..."evidence of the world’s oldest known battle....some 13,000 and 14,000 years ago,"

[dixiegrrrrl]

From Gwynne Dyer's column, titled:

The Origins of War

The 59 skeletons were found in 1964, lying together in a gravesite beside the Nile near what is now the Egyptian-Sudanese border. They died between 13,000 and 14,000 years ago, and some of them seemed to have died in battle. That was big news half a century ago, when most people still believed that organised killing was an invention of civilisation. Now they are back in the news, billed as evidence of the world’s oldest known battle.

The skeletons were first dug up in haste, as part of a “salvage dig” to rescue archaeological artefacts that would soon be covered by the 500-km lake rising upstream from the new Aswan High Dam. They got little further attention until two years ago.
Scientists at Bordeaux University recently re-examined them, and discovered dozens of previously undetected arrow impact marks on the bones. MOST of the victims had died in a hail of arrows, killed by an organised force of enemy archers, and the deaths had occurred over a period of months or even years. So there had been a prolonged low-level war long before the rise of civilisation or even of agriculture.

The people in the graves were ethnically Africans, probably driven down into the Nile valley by the drying out of what is now the Sahara Desert. We can surmise that their enemies were probably whites of the Levantine/European/North African stock that lived around the Mediterranean and had already spread up the Nile.

The war was almost certainly about resources, for it was a time of rapid climate change and food resources were under great pressure. The two groups were hunters who had efficient weapons, so technically they could fight a war. But the weapons were not new, and neither were resource crises.
So why didn’t this happen far earlier?

http://gwynnedyer.com/2014/the-origins-of-war/

[Gothmog]

1. But Ken Hamm says the world is only 6.000 years old

The nut cases are not going to like this finding

[elleng]

2. 'plus ça change,

plus c'est la même chose.'

[Lochloosa]

3. A prolonged low level war is not a battle

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

4. I think the word 'battle' is being used because

MOST of the victims had died in a hail of arrows, killed by an organised force of enemy archers,

You're probably not going to have an 'organized force of enemy archers' shooting a 'hail of arrows' at just one guy. So that would mean groups on either side, which takes us to the word 'battle'.

[littlemissmartypants]

5. I think I want to be a forensic anthropologist. eom

[Demeter]

6. It's more likely that earlier "wars" have no remaining traces

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. Exactly...which is why this was an important find.

We do seem to have the DNA for it, don't we?