From Stone Darts to Dismembered Bodies... 5,000 Years of Violence in... California

Western Digs ^ | April 28, 2014 | Blake de Pastino

[SunkenCiv]

From shooting their enemies with darts and arrows to crushing their skulls and even harvesting body parts as trophies, the ancient foragers of central California engaged in sporadic, and sometimes severe, violence, according to a new archaeological study spanning 5,000 years.

In an effort to understand life and death in one of the ancient West’s most populous regions, anthropologists conducted a landmark study of its dead, cataloging signs of violence found in burials between the Sierra Nevada and the San Francisco Bay, dating from historic times all the way back to 3000 BCE.

After 13 years of mining the data, the researchers identified what they say is a complex pattern of episodic violence, driven by forces as diverse as competition for territory, pressure from a changing climate, and the arrival of Europeans.

Chronicling 16,820 burials from 329 sites among 13 different ethnographic groups, the data reveal that the most common type of violence over the millennia was so-called sharp-force trauma, caused by projectiles like arrows or atlatl darts, which appeared in 7.2% of the burials studied.

Another 4.3% of the hunter-gatherers suffered apparent blunt-force trauma to the head, while just under 1% showed evidence of dismemberment, with limbs, scalps, or heads having been removed after death.

These grim findings illustrate the periodic conflicts that took place among California’s prehistoric groups in response to the historical, environmental, and social circumstances around them, said Dr. Terry Jones, an anthropologist at Cal Poly who co-authored the new study.

“Many people still seem to think that prehistoric California was a violence-free paradise, but the archaeological record shows clearly that that was not the case,” he said in an interview.

“People are people, and most of us believe that an inclination to resort to violence in certain situations is part of the human condition.”

[Sherman Logan]

Yeah, but of course it goes back to well before Marx. Back to at least Shaftesbury around 1700. The notion has always been popular among those criticizing modern society.

In the book I mentioned earlier, it is demonstrated that the average among primitive peoples is a death rate from war and other violence that is considerably higher than hit either Germany or Russia during the 20th. In the most extreme societies over 50% of males die from violence.

Why this should be a surprise to anyone is itself a surprise.

Human evolution, since reaching intelligence, has pretty obviously not been between individuals, but between groups, tribes or whatever you want to call them.

What do you think happened to a peaceful tribe that came into contact with a warlike one? Either they abandoned their pacifism darn quick, or they died.

More precisely, the men died. The conquerors could always find a use for women, but adult males were just a danger, and were generally just massacred.

Modern genetics shows this very clearly.

[Sherman Logan]

Yup. Visited Mesa Verde about 25 years ago, and had to suffer through PC rangers on the tour trying to describe the quite obviously defensive cliff dwellings as early attempts at passive solar building.

Really. As if anyone would choose to live in such a wildly inconvenient spot if they didn’t have a darn good reason.

If the neighbors were getting into cannibalism and perhaps human sacrifice, I’d want to fort up, too.

[Big Red Badger]

Kumeyaay and see!
I will Pauwai the fee !

[Verginius Rufus]

The Indians were peaceful.

If they have found evidence of violence, that must mean one thing:

The Vikings got much further west than we had realized. Not just to Minnesota (Kensington Runestone), but all the way to California.

[uglybiker]

I always thought it belonged to a short, red-haired guy named Sam.

[Bernard Marx]

If the neighbors were getting into cannibalism and perhaps human sacrifice, I’d want to fort up, too.

I worked in that country for years and after seeing the cliff dwellings in the region I realized those people were afraid for their lives. Wherever you go in that region -- Mesa Verde, Sinagua ruins, Walnut Canyon -- it's clear they were hiding and defending against hostile intruders.