Ebaadshams

Has the world ever been at peace? Of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or just 8 percent of recorded history. In the search for the origins of war, archaeologists look for four kinds of evidence. The artwork on cave walls is exhibit one. Paleolithic cave paintings from Grottes de Cougnac, Pech Merle and Cosquer in France dating back approximately 25,000 years show what some scholars perceive to be spears penetrating people, suggesting that people were waging war as early as the late Paleolithic period. But this interpretation is contested. Other scientists point out that some of the incomplete figures in those cave paintings have tails, and they argue that the bent or wavy lines that intersect with them more likely represent forces of shamanic power, not spears. (In contrast, wall paintings on the eastern Iberian Peninsula, probably made by settled agriculturalists thousands of years later, clearly show battles and executions.) On the sam