Prehistoric warfare

Prehistoric warfare refers to war that occurred between societies without recorded history.

The existence—and the definition—of war in humanity's hypothetical state of nature has been a controversial topic in the history of ideas at least since Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan (1651) argued a "war of all against all", a view directly challenged by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in a Discourse on Inequality (1755) and The Social Contract (1762). The debate over human nature continues, spanning contemporary anthropology, archaeology, ethnography, history, political science, psychology, primatology, and philosophy in such divergent books as Azar Gat's War in Human Civilization and Raymond C. Kelly's Warless Societies and the Origin of War.^[1]^[2] For the purposes of this article, "prehistoric war" will be broadly defined as a state of organized lethal aggression between autonomous preliterate communities.^[3]^[4]

Fry, Douglas P., War, Peace, and Human Nature. Oxford University Press, 2013.

Karsten, Rafael, Blood revenge, war, and victory feasts among the Jibaro Indians of eastern Ecuador, 1923.

Kelly, Raymond C. Warless societies and the origin of war. Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2000.

Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest, University of Utah Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0874805819

Lee, Wayne E., Waging War: Conflict, Culture, and Innovation in World History, Oxford University Press, 2015.

. Hjortspring : Warfare and Sacrifice in Early Europe. Aarhus, Denmark; Oakville, Connecticut. : Aarhus University Press, 1995.

Roksandic, Mirjana (ed.), Violent interactions in the Mesolithic : evidence and meaning. Oxford, England : Archaeopress, 2004.