LeBlanc brilliantly argues that warfare has been a part of human existence throughout history. He uncovers a six-million-year-old equation of population growth, resource stress, and warfare as he surveys the archaeological, ethnographic, and historical records from cultures around the world. This distinguished book explores the implications of his findings by considering if humans are doomed by genetic heritage to fight each other, and arrives at a hopeful conclusion: by understanding why humans fought in the past, modern man, with technology and awareness, can avoid warfare in the future.
Steven A. LeBlanc, an archaeologist at Harvard, is the director of collections at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. He is the author of Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest. Katherine E. Register is a writer working in the Boston area.