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Author's response: The challenge of peace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2024

Luke Glowacki*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA laglow@bu.edu https://www.hsb-lab.org/
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

The 30 commentators are largely sympathetic to the account I develop for the origins of peace in humans, though many suggest that peace has deeper roots and that humans share characteristics of peace with other species. Multiple commentators propose how to extend my framework or focus on the cognitive and psychological prerequisites for peace. In my reply, I discuss these considerations and further my account of why I think peace as defined here was unlikely prior to behavioral modernity which emerged approximately 100,000 years ago. In general, there seems to be a consensus that moving the debate beyond “war versus peace” in human evolution and instead focusing on the conditions that enable war or peace is a fruitful direction for the field to take.

Type
Author's Response
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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