A while back I wrote a column entitled, Is War Our Nature? (5.20.16). In it, I discussed a then-recent archeological discovery revealing that the earliest warfare among humans was believed to have taken place around ten thousand years ago. The rhetorical question that I asked in that column was: Are we humans predisposed to war and violence since our history, as a species, is replete with it? In other words, is war part of our nature?

That very question leads to the time-tested issue of whether we humans are born with a nature, or set of instincts. The issue is termed, nature versus nurture. When we are born, are we genetically preprogrammed to behave in certain ways, such as to be violent, or do we learn our behavior from other people, such as our parents? One of the prevailing theories on the nurture side of the issue is called the blank slate. According to blank slate reasoning, a developing human brain has no predetermined information, or instincts. The child is, thus, born with a blank slate that will be filled with information through the learning process. Of course, as our technology improves and we learn more about the prenatal development process, we are beginning to understand that some learning may take place prior to birth.

The most convincing evidence supporting the blank slate theory, at least with respect to violence, is that not everyone is violent. If humans were preprogrammed to be violent, we would all be violent. Since we are not all violent, some of us must learn violence and some of us do not. Problem solved.

If only questions involving human behavior were that simple. Getting back to that ten-thousand-year-old battle, evidence from the site suggested that one of the warring parties had traveled quite a distance in order to engage in that battle. This was no spur-of-the-moment anger reaction. My guess is, also, that it was not an isolated event. Because we have not found evidence of prior warfare does not mean that such evidence does not exist. It simply means that we have not found it.

What we know for certain is that people were conducting organized, group warfare at least ten thousand years ago. We do not know why they were fighting, nor do we know how or why they learned to fight. There is much that can be surmised but very little that can be established with any degree of certainty. There are lessons to be learned from those unfortunate nomadic hunter-gatherers who fought that day, however. What we, in the 21st century, CE, can learn from those people and those events ten thousand years ago will have to wait for next weeks column. In the meanwhile, be well, be kind, and may God bless you.

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