[ROCKMAN]

And in the vein of what's old is new again: wonder if the basic cause of the conflict was resource scarcity as the article hints. And done by peace loving Europeans, no less:

Shattered Stone-Age bones expose world’s oldest mass torture

A Stone-Age child’s skull, showing the death blow to the forehead region, possibly made using an adze. Whoever the assailants were, they probably arrived at dawn. Catching their victims unawares, they hacked the shinbones of as many villagers as possible to prevent them escaping, then bludgeoned them all to death with blows to the head before dumping them in a mass grave. Though no one can be sure exactly what happened to the 26 people whose bodies were found in a Stone-Age mass grave, this is the most likely scenario, according to Christian Meyer of the University of Mainz in Germany. His team has analyzed the bones, unearthed near Frankfurt, in 2006.

He dates them to between 5207 and 4849 BC, the early Neolithic period by which time farmers had spread through most of mainland Europe from the south-east, forming a culture known as the Linearbandkeramik, or LBK. The find is the third known massacre site from this period, and suggests that despite the popular image of peaceful harmony among Europe’s pastoral inhabitants, friction between communities was building up, perhaps because of crop failures, overcrowding or pressure for land. Meyer says that evidence for individual cases of attacks and torture in ancient times have been found before. “But this is the first time we have almost a complete village put to death in a mass grave with this pattern of destroyed leg bones,” he says.

Half the victims were children and half adults, the two eldest – over 40 years old – being the only women. No teenagers were found, suggesting that they fled or were taken by the assailants. This area was the site of what were at the time most advanced human settlements. Alongside the two earlier LBK massacres – one in Germany and the other in Austria – the find suggests that tensions were starting to spill over into violence. “It was the first time in history our descendants were faced with this problem,” says Meyer. “It meant they were stuck to their settlements without being able to escape what fate threw at them, whether it was droughts, climate stress, or disputes with neighbors.”

{And that would now include energy resource limitations}

The site of the massacre is on a “border” between two loose networks – based on differences in pottery and other artefacts found there – and so may have been targeted or raided by the rival “network”, Meyer suggests. The most likely trigger, Meyer thinks, is that there was some kind of climate stress that made the crops fail, leaving people starving and desperate enough to steal food – even if it meant murder. Alternatively, the victims may have been targeted because the rival group blamed them for the loss of food, maybe through witchcraft. “It seems quite clear that these cases are showing farmer-on-farmer violence,” says Peter Bogucki of Princeton University.

{What next: energy consumer on energy consumer violence? Oh, wait...been there already}

In those times there were no leadership structures beyond the group – no central government – so conflicts were intensely personal and hard to defuse, he says. “There were probably codes of honour, respect and revenge that structured interactions, with the result being that things could get nasty quickly.” “Finds like the one at Kilianstädten show us that early farmers had many things to worry about,” says Bogucki. “But even though things sometimes ended unpleasantly, they were not killing each other all the time.”

Other researchers say that the mass violence could have been a step towards formation of potentially successful in-group loyalties and cooperation. “Inter-group warfare could have had very substantial effects on both cultural and biological evolution of social behaviors,” says Samuel Bowles of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. “Most prominent among these effects would be the diffusion of within-group cooperation through success in warfare.”

Meyer says that injuries to the victims’ skulls suggest they were killed by blows with an adze, a hammer-like tool used in agriculture but which could double up as a weapon. Not till the Bronze Age 2000 years later would humans begin designing artefacts explicitly for warfare, such as swords and shields. “Then came proper warfare, with real weapons and real warriors,” he says. “But it’s disturbing and shocking that violence was also evident in Neolithic times.”

{Explicit weapons for warfare? We have certainly come a long way in that regard}

[davep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ennui2', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', '
')I am no doomer.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davep', '[') You can still have a pessimistic outlook on the future (you'd have to be pretty unaware or in denial not to) but take an optimistic outlook on improving things in your own little way. It's the way of the "moderate" as we used to be called on the doomer scale.

[jedrider]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Apneaman', 'D')on't listen to the Cog-sucker ...

[StarvingLion]

I just solved the worlds energy problem. Here goes:

Average person in the USA consumes 200 kWh of energy per day (conservative figure)

10 billion people x 200 kWh = 2.0 x 10^12 kWh per day. (for 10 billion to consume energy like US citizens do now)

If a Nuclear reactor produces 1 GW. This is 2.4×10^7 kWh per day

Therefore you would need 83,000 or so 1 GW Nukes.

At $5000 per kW, this would cost 83,000 x 5000 x 10^6 = $415 Trillion.

This is equivalent to over 5 years of gross world produce.

All the energy available in the world for 5 years would have to go into building these nuclear reactors. No problemo.

[ralfy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'W')hat exactly does being a doomer do for you except make you depressed and develop a tendency to post a lot of doom on the internet?

I prep both physically and financially but I am no doomer. What is the big difference between our thought processes?

[careinke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ennui2', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', '
')I am no doomer.

[ennui2]

As far as the guns go...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qth1k962_9A

[davep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ennui2', 'A')s far as the guns go...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qth1k962_9A

[Cog]

As far as guns go, two is one and one is none. I've never lost money on a gun on the rare occasion I let one go. Can't say the same for my stocks.

[careinke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davep', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ennui2', 'A')s far as the guns go...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qth1k962_9A