[gunnar]

well, limiting yourself will never lead to a whole understanding of life. you do have a good grasp of life, but will be left with what you know from expeience in life. that will be limited, as you have limited yourself. so no matter how much of a scientific understanding you aquire in life, it will not make up for the lack in understanding life as a whole.

[Graybeard]

Originally Posted by gunnar well, limiting yourself will never lead to a whole understanding of life. you do have a good grasp of life, but will be left with what you know from expeience in life. that will be limited, as you have limited yourself. so no matter how much of a scientific understanding you aquire in life, it will not make up for the lack in understanding life as a whole.

Gunnar ... I don't know how old you are, but I'm guessing quite young. All debates need limits to prevent the subject in question from disappearing in other issues.

If you have a point of view feel free to express it, with some accompanying reasoning. it doesn't have to be perfect ... we will soon let you know if its not ...

Otherwise it serves no purpose.

Originally Posted by gunnar humans have been fighting humans for one reason or another, since there where humans. ............... I understand this to be because humans have the ability to combine extremes in creating destruction.

This is one of your earlier posts. Of course it goes without saying that there has always been agression. But many species combine, just like us, to obtain resources. What we are debating is the reason why .... that debate has been defined as the difference between inherited abilities and conditioned abilities to make war .

Or both. You need to make a choice and then supply a reason for it. If you feel we have left a fourth choice out, then state it.

cool bananas ... greg

[gunnar]

ok. i will remember to stay on subject.

[gunnar]

greybeard, i am not disputing the fact that other forms of life prey on things, even in a ruthless manner. i am saying that the distinct difference in a humans ability that sets it apart from all other forms of life is an ability to create missles, sattelites, guns, tanks, bombs, airplanes...and on, and on.
and with this ability, humans create destruction that is out of balance. and when the planet is nolonger inhabitable, some beleive that we can just go to another planet or moon. i do see the difference in that, that sets us as humans apart from all other forms of life on known to exist.

[Graybeard]

Originally Posted by gunnar I am saying that the distinct difference in a humans ability that sets it apart from all other forms of life is an ability to create missles, sattelites, guns, tanks, bombs, airplanes...and on, and on.

I see this as just one outcome of toolmaking. Toolmaking can be good or bad ?? Other species do use tools. Distinct means only one.

But, why do you think humans have this distinct ability ?

cool bananas ... greg

[RascalPuff]

“Precisely who invented the first real armies, and how, we can never know. It may even have come about in different ways in different places. In one case a village militia may have discovered the rudiments of discipline and gained experience in a series of intervillage squabbles, and then been taken in hand by a prehistoric Napoleon who saw the possibilities in a systematic program or conquest. He may have been more interested in loot, slaves, and rape than in creating the basis for a complex and productive farming economy, but his conquests would nevertheless produce the latter effect.

“In another case, an agricultural area may have been conquered by warriors from a tribe of hungry nonfarmers who then turned themselves into a military ruling caste. It is even conceivable that in some cases the initial work of political and economic unification over quite large areas proceeded without violence, but in a world where armies have come into being, even such a pacific society will survive only if it rapidly develops an army of its own...

“There was also, in the ancient kingdoms, a persistent phenomenon that is all too familiar to the citizens of modern states: the intoxication of power. Though no man can have absolute power, the illusion of it is engendered at all levels in a state administration that is backed by the right and ability to punish or even kill those who disobey. The practical basis for ordinary moral behavior is the recognition of shared humanity and mutual vulnerability, which is precisely what is destroyed by the illusion of absolute power. Thus those who controlled the first civilized states - which were all, without exception, totalitarian tyrannnies - felt entitled to torture and kill their own subjects for any act of defiance and to massacre entire populations of foreigners who threatened their power. The former assumption is still very common, and the latter universal, in the states of today.”

‘After all, previous wars ended up in the besieging of major cities, and in besieging a city what was the idea? To cut off all supplies, and the city held out if it could until they’d eaten the last dog, cat, and sewer rat and were all starving, and meanwhile the besieging forces lobbed every missile they could lay their hands on into the city (*less modern wafare tactics included catapulting deteriorating human and animal bodies over the besieged cities walls, to spread disease), more or less regardless of where those missiles landed, as an added incentive to surrender.’
- Sir Arthur Harris, head of RAF Bomber Command, 1942 - ‘45.

“...over 90% of all the states that have ever existed have been destroyed - and often their people with them - because they failed to have enough military power available at the critical moment. It is a lesson that is indelibly engraved in the consciousness of every government from Pharaoh Narmer’s to Premier Gorbachev’s.”
- Gwynne Dyer, WAR, p.p. 15, 16, 17, 19.
____________________

“In the few generations before 2,000 BC, nomadic herdsmen from southern Russia, who had discovered the use of horse drawn chariots, began expanding in every direction. Within a couple of hundred years these ‘Indo-European’ peoples had spread over most of Europe and spilled over the mountain wall separating the great Eurasian plain from Asia Minor and northern India. Eventually they overran most of northern Asia Minor (and Semitic refugees fleeing before them conquered Egypt for the first time in its history). Further east, the Aryan branch of the IndoEuropeans extinguished the urban civilization of the Indus Valley so thoroughly that not even its language is known." - Ibid

[Graybeard]

Hmmmm .. Rascal ...
Can I take it that you are now in agreement with me, that there is no distinction in principle, between War and Organised War ....

cool bananas ...greg

[RascalPuff]

Originally Posted by Graybeard Hmmmm .. Rascal ... Can I take it that you are now in agreement with me, that there is no distinction in principle, between War and Organised War .... cool bananas ...greg

Well, Greg:
Ya got yer agricultures, yer trading cultures, yer raiding & trading cultures, and yer exclusively raiding cultures.

They all make war, but some of them are a lot more organized to do it than others.

The Agri-cultures and trading cultures, as a rule, made defensive war.

Yer raiding & trading cultures oscillated between trading and raiding, for a living (as opportunity afforded).

Whereas, yer raiding cultures, that's all they did is make war.

When they weren't unified to sack civilizations bordering the grassland steppes, they fought, extra-tribally, against each other; that's why they excelled in warfare, that's all they did for a living - stealing livestock and women. Conquering and absorbing other tribes (about 90 of them) to enlarge the ordu (horde).

The raiding cultures of the nomadic steppes finally begat Attila and Genghis Khan (who could no longer be historically ignored by Europe), for example...

The Silk Road came into being as the avenue of trade between East & West, because the West abdicated and struck a deal, where, it was agreed that Western Europe not be invaded, by Genghis Khan's grandson, Batu Khan, and perhaps the best General who ever lived - Subedai Bahadur 'of the Reindeer People' (A White Mongolian from Northern Finland) -after taking most of Eastern Europe in just over two years, between 1238 and 1241 AD. Yes.

Western Europe via the Merchant's Guild, agreed to traffick whatever Kublai Khan wanted, in what was then called Peking. A relatively obscure fact of European history - 'Marco Polo opened the trade routes between East & West'... Indeed, he was the bag man for Western Europe's Guilds, who preferred to trade, rather than be raided... So they 'paid tribute', via the Silk Road. Yo. The Mongolian affirmative...

(Incidentally, Mom was Mongolian. Robertson is the Scot half. Mom's maiden name was Savolainen.)

So, I guess it's a matter of gradation...
All the cultures made war, but some of 'em made it more and better than others.

So, with that qualification, there are distinctions within the organised war category, and, with those qualified distinctions, I reckon to more or less, approximately agree with you. Mr. Cool Bananas. : )

Kewel Kukumbers,
- RP

[Graybeard]

I'm gettin a bit lazy ... LOL

Originally Posted by British Archaeology: Num 52, Apr-2000 Origins of war: Mesolithic conflict in Europe The Mesolithic era is often characterised as a kind of golden age of harmony with nature and peaceful co-existence between people. Not so, writes Nick Thorpe Eight and a half thousand years ago a small community was massacred in southern Germany. Stone clubs flew against skulls. Women screamed; children cowered in shocked silence. No one was spared. Most of the men seem to have been away, perhaps hunting for the rest of the group. Those that remained put up stout resistance against their attackers. But they were all killed too. Evidence of the massacre was uncovered a century ago by archaeologists excavating Ofnet cave in Bavaria. They found two pits containing 38 decapitated skulls. Most had belonged to children under 15 years old, including several under five. Two thirds of the adults were women, but the men suffered the most wounds - some had been struck as many as seven times. Several skulls had cut-marks suggesting they had been scalped. Their burial was particularly curious. It many ways it resembles a conventional burial of this date. The skulls were covered in red ochre. Pierced red deer teeth and shells were included in the grave. So were these scalped, decapitated heads buried, reverently and tearfully, by the absent men on their return - who chose not to bury the remainder of the bodies? Or, perhaps more likely, do the skulls represent the booty from a head-hunting expedition, which was later given a ceremonial burial? We cannot be sure. Massacres were not uncommon in prehistoric Europe. Perhaps the most dramatic case we know took place at Talheim in south-west Germany, where a mass grave dating from about 5000 BC contained 34 men, women and children, killed by multiple axe and adze blows to the back of the head. Three of the dead had also been shot with arrows from behind. Here the victims had been unceremoniously thrown into a pit without grave goods. What is remarkable about the earlier event at Ofnet is not so much the fact of massacre as the date. The Ofnet community of hunter-gatherers were slaughtered in the Mesolithic period, often characterised as a kind of golden age of harmony with nature and peaceful co-existence between people. Archaeologists have for some years been squeamish about prehistoric warfare. Many seem to want to imagine that there was no such thing, and war is a product of more modern times .... (for more click here)

cool bananas ... greg

[RascalPuff]

Greg: You inspired me to Google 'perhistoric warfare'. Very interesting. Until recently, they didn't think they're was much of that happening. Forensic evidence is coming in that proves it was a big problem with prehistoric mankind. If you haven't done so already, check it out. Don't know if it's in the 'organized warfare' category or not. What do you think?

Kewel Kukumbers,
- RP