ENDEMIC WARFARE

'Endemic warfare' is the state of continual, low-threshold warfare in a tribal warrior society. Endemic warfare is often highly ritualized to minimise fatalities, and plays an important function in assisting the formation of a social structure among the tribes' men by proving themselves in battle. Typical activities associated with endemic warfare are cattle raids and abduction of women.
It is unclear why some tribal societies (such as the African tribes Nuer or Germanic tribes, the Yuezhi or the Māori) evolve traditions of endemic warfare while in others (such as the Kalahari Bushmen), warfare is practically absent.
Endemic warfare is not equivalent to "primitive warfare" in general, but is reserved for perpetual low-threshold conflicts. Primitive societies are well capable of escalation to all-out wars of annihilation between tribes. Thus, in the Amazonas, there was perpetual animosity between the neighboring tribes of the Jivaro. A fundamental difference between wars enacted within the same tribe and against neighboring tribes is such that "wars between different tribes are in principle wars of extermination" (Karsten, p. 277).

Contents

See also

References

External links

See also

★ Prehistoric warfare

★ Tinku

★ Feudalism

★ Ritual fight

★ Historical periods characterized with endemic warfare:

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★ Aztec warfare

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★ Anglo-Saxon warfare

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★ Mongols before Genghis Khan

References

★ Zimmerman, L. ''The Crow Creek Site Massacre: A Preliminary Report'', US Army Corps of Engineers, Omaha District, 1981.

★ Chagnon, N. ''The Yanomamo'', Holt, Rinehart & Winston,1983.

★ Keeley, Lawrence. ''War Before Civilization'', Oxford University Press, 1996.

★ Pauketat, Timothy. ''North American Archaeology'' 2005. Blackwell Publishing.

★ Wade, Nicholas. ''Before the Dawn'', Penguin: New York 2006.

★ Rafael Karsten, ''Blood revenge, war, and victory feasts among the Jibaro Indians of eastern Ecuador'' (1923).

★ S. A. LeBlanc, ''Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest'', University of Utah Press (1999).

External links

★ Haida Warfare

★ Primitive War

★ Tribal Warfare and Blood Revenge

★ The Crow Creek Massacre

★ War Before Civilization

★ The Myth of the Peaceful Savage

★ The fraud of primitive authenticity

★ Warfare among tribal peoples

★ Tribal warfare kills nine in Indonesia's Papua