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Chapter 8 peaceful versus warlike societies in pre-columbian america: what do archaeology and anthropology tell us? James DeMeo Perhaps the ultimate price we all pay for diminishing the female’s power and position in society is war, the great corporate money-machine and ideological tool of fascism. This chapter reveals the relationship between patriarchal culture and war. Discussion of this relationship has typically been suppressed in one of two primary ways. The previous chapter addressed the first way: simply curtail any discussion about the power of Indigenous women in peaceful, traditional Indigenous society. The second way is to re-create history so as to make the world believe that Indigenous cultures were not at all peaceful in the first place. The latter has been a primary occupation for a number of authors for some time. For example, in 2003, St. Martin’s Press published Harvard archaeologist Steven LeBlank’s book, Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage, co-authored with Katherine E. Register. Like a number of other academic books, such as those referred to in the introduction, this one attempts to demonstrate that warfare today is far less prevalent than it was in “primitive ” cultures. It argues that the assumptions and the actions of early Indigenous People resulted in patterns of violence throughout the world, and that awareness of these patterns in concert with recognizing the advantages of modern technology increases the ability for humans to avoid war in the future. An admirable goal, but their anecdotal evidence contradicts larger bodies of evidence about war in pre-contact cultures. In fact, their “evidence” simply replicates the self-authorizing mythology in which the majority of Americans have been thoroughly steeped. From images of the caveman dragging his mate into a cave after crushing the head of an opponent with a club to memories of Saturday morning television programs depicting blood-thirsty savages, Americans do not need “more awareness” about Indigenous violence. As previous chapters have shown, popular literature, Hollywood movies, and school textbooks have done an ample job of getting the average person to see ancient cultures as having been prone to violence and war. A large body of research, however, opposes claims that war and belligerence were very prevalent in Indigenous cultures. A day spent looking at the Human Resources Area Files demonstrates this clearly. HRAF, an internationally peaceful versus warlike societies 1 3 5 recognized organization in the field of cultural anthropology founded in 1949 at Yale University, publishes scholarly materials arranged by geographic region. Its large data base in archaeology and cultural anthropology clearly shows that warfare, religious conflict, genocide, and massive civilian morbidity and mortality from social wars were rare in most Indigenous societies relative to European ones. In this chapter, one of the foremost researchers on the subject, James DeMeo, presents a summary of his painstaking research, which further supports the conclusion that “pre-contact” American Indian cultures were oriented more toward peace than war. Although he does show a number of exceptions to this rule, he demonstrates that they are examples of “isolated patristic violence amid a background ocean of matristic and peaceful social conditions.” Knowing that our Indigenous ancestors had a way of living cooperatively can give us hope that there is at least one human model that may help us end the increasingly horrific wars so prevalent in our dominant cultures today. JamesDeMeoreceivedhisdoctorateingeographyfromtheUniversityofKansas, where his research corroborated various aspects of Wilhelm Reich’s controversial social and biophysical discoveries. DeMeo has been on the faculty of geography at Illinois State University and the University of Miami. He has published over 150 articles on a range of issues—energy resources, health, cultural history, environmental problems, and experimental life-energy research—as well as the following books: The Orgone Accumulator Handbook (Natural Energy Press, 1989, now in seven languages), Nach Reich: Neue Forschungen zur Orgonomie (co-editor, Zweitausendeins, 1994), On Wilhelm Reich and Orgonomy (editor, Natural Energy, 1993), Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence (Natural Energy, 1998), Heretic’s Notebook: Emotions, Protocells, Ether-Drift and Cosmic Life Energy (editor, Natural Energy, 2002). He is also editor of the journal Pulse of the Planet. In 1978, he founded the Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory, of which he has remained the director to this day. *** When people come to trouble, it is better for both parties to come together without arms and talk it over and find some peaceful way to settle it. —spotted tail...

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