World Peace In Prehistory (5)

Rebuttal: Con's main points are; human nature is the reason of war, opposed to the consequences of the development of agriculture; the idea of ownership was preexisting (competition for resources), wealth is just a tool used for oppression, agriculture allowed for human control of population (as a good thing), and that many benefits came from the development of agriculture. Human nature would naturally lead to war: Man is natural competitive, and sometimes savage like, but only a savage when need be in order to survive. If you look the most devastating wars in history, they were fought between two or more agricultural states, no large scale wars have been between two groups of hunter and gathers. Hunter gathers did have disputes over territory, but once one of the groups know that the other group was willing to fight them to defend their territory, the back off, you can also see this between mammals such as wolves and lions, they fight to be the alpha and they loser accepts the loss and leaves or backs down, killing does happen, but it is rarely deliberate or intentional. As Jared Diamond puts it, "inequality separates the haves and have not's". In other words, inequality throughout the world is due to the development and ability to produce an agricultural state. When the Spanish conquistadors came to the America's, there technology enabled them to wipe out the natives [5]. The conquistadors took advantage of the natives because they "have" and the natives "have not" [3]. The natives only fought back because they had to, for defense. The idea of ownership was preexisting: Hunter and gather peoples did not have a surplus, so therefore they add little possessions and no "wealth". The only thing that other members of the same or different clans could be "deprived from" would be ability to mate (women), and food. The development and use of agriculture allowed man to be able to focus on other things, one of them being war and conquest. Just the fact that there is often a solider or warrior class or caste in a society, tell you a lot. Warrior and Higher classes often had an easily life full of luxury, because they did not do hard manual labor to achieve food, yet it was given to them. One reason for war is to obtain more wealth; greed led to war. After division of labor started to occur, different classes got their food different ways. The farmer got food from the food they grew, while all the other classes bought or stole the food. An example of a society being reliant on taking the food of other would be the Mongol Hoard [4]. When the Mongols raided a village, they would take the food, thus, having and not having stockpiled food lead to war. "Because agriculture allows food to be stockpiled and enables some people to do things other than look for food, it led to the invention of more and better weapons, soldiers, warfare, class divisions between those who had access to [stockpiled] food and those who did not [1]". Knowing that others had stored food that could be taken by force, wars broke out between those who had (wealth) and those who did not. Because hunter gathers did not have stored food, this does not apply to them. Agriculture allowed for human control of population (as a good thing): This debates focus is on war, so I will only address the points that are relevant to this debate. When food could not be self-obtained, it was taken from others by force, "Armies march on their stomachs" [2]. By having a large population, internal and external conflicts occur. Each person born means less per person. If there is enough food to feed a group of ten, then by having a group of twenty would mean that each person would only get half. Because there are ten more people then there is enough food, there is a need for either more food, or more space, both of which lead to warfare. Sources: [1]Farming is the Root of All Evil: http://www.telegraph.co.uk... [2]An Edible History of Humanity: pgs. 145-196 [3] Guns, Germs, and Steel: http://video.google.com... [4]Mongol Conquest: http://en.wikipedia.org... [5] Conquistadors: http://en.wikipedia.org...