How humans have been killing, starving and despoiling their environment for millions of years.

One of the most enduring myths perpetuated over the last fifty years is the assumption that indigenous peoples, both past and present, knew how to live in balance with nature. These ecologically perceptive people, unlike modern greedy man, were true environmentalists and lived in tribal bliss, preferring to trade in trinkets than go to war with their neighbors—so the story goes.

The archeological evidence however shows otherwise, both from unearthed remains from the past and observing the few remaining hunter–gatherer bands still living today. In Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage by Steven A. LeBlanc, 2003, this well-written book explores the real ecological impact that our ancestors had on the environment and on each other.

LeBlanc notes: “What has occurred over the centuries is that the blending of the original misunderstanding of the actual ecological situation of the people of North America with the eighteenth-century European desire to fabricate ‘noble savages’ for heuristic purposes has resulted in a well-developed myth that has become widely believed in many camps. This myth has been embraced by the environmental movement and by Native Americans as well.” He later looks at other ethnies and nations, and notes that they are identical to Native Americans in their inability to live in balance with nature without despoiling it by overpopulation and poor ecological management.

The book really looks at warfare from two cultural perspectives, but LeBlanc does not divide the book up in this way, but I will attempt to do so. Humans living as foragers-farmers in bands or tribes, fought wars differently than later cultural systems. As loosely formed egalitarian groups, wherever they found themselves, they exploited all available land and the animals living on the land, until the land could no longer support the number of people living in any particular area. As humans are the only species that has no other enemies other than each other, human groups continued to grow until they reached the boundary with a neighboring group, or they hit the boundary of their ecological niche bounded by water, mountains or some other natural barrier.

Eventually then, the size of the tribe outgrew the carrying capacity of their niche and they had no choice but to starve to death, practice infanticide, or go to war with their neighbors. The only break in this cycle occurred when natural disaster or disease wiped out large numbers of people. For all other instances, humans routinely killed about 25% of each generation through genocidal warfare in order to survive—quite often using predawn raids to annihilate as many of the enemy as they could, and quite often followed by ritual torture, cannibalism, and taking the females for their own. All others would be killed if possible.

LeBlanc explains how humans, like chimpanzees, developed a blood-lust for genocidal warfare:

“Assume for a moment that by some miracle one of our two groups is full of farsighted, ecological geniuses. They are able to keep their population in check and, moreover, keep it far enough below the carrying capacity that minor changes in the weather, or even longer-term changes in the climate, do not result in food stress. If they need to consume only half of what is available each year, even if there is a terrible year, this group will probably come through the hardship just fine. More important, when a few good years come along, these masterfully ecological people will not grow rapidly, because to do so would mean that they would have trouble when the good times end. Think of them as the ecological equivalent of the industrious ants.

“The second group, on the other hand, is just the opposite—it consists of ecological dimwits. They have no wonderful processes available to control their population. They are forever on the edge of the carrying capacity, they reproduce with abandon, and they frequently suffer food shortages and the inevitable consequences. Think of this bunch as the ecological equivalent of the carefree grasshoppers. When the good years come, they have more children and grow their population rapidly. Twenty years later, they have doubled their numbers and quickly run out of food at the first minor change in the weather. Of course, had this been a group of ‘noble savages’ who eschewed warfare, they would have starved to death and only a much smaller and more sustainable group survived. This is not a bunch of noble savages; these are ecological dimwits and they attack their good neighbors in order to save their own skins. Since they now outnumber their good neighbors two to one, the dimwits prevail after heavy attrition on both sides. The ‘good’ ants turn out to be dead ants, and the ‘bad’ grasshoppers inherit the earth.”

Are humans really that stupid then? Not really as LeBlanc explains. It is just that change was usually so slow that no one generation could see what was happening. It might take one or two generations or longer to kill off all of the large animals to hunt, or several hundred years of slash and burn farming before the land became marginal and unproductive. No one generation of people could see the changes that were occurring, nor could one generation question generations of tribal warfare. Every generation grew and died in a fairly constant ecological niche compared to what occurred over hundreds of years. But over that time the humans kept expanding and shrinking in cycles, and never found a balance with nature.

Surely then, the extant hunter–gatherers that we can observe today would not be so blind to ecological disasters of their own making would they? Well, it seems nothing has really changed, especially among the marginally intelligent tribes. LeBlanc observes:

“Mainland studies give a similar result. The Hadza, for example, are a small group of hunter-gatherers who live near Lake Eyasi in Tanzania. They exist by collecting a number of different roots and by hunting both large and small game in a rather sparse and unpromising environment. Unrelated to the Bantu-speaking farmers and herders that populate much of Africa, the Hadza are similar to, but culturally and linguistically distinct from, the more famous Bushmen or !Kung of southern Africa. Living in such a harsh environment, the Hadza people would be expected to be careful conservationists. Yet, ethnographic studies reveal that, ‘the Hadza give little attention to conservation of their food resources. When women dig up roots, they do not attempt to replace any portion of the plant to grow again. When they gather berries, heavily laden branches are often torn from the trees and carried back to camp. When a woman is building the framework of her grass hut, she is as likely to use branches from berry trees as from any other type of tree…. When a nest of wild bees is found and raided for its honey, no portion of the comb is left to encourage the bees to stay on. Moreover, little effort is made to leave the nest suitable for reoccupation…. In hunting, no attempt is made at systematic cropping…. There are no inhibitions about shooting females (even pregnant females) or immature animals. . . . If two animals are killed on the same day, the more distant one may be abandoned.’

“This account is hardly the stuff of a deeply ingrained conservation ethic critical to survival. The Hadza are not alone in this behavior; researchers see it throughout the world in many time periods and places. Irven DeVore relates once watching !Kung women collecting tubers. The women found a nice patch and dug up all the tubers. Then they selected only the largest specimens to carry back to camp. They did not replant the smaller ones to grow larger but left them to dry out and die.”

In the media however we are constantly fed stories of the “wise” savage or the “street smarts” of those living in the ghetto. Almost any story about indigenous people or ghetto life will lead to platitudes of how these peoples’ “special way of knowing” is equal to the greatest professors in our universities. So eager are today’s egalitarians to prove equal human worth that anecdotes have replaced science as the primary means of conveying truth.

Now, are the current environmentalists any better at planning our future so that we can live in peace with one another? Hardly, it seems, because I am not aware of any environmentalist movement that states flat out that we need to limit the number of people where these people cannot support themselves. Instead, what is usually advocated, is for the West to provide resources to impoverished people around the globe, in order to bring them up to our living standards, so that THEN they will not have so many children. Any environmentalist movement, that does not address population growth in backward countries, is not really interested in living in balance with nature, but has other motives and intentions.

Now back to warfare. Originally war was needed to reduce the number of people because warfare was preferable to starvation—one can win a war. As bands became tribes, and tribes became chiefdoms, then states, and finally empires, the rules and reasons for warfare changed. From chiefdoms to highly complex societies, warfare slowly became a means to an end for powerful leaders. Leaders decided when it was good for the country to go to war, regardless of the welfare of the people they led. It was no longer a matter of putting food on the table but going to war for personal self-aggrandizement.

LeBlanc notes, “Chiefdoms are also precarious and allies are critical. No chief is safe if his enemies gang up on him, so it behooves every chief to have as many allies as possible. To gain allies a chief must appear strong, and one way of demonstrating strength is to look wealthy. The size of monumental architecture, the lavishness of a feast, the quality and rarity of gifts, all serve to help chiefs size up their potential allies or foes.”

Moving up to more complex societies he states, “There is no correlation between the existence of productive public works and improved standards of living. Another hallmark of complex societies is the inequality of their people: The elites in a chiefdom or state had more of everything—resources and power—than the non-elites, as seen in their grander houses, their burials filled with rare and valuable objects, and even their larger physical stature and better health. Societies with a controlling elite could enforce peace on members of the social group, and they could attempt population control. Though relative peace could be mandated, the efforts at population control almost never worked.”

LeBlanc then goes on to discuss current warfare, where on the one hand impoverished conditions may push young men to go to war, at the same time that another nation’s elite will take the nation to war for those few in power. We see both trends today, as tribalist warlords or religious or national partisans clash with powerful nations that want to control another nation’s resources, form of government, or alliances. LeBlanc notes, “Today, not only do a small number of people make the decision to go to war (although in some states there does need to be popular acceptance), but a small number of people can manage the war in almost total isolation from reality.” In addition, a small number of people can come together to form terrorist cells that are extremely difficult to defeat. And how much worse would it be in Iraq today if the average Iraqi had the same level of intelligence as the average American? What would have happened if they had the technology to build and hide thousands of surface-to-air missiles, rather than rely on the rather crude and limited grenade launcher?

The West today is naturally controlling population growth, but sabotaging the benefits of it through open immigration. We have the ability to go to war only when it is in our economic interest—for all of the citizens of a nation—rather than for a few, whether it is for power and prestige or an egalitarian agenda to save the downtrodden from themselves. As Frank Salter argues in On Genetic Interests, universal nationalism is a viable means to have peace between nations, by competing economically, and preserving each ethnies gene pool by not flooding the nation with outsiders who breed like rabbits. But perhaps a lot more warfare will be needed before Whites will realize that they have done their part in controlling overpopulation, and we must force others to do likewise or let them starve on their own.

Posted by Matt Nuenke on Tuesday, March 22, 2005 at 07:46 PM in Immigration
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