Agricultural Commiunities vs Marauders

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I certainly can deny out warlike nature.  All evidence is that before Abram came along and invented God, humans were agricultural - herding communities or hunter - gatherers where the ecology permitted it.  Their gods (if any) were generally earth/fertility oriented and community sustainability was an important moral imperative. 

War was rare although not non-existent, as there were tribal leaders that for one reason or another usually outgrowing their resource base could try to take what they wanted by warfare.  Usually settled communities could defend themselves and the marauders failed usually when the dysfunctional leader was killed. 

Abram's genius was inventing a leader that couldn't be killed because it didn't really exist, and who divided all the world simply into us and them.  Them just didn't count.  This was a successful concept, as poor young men could be convinced that it was "their" fault they were poor and horny and run off to battle for plunder, and women. 

As for the people who created the mythology, whether or not they were inspired by God is moot, as they believed in God, and codified the mythology based on that assumption.  My belief or lack thereof in God has nothing to do with what others believe.  I also do not think that 50+% of the population that believe in Christianity and Islam and at least pretend to read and abide by Scripture is "only a fraction." 

 I was not arguing that predatory tribes did not exist before or even after Abram invented God.  Tribal survival is always an evolutionary imperative.  If drought or other natural disaster makes your community uninhabitable the tribe or community if larger does what it takes to survive.  Since arable land is usually occupied and defended predation involves the expenditure of many warriors.  Those mass graves mentioned earlier may or may not have been all victims of predation.  In a battle of relatively equal weaponry one would expect the attackers to have the most casualties. 
At Crow Creek the lack of young women in the grave is more likely the result of the defenders giving the most important members of the tribe time to escape to safer ground than the biblical assumption that God delivered the virgins to the victors.  The site was defensible as noted by the defensive trenches that the attackers had to overcome.  The assumption that they did is optimistic at best.  The burning of the settlement may well have been a defensive move to remove the incentive for the attackers.  The fact that the site was abandoned for several weeks suggests to me that the attack failed with the loss and/or retreat of the attackers and the villagers returned later to honor the dead with a proper burial.

While predation and defensive warfare may have been common in prehistory, the long term survival of most communities on arable land suggests that predation was a poor tribal survival strategy.  That is until the Romans came along with their emperor Gods emulated by the Christian God that held all of "them" in contempt to be slaves and breeders, that predation became a way of life and a relatively successful one at that. 

Evolution of War

Aug 16, 2015 -- 12:35PM, onefreespirit wrote:

When the popes led their faithful to war, they didn't do it by changing human nature to suit their purpose. Warlike behavior satisfies the human need to prove ourselves superior to others.

A totally unsupported and probably false assumption.  Nothing in human evolution indicates warlike behavior.  See aforementioned fragile skull.  Humans evolved by cunning not force.  Selecting agricultural crops so they were not dependent on dangerous foraging, domesticating food animals rather than hunting dangerous game, coopting follower wolves for predator warnings, (not exclusive to humans by the way)  breeding aggressive "sheepdogs" to protect the herds and domesticated small feline predators to control small rodents that domesticated themselves. 

The only significant predators were anti-social exploitive humans who raped, pillaged and burned those who had a sustainable agricultural society.  Even those sustainable societies used aggressive war as a last resort preferring to expend extensive resources on defensive structures to protect their cultures.  See the Great Wall of China, and Castles atop sheer cliffs. A few defenders with projectile weapons spears, rocks and fireworks (another cunning invention to avoid proving ones tribe superior.) could hold off invading hordes almost indefinitely. 

It took Abram, the God he created in his own image, and baby factories to make war and pillage a viable cultural strategy.    

War Poster Boys

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Lets not draw cave men BS conclusions from a Christian BS study.  Women's taste in male appearance changes like hemlines.  If Putz was really interested in evolution he would look at cross cultural traits rather than the misogynist Penn State Christian/football violent culture.  Probably at least half the men in the world do not have big muscles, heavy facial hair, square jaws, teeth that clench to take facial violence, (he forgot that one) deep voices, and a propensity to violence.

East Asians, South Asians, Africans, and what we know of indigenous people all lack most of those features, and women and men are generally the same size and shape. Lithe, flexible, versitile muscles good for other things than wielding clubs.  Dexterity in both genders.  A generally small face to make room for a bigger brain, in short a body and face designed by evolution for versatility, adaptability and cooperation.  Their fighting style (when forced to fight) is not strength but adaptability and expending as many men as necessary to overwhelm the enemy and not incidentally protect the women and children.  A few planes with Kamikaze pilots can destroy a battleship and a whole bunch of square jawed, heavily muscled, violence loving men.   

Three millennia of war and violence in the Middle East and Europe have changed not so much women's preferences, but which man got the harems, and ownership of the baby factories to make more men with big muscles, heavy facial hair, square jaws and teeth that clench to mitigate blows to the face (the only exposed area for armored men) and a propensity to violence.  The fact that they are an evolutionary minority speaks volumes about the propensity to violence in spite of their high birth rate.