Examining the evidence from small-scale societies and early prehistory and implications for modern theories of aggression and violence

This paper attempts to evaluate theoretical positions concerning the causes of violence among human societies using data from small-scale, radically non-Western societies and archaeological evidence from early hominids. The paper begins by observing that the almost exclusive focus on violence in industrial societies misses a wide range of variability presented by non-industrial groups, in the present as well as the past. It is argued that this narrow focus represents a significant bias within many of the social sciences. The paper also examines evidence of an evolutionary basis for violence and aggression by looking at the early hominid archaeological record. The paper finds significant evidence for some evolutionary basis for violence given its ubiquity in both the present as well as the deep archaeological past. The paper closes by proposing a synthetic model combining evolutionary theory and interactionist perspectives on the inputs leading to aggression and violence in human social groups.