I haven't read this book, but regardless of its ultimate correctness, it's worth recognizing that it too is interpretative mythmaking (about who we are based on a very small historical slice of our existence). It probably generalizes well enough to who we've been since the last glacial maximum, but I think there's enough evidence to be skeptical of interpreting any human group since the LGM as untouched by the processes driving what we call civilization.
"Civilization" is a relative measure, not an absolute one. It's shaped by what we're accustomed to, and vulnerable to unknown biases. (Is raising and slaughtering your own pig more or less civilized than modern factory farming? Is solitary confinement more or less civilized than exile?) Claiming to discuss war "before" civilization draws an arbitrary line separating very gradual change driven by many competing/interacting processes. What standard do we measure whether some group of people in some place and time were civilized against?
If you measure against the great apes, when did the relationships between hominid groups and their environments cross a rubicon? What technological and social markers count? Tool use? Language? Trade? Making objects and carrying them around with us over great distances? Art? Stories? Clothing? Religion? Cooking? Baking? Early agriculture?
AFAIK there's evidence for most of these back well into the stone age (and in some cases among pre-homo-sapiens hominids). We're also mostly limited to studying sites above modern sea levels and have vastly less access to evidence of hominid activity that may exist in areas now under water (including glacial refugia such as the potential "Arabo-Persian Gulf Oasis"
).
"Civilization" is a relative measure, not an absolute one. It's shaped by what we're accustomed to, and vulnerable to unknown biases. (Is raising and slaughtering your own pig more or less civilized than modern factory farming? Is solitary confinement more or less civilized than exile?) Claiming to discuss war "before" civilization draws an arbitrary line separating very gradual change driven by many competing/interacting processes. What standard do we measure whether some group of people in some place and time were civilized against?
If you measure against the great apes, when did the relationships between hominid groups and their environments cross a rubicon? What technological and social markers count? Tool use? Language? Trade? Making objects and carrying them around with us over great distances? Art? Stories? Clothing? Religion? Cooking? Baking? Early agriculture?
AFAIK there's evidence for most of these back well into the stone age (and in some cases among pre-homo-sapiens hominids). We're also mostly limited to studying sites above modern sea levels and have vastly less access to evidence of hominid activity that may exist in areas now under water (including glacial refugia such as the potential "Arabo-Persian Gulf Oasis" ).