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The First Wars Were Absolutely Horrifying

The Historian's Craft

79,104 views

SOURCES:

How War Began, Keith Otterbein

Warfare and Its Relationship to the Origins of Agriculture, Keith Otterbein

A massacre of early Neolithic farmers in the high Pyrenees at Els Trocs, Spain, Kurt Alt et al

Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi, Adhi Oktaviana et al

Violence in fishing, hunting, and gathering societies of the Atacama Desert coast: A long-term perspective (10,000 BP - AD 1450), Vivian Standen et al

Multi-isotope biographies and identities of victims of martial victory celebrations in Neolithic Europe, Teresa Fernandez-Crespo et al

Neolithic Bodies in Vrable - 7000 year old Headless Human Skeletons in an Enclosed LBK Settlement in South-West Slovakia, Martin Furholt et al

Large-scale violence in Late Neolithic Western Europe based on expanded skeletal evidence from San Juan ante Portum Latinum, Teresa Fernandez-Crespo et al

20 Comments

@GeorgeC.Marshall 10 hours ago

Must have been all those violent video games.

@OsborneInk 10 hours ago

This happens to be one of my favorite topics as a military historian. Thank you for covering it. All human societies have a level of violence, what changed with population growth was the level of organization.

@dubsar 9 hours ago

Wait until the last wars.

@samuelwheeler9678 9 hours ago

I actually found the difficulty you clearly had with some of this particularly compelling and got across the seriousness of the subject rather than many who would treat it in a sensationalist manner. One of the reasons I really rate this channel.

@CharlieBWright 8 hours ago

“War, war never changes.” - John Fallout

@aardsnark940 9 hours ago

I was a combat medic for a long time. I can’t imagine how grim it was to take any significant wound so long ago. I wonder if they had any gauze like material like moss or any concept of tourniquets or direct pressure

@PaulvonOberstein 7 hours ago

Keeley wasn't an archeologist. He was a cultural anthropologist. But an archeologist named Steven LeBlanc makes a similar argument to Keeley in a book called Constant Battles

@TimJohniLL88 6 hours ago

Subscribed simply because you come across as an objective historian/ relator

@RYwoodview 6 hours ago

Makes sense to me that as agriculturalists spread, their growing populations (reliable food sources) blocked out the relatively fewer original hunter-gatherers, leading to conflicts over areas of control. As the farming populations grew and won these, they extinguished the existing male h-g lines and brought those women into their population (genetic studies confirm this). Later, of course, farming groups fought farming groups, and on and on.

@matthewmiller9485 7 hours ago

This far back in history, keep in mind armor was VERY limited. If you were lucky, you MIGHT have a wicker or wooden shield, but body armor in the stone age was near non-existent. Combine this with the EXTREMELY limited medical knowledge of the time, battles of ANY size would probably lead to an INSANE amount of terrible and gruesome wounds with pretty much all combatants.

@shawnparadise6504 11 hours ago

Thanks man. Always enjoy your videos.

@qboxer 8 hours ago

I’ve been waiting for this one for a while. Thanks very much Mike!

@Ecumenomachy 6 hours ago

It would be really interesting if we could get a high confidence estimate as to when human verbal language began. Then see if there is any correlation between that, the rise of larger societies, agriculture, and the first organized warfare.

@MinnesotaBeekeeper 11 hours ago

Really appreciate your work.

@djpenton779 7 hours ago

Another very interesting (but horrifying) video. You have a good knack for choosing and explaining topics that I don't encounter on other channels. I have seen a couple of videos on the Tollense Valley "massacre", and also much later archaeology relating to e.g. the battle of Towton, but nothing covering the Iberian sites. Thanks for a good video and the subsequent nightmares, I guess.

@mikescott3167 6 hours ago

21:39 Conventional agriculture was likely an offshoot of habitat manipulation used to attract game animals. One needn’t “hunt” deer when they are constantly attracted to your irrigated garden trap. Aquaculture (fish farming) similarly arose from fish trapping and likely supported a sedentary society prior to true agriculture.

@aaronvoogt2464 6 hours ago

Very well researched and illustrative video. The descriptions of injuries found at some of these sites really paint a visceral picture of the reality of life back then. You have a voice very similar to Manny from Ice Age

@TarpeianRock 3 hours ago (edited)

This seems in stark contrast with the way warfare was conducted by the people of Papoea New Guinea still living in a Stone Age society. This has been captured on film (in 1963) and it’s clear the clashes consist mainly of lot of shouting, darting forward and backwards and such like. A few are injured but no mass killings.