Abstract
Glowacki's work meshes well with our view of human nature as having evolved to use culture to improve survival and reproduction. Peace is a cultural achievement, requiring advances in social organization and control, including leaders who can implement policies to benefit the group, third-party mediation, and intergroup cooperation. Cultural advances shift intergroup interactions from negative-sum (war) to positive-sum (trade). Glowacki's fascinating and informative article contends that intergroup peace is a historical achievement that is largely unmatched among other species. While some intergroup cooperation is found now and then in a few other species, it is extremely rare, and even observations of the few species that occasionally exhibit it (such as bonobos) generally reveal more intergroup violence than intergroup cooperation. Violence, from petty raids to ongoing warfare, has been common throughout human prehistory and history, but peace has also been achieved, enabling positive-sum intergroup cooperation (such as trade) by which both groups benefit. Progressively stronger and more complex social structures increased both war and peace. The two developments may not have been independent, because the greater lethality of war made peace all the more desirable.
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