The farther back archaeologists and anthropologists keep digging in our collective Human history, the more evidence of our innate violence they will discover. Living today, surrounded by civilization, it’s easy to forget that human beings are still animals—unless you start watching the news. Then you remember it, and fast. We have, thanks to the development of our technology, simply gotten more efficient at killing each other. Humans are pack animals. We protect those within our packs and make war against those outside it, even if that warfare today is only ideological in form. Don’t believe it? Think about how you feel about people in the political party that is in opposition to yours. Hell, think about how you feel about fans of football teams you don’t like. Pack mentality. Innate violence. Innate hatred, hate born of fear, fear of the outsider, the “different.”
We haven’t changed. Evidence being recovered from a site on Lake Turkana in Kenya bears witness to this. Skeletal remains bearing arrow wounds or crushed skulls delivered by clubs, including the bodies of women, one of them pregnant. Some of the dead had been tied up before being killed. As the site was located on a lagoon, the groups were probably fighting over water. Was their plenty of water to share? Probably, and food also. But why share when you can just eliminate “the other guys?”
