Human tendencies to compete and social demands for group and individual survival may conflict. Many societies possess a compromise: ritual fighting. Ritual fighting (or ritual battle or ritual warfare) permits the display of courage, masculinity and the expression of emotion while resulting in relatively few wounds and even fewer deaths. Thus one can view the practice as a standard form of conflict-resolution and/or as a healthy psycho-social exercise. Native Americans often engaged in this activity but warfare occurs or occurred much more rarely in most other hunter-gatherer cultures. In more formalised social environments representative champions — not necessarily leaders themselves — may represent a party and engage in ritual single combat after the manner of David and Goliath .

Warfare is known to several tribal societies, but some societies develop a particular emphasis of warrior culture (such as the Nuer of Sudan, the Māori of New Zealand, the Dugum Dani of New Guinea, the Yanomamö (dubbed "the Fierce People") of the Amazonas, or the Germanic tribes of Iron Age Europe).

Endemic warfare is not equivalent to "primitive warfare" in general, but is reserved for perpetual low-threshold conflicts. Communal 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" .

The Yanomamö of the Amazonas traditionally practiced a system of escalation of violence in several discrete stages. The chest-pounding duel, the side-slapping duel, the club fight, and the spear-throwing fight. Further escalation results in raiding parties with the purpose of killing at least one member of the hostile faction. Finally, the highest stage of escalation is Nomohoni or all-out massacres brought about by treachery.

Similar customs were known to the Dugum Dani and the Chimbu of New Guinea, the Nuer of Sudan and the North American Plains Indians. Among the Chimbu and the Dugum Dani, pig theft was the most common cause of conflict, even more frequent than abduction of women, while among the Yanomamö, the most frequent initial cause of warfare was accusations of sorcery. Warfare serves the function of easing intra-group tensions and has aspects of a game, or "overenthusiastic football" . Especially Dugum Dani "battles" have a conspicuous element of play, with one documented instance of a battle interrupted when both sides were distracted by throwing stones at a passing cuckoo dove

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.
• S. A. LeBlanc, Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest, University of Utah Press (1999).
• Guy Halsall, 'Anthropology and the Study of Pre-Conquest Warfare and Society: The Ritual War in Anglo-Saxon England' in *Hawkes (ed.), Weapons and Warfare in Anglo-Saxon England (1989), 155-177.

See also

• Prehistoric warfare
• Tinku
• War dance
• mock combat
• Communal violence
• religion and violence
• Historical periods characterized with endemic warfare:
• Aztec warfare
• Anglo-Saxon warfare
• Mongols before Genghis Khan

External links

• Haida Warfare
• Tribal Warfare and Blood Revenge
• The Crow Creek Massacre
• Warfare among tribal peoples, review of War before Civilisation
• Tribal warfare kills nine in Indonesia's Papua

The series consists of two comics, which are set in the Mesozoic era, Tribal Warfare and The Hunt. Both are very violent stories about the daily lives of carnivorous dinosaurs.

The books have received Eisner awards for Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition and Best Limited Series.

Tribal Warfare

A pack of Deinonychus get revenge on Blue Back, a Tyrannosaurus who stole their well earned meal, by stealing all of his families eggs but one.

The story can best be described as a sort of "gang-war" between the two species, and while many of the animals depicted in Delgado's story did not exist at the same time period or place, their inclusion was added for familiarity and dramatic effect.

The Hunt

The second and final book is more of a tale of revenge, but features a similar "species vs. species" rivalry.

See also

• Gon (manga) − another silent comic featuring a dinosaur

References