, Keeley concludes that “peaceful societies have been very rare, that war was extremely frequent in nonstate societies, and that tribal societies often mobilized for combat very high percentages of their total manpower.” (26) 

Keely suggests through analysis of the historical record that “peaceful societies” rarely existed in primitive world.  In cross cultural studies of politics and conflict, Keeley demonstrates that only 10 to 13 percent of the studied societies rarely or never engaged in warfare.  And when you dig further, he suggests there is more to the story.  Many of the “peaceful societies” had extremely high homicide rates, as much as four times higher than that of the modern United States.  Warfare, then, must take a broader definition, one that encompasses conflict both between societies and among societies.  To characterize these groups as pacifist is to underestimate the effect of violence on their respective communities.

Primitive war becomes more striking when the frequency of war, or the number of times in a generation societies engage in war, is studied.  Seventy to ninety percent of prestate societies engaged in war at least once every five years, with most facing war every two years.  Even at the height of European power in the nineteenth century, only Great Britain came close to matching those numbers. Keeley concludes that the less complex and more primitive the society, the more likely that society was in engage in prolonged and frequent warfare. 

Historians and archaeologist often viewed mobilization as a problem in nonstate, primitive societies.  Limited resources, poor transportation and the lack of modern techniques forced primitive tribes into smaller, less sustainable campaigns, and therefore, fewer men were engaged in combat.  Through careful analysis of ethnographic data, Keeley determines that these conclusions are false.  Moreover, only France during World War I matched the mobilization rate of many smaller, prestate, primitive societies during prolonged periods of warfare and conflict.  Modern societies require tremendous resources to mobilize an army, and while the same may be true for primitive societies, as much as 30 to 40 percent of the male warrior population faced combat on a regular basis in select primitive societies. (34)

Keeley further illustrates that prehistoric warfare began over 30,000 years ago, much earlier than historians have argued in the past.  Human remains from burial sites across Europe and Africa display a propensity for violent death.  Embedded stone arrowheads and ax wounds are common, and many of these early societies constructed fortifications for protection against warring tribes or bands.  Some archaeologists point to the introduction of agriculture as the beginning of warfare, but with evidence of homicide and violent death stretching 10,000 to 20,000 years prior to the agricultural revolution, Keeley suggests one must question a lack of warfare in the prehistoric world.  “If anything, peace was a scarcer commodity for members of bands, tribes, and chiefdoms than for the average citizen of a civilized state.” (39)

Keeley tackles the misconception of ineffective primitive warfare and the assumption that weapons excavated from archaeological digs were simply tools of the carpenter, farmer, or a display of wealth.   Modern methods of warfare and tactics do not apply to primitive warfare, in Keeley’s opinion.  A lack of leadership and centralized authority prevented tribes or war bands from acting in unison; however, small scale raids were common, as were surprise attacks and prolonged wars of attrition carried out over a number of months or years.  Such tactics often produced great results and are still used in modern guerilla warfare. 

Keeley suggests weapons and fortifications reflected the practical nature of primitive warfare.  Men in small primitive societies were typically armed with axes or knives, and while these weapons could be used for purposes other than war, many lacked the rigidity required for felling trees or chopping wood.  Furthermore, archaeologists have discovered “specialized” weapons that only could have been used in war, though many have discounted this conclusion.  Fortifications were less specialized and elaborate than those constructed by larger states, but still contained the essential qualities of more modern defensive construction.

Primitive warfare in the long run may be less effective than modern, civilized combat, but Keeley demonstrates that primitive tactics led to higher casualty rates and more brutal engagements.  Guerilla tactics produced embarrassing losses for modern powers and great victories for primitive tribes throughout history.  For example, modern European tactics were unable to cope, at least initially, with the fighting style of North American tribes.  Mutilation, high war deaths as a percentage of population, the theft of women, the decimation of crops, populations, and villages, looting, and high rates of territory loss were the common effects of primitive warfare.  In short, total war, a phenomena typically associated with modern warfare, was the norm in primitive combat. 

Keeley dispels one final myth concerning primitive war, that of causation.  Under some modern assumptions, primitive war had far different causes than modern war.  Women, for example, are considered essential to warfare in primitive society.  While this may be true, there are similarities in terms of causation between modern and primitive societies.  Population density, trade, intermarriage between societies, aggressive neighbors, fluctuating frontiers, famine and starvation all contributed to primitive warfare.  The same can be said of modern war.  Keeley concludes though modern war and primitive war are different in terms of technology, European tactics, mobilization, and strategy, there are far more similarities than differences, and suggests that it takes more civilization, not less, to reduce the frequency, brutality, and harshness of war.   

            Overall, War Before Civilization offers a perspective on primitive war lost in the last fifty years.  Keeley consults very few untapped sources, and his conclusions were reached in some cases 200 years earlier.  With common sense, his ideas should be evident from the sources at hand.  A general knowledge of human psychology and sociology would lend to the theory that early man could be and possibly was as belligerent as modern man, only without the tanks and airplanes.  His work rights several incorrect observations of the last half century, and though the scarcity of archaeological and ethnographic findings limit his ability to conclusively prove his arguments, a problem he admits to throughout the book, Keeley’s work should at the very least provide the modern historian with a more complex and less romantic view of the past.