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Finding a 5,500 year old warzone is going to devastate the peace lovers

This shows that there may have been peace lovers for as long as 5,500 years.
Warfare is a natural state of affairs – I’m hard pressed to think of a truly “peaceful” group of animals in nature. From humans to apes to dog and cats and ants they protect their territory and conquer their neighbors. I even watch the local squirrels at war on a regular basis.

Warfare is a natural state of affairs – I’m hard pressed to think of a truly “peaceful” group of animals in nature. From humans to apes to dog and cats and ants they protect their territory and conquer their neighbors. I even watch the local squirrels at war on a regular basis

Your assessment may be correct. Other animals go to war only over access to resources. Do humans go to war for any other reasons?

Okay, okay, the subthread is getting as interesting than the actual thread.

R. Scott: Warfare is a natural state of affairs – I’m hard pressed to think of a truly "peaceful" group of animals in nature.

I think you're onto something.

Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit: Other animals go to war only over access to resources. Do humans go to war for any other reasons?

I think that R. Scott is correct, that warfare (or more broadly, struggle, debate, and controversy) are the natural pasttime.

dsc: Satanic evil, and resisting same.

I think, in general, people go to battle to avoid something they perceive as worse. That could be a loss of prestige as well as a loss of livelihood. Resistance to an attack, IOW self-defense, is a great motivator.

Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit: For me the only two instances where there is even a semblance of an argument that religion was the reason were the Muslims in the 700s and then the crusades. But those were just about power, plunder and control of resources as well.

patton: Power is a resource - above all, hitler was out for power.

IMHO, politics is always and only about power. And, as CC and DSC wrote, the Moslems weren't chasing resources.

R. Scott: Even a purely defensive war – beating off invaders – comes down to protecting resources.

Some are motivated by that. The skillful leaders know how to motivate via lots of methods, to make sure everyone hears what they need to hear in order to be motivated to fight or even just support the war.

Constitutionalist Conservative: Which resources were Alexander, Napoleon and Hitler after? Sometimes war is driven solely by colossal egos.

I disagree. All politicians have colossal (and brittle) egos, and most don't go to war.

Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire grew out of the Persian Empire's various invasions of Greece before the Peloponnesian War(s), and Persia's meddling in Greek city states (including the P War).

Napoleon tried to build French industry by requiring continental neighbors to buy French products, and France couldn't adequately supply the markets of Europe, so Nappy would march on capitals, try to invade Britain, and over time bring (as I've seen it described) sorrow to half the houses of Europe.

Hitler (and Napoleon before him) rose during a time when the nation he ruled was in economic and political turmoil. Once upon a time I had to study declassified documents from the US State Dep't from the period before WWII, and the constant litany was that Germany's trade with various countries in South America -- manufactured goods for raw materials by barter -- was growing, mostly at the expense of cash on the barrelhead US industries' trade with those same countries.

dsc: A hundred years after mohammed's death, the mooselimbs had conquered everything from Afghanistan to Greece. They didn't need to conquer that much to ensure plentiful resources... The Crusades were the first wars on terrorism. Included in the lands reduced under mooselimb tyranny were vast areas that had been Christian for hundreds of years. Christian pilgrims seeking to visit holy sites were murdered, raped, and enslaved (just like today).

I'd say, the Crusades were a war of self-defense. Islam is medieval fascism, and the Koran a medieval Mein Kampf, y'know, as long as we're all drawing parallels. :')

GingisK: Hitler was after numerous natural resources such as petroleum, chromium, and iron. He was also after "living space".

The struggle for living space is classically Malthusian, as was the European colonial expansion. It's an axiom of medieval (and earlier) economic systems that wealth is fixed. In a modern economy, wealth isn't a pile of loot in Unka Scrooge's basement, it's being made all the time, through work. The "hard money" mentality is also Malthusian in outlook. There were various scares over impending losses of resources at various times, and of course the occasional calamity (such as the Little Ice Age, and the Black Plague) which intermittently reinforced the fear.

Constitutionalist Conservative: Okay, I'll grant that these guys sought resources in the course of their military adventures. However, I maintain that the quest for resources was not the primary motivator for their adventures. Empire was (plus revenge, in Hitler's case).

I wholeheartedly agree, Hitler was consumed by a need for revenge. I do wonder what he thought he was owed, since Germany and his own country of that time, the empire of Austria-Hungary, had started the war in the first place (unless one counts the Serb who shot the Archduke). Perhaps his knickers were knitted up about having had his old country parted out more or less along ethnic lines and geographic features.

Of course, Hitler was just a nut, but he did have a real knack for self-aggrandizement. His favorite artist was Franz von Stuck, and one study of Hitler noted that Adolf modeled himself after a character in one of von Stuck's paintings ("The Wild Chase"), right down to the odd mustache and that cape he wore -- and the painting was a mythological subject, and painted in the year of Hitler's birth. Creepy.

patton: However, look at the german invasion of russia - purely motivated by Uncle Joe's offer to cut off the German oil supply.

While Stalin's inertia is easier to explain (the USSR was clearly not ready to fight a huge war; also, the Commies, despite the revisionism that began with Barbarossa, saw Hitler as the only choice for Germany and a partner; and Stalin was reluctant to mobilize a defense for some while after the invasion began, he literally couldn't believe the agreement would be broken), Hitler's opening of the eastern front is such a colossal blunder, one is tempted to agree with those who claim he was merely fighting out along the lines laid down in Mein Kampf.

In the recent book "Interrogations" one of the German generals made note of some inside info which illuminated the mystery of Hitler's Barbarossa. He noted that HItler was agitated by the constant (as he saw it) guerrilla war along the frontier in divided Poland. That was probably just local activity (Poles, plus hungry Soviet citizens) and definitely had nothing to do with Stalin's regime or the Red Army, but Hitler took it as something that had to be stopped, and used that as a rationale for launching Barbarossa, an invasion plan that was strenuously objected to by some military leaders (I think Guderian is one example; something got him suspended for a couple of years, right when his services could have been pretty handy).

patton: 2nd treaty of versailles required germany to pay war reparations to france, to the extent that it bankrupted the weimarer republic, and led to hitler's rise to power. Ipso facto, WWII was started to prevent a LOSS of resources.

Actually, not bad. But Hitler's rise to power was only made possible by Hindenberg, who needed just a few votes to create a working gov't, and assured his associates, "don't worry, I can control Hitler." Hitler was headed down the road to obscurity after the Nazis crushing election defeat, and a month or so later, he was running the country.