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Science and technology
科學技術
The origins of war
戰爭的起源
Old soldiers?
古老的戰士？
The latest research suggests humans are not warriors in their genes, after all
最新研究發現人類骨子里有的不是殺伐
EDWARD WILSON, the inventor of the field of sociobiology, once wrote that war is embedded in our very nature.
艾德華·威爾森是生物社會學領域的創始人。他曾經寫道戰爭深植于我們的骨子里。
This is a belief commonly held not just by sociobiologists but also by anthropologists and other students of human behaviour.
這種觀點不僅生物社會學家普遍認同，人類學家以及一些研究人類行為的學者也認同。
They base it not only on the propensity of modern man to go to war with his neighbours but also on observations of the way those who still live a pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer life behave.
認同的基礎有兩點：現代的人們有與鄰為敵的傾性；對那些仍然生活在農業社會以前的采集狩獵者的觀察結果。
Add this to field studies of the sometimes violent behaviour of mankind's closest living relative, the chimpanzee, and the idea that making war is somehow in humanity's genes has seemed quite plausible.
除此之外，還可以到野外觀察一下與人類親緣關系最為相近的黑猩猩，可以知道黑猩猩有時也有暴力行為。由此，威爾森的觀點似乎相當有說服力。
It has even been advanced as an explanation for the extreme levels of self- sacrificial altruism people sometimes display.
其實，這種觀點早已有人提出過，用來解釋自稱犧牲的利他主義者有時表現出來的那種極端行為。
But a paper in this week's Science, by Douglas Fry and Patrik Soderberg of Abo Akademi University, in Finland, questions all this.
本周，芬蘭埃博學術大學的道格拉斯·弗萊和帕特里克·索德伯格在《科學》雜志上發表了論文，提出了疑問。
Dr Fry and Mr Soderberg have reviewed what is known about modern hunter-gatherers.
他們負責對被稱為現代狩獵采集者的研究做出評論。
They suggest that although such people are far from peaceful they are also far from warlike.
他們說，雖然這些人遠不是和平之士，但他們也遠不是好戰之人。
Most who die violent deaths in their societies do so at the hands of fellow tribesmen, not foreigners.
在他們的社會中，多數死于同族人暴力的人，而不是外來者暴力的人，也會施展暴力。
Murderers, this research suggests, humans may often be.
論文稱，人類可能經常會成為殺人者。
But they are not the died-in-the-wool warriors of anthropological legend.
但是，又不是人類學傳奇上的那種馬革裹尸的武士。
Dr Fry and Mr Soderberg came to this conclusion by scrutinising 21 hunter- gatherer societies from all over the world.
他們兩人對全世界21個獵狩社會進行了仔細觀察，得出了此項結論。
They looked at ethnographic studies of these groups, published over the past 100 years or so.
他們瀏覽了這些族群的種族志研究結果。
Inter alia, these studies recorded homicides and their circumstances.
這些研究發表于大約100年以前，特別紀錄了殺人行為以及原委。
The two researchers classified such deaths into interpersonal events, interfamilial feuds, group-sanctioned executions and intergroup events.
他們把死因分為人際關系矛盾，家庭不和，族群判決的死刑，族群間矛盾。
Only the latter could be described as war.
只有后兩者稱為戰爭。
One of the 21 groups was extremely warlike.
21個族群中有一個極度好戰。
More than half of recorded killings perpetrated by the Tiwi, an Australian people, were acts of war—and nearly half of all homicides from all causes in all 21 groups involved the Tiwi.
這個族群就是澳大利亞的提維人。研究中紀錄了他們的殺戮行為，其中多半數的都屬戰爭行為。21個族群所有的殺戮原委中近半數的涉及提維族。
This group was such an outlier that Dr Fry and Mr Soderberg did their analysis twice: once with and once without the Tiwi.
這個族群極度異常，兩人進行了兩次分析：一次涉及提維族，另一次沒有。
Nomad's land
游牧民族的土地
Excluding the Tiwi, deaths in war were only 15% of the total.
排除提維族，戰爭致死的人數是全部的15%；
Including them, the figure was 34%.
否則是34%。
But even that is still a minority.
但仍然不夠充分，
These numbers do not suggest hunter-gatherers are going out looking for trouble with their neighbours.
不能說明問題―獵狩者跑出去找麻煩。
This finding seems different from that arrived at in 2009 by Samuel Bowles of the Santa Fe Institute, in New Mexico.
這項發現與新墨西哥圣菲研究所的塞繆爾·鮑爾斯2009年的研究結果不同。
Dr Bowles looked at eight modern hunter-gatherer groups, including the Tiwi, and at archaeological evidence concerning 15 ancient ones.
鮑爾斯研究了8個現代獵狩族群和15個古代獵狩族群的考古證據，得出了結論：
He concluded that death in warfare is so common in hunter-gatherer societies that it was an important evolutionary pressure on early Homo sapiens, and might easily account for the emergence of self-sacrificial altruism.
獵狩社會中發生的戰爭死亡現象非常普遍，變成了早期人類進化的壓力。這就輕松地說明自我犧牲的利他主義的出現。
Dr Bowles's analysis did not, however, separate the Tiwi from the rest, so was influenced by this outlier.
然而，鮑爾斯的分析并沒有把提維族與其它族分離開來，因此受到了這種異常現象的影響。
Treating outliers with caution is reasonable.
認真對待這種異常現象是合乎情理的。
An analysis of modern warfare that looked at the 1940s would come to a different conclusion from one that looked at the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s or 1990s.
有一項分析著眼于1940年代的現代戰事，得出的結論與著眼于1950年代，1960年代，1970年代，1980年代以及1990年代的不同。
Nor could the archaeological studies clearly indicate which violent deaths were caused by war.
而且考古學研究也不能說明哪一項暴力致死的原因是戰爭。
As Dr Bowles himself says, one cannot always distinguish between deaths due to intergroup violence and that occurring within groups.
正如鮑爾斯本人所說，總是分不清哪些死亡是族群間暴力所致，哪些是同族群暴力所致。
Dr Bowles was not the first to conclude that war was common during human evolution.
戰爭是人類進化當中的普遍現象，得出此結論鮑爾斯并不是第一人。
Early in the 20th century, studies of the Yanomami, who live in the Amazon rainforest, suggested as much.
20世紀早期，對生活在亞馬遜雨林的諾馬米人的研究已經進行了大量論證。
But that idea was overthrown when, decades later, a researcher called Brian Ferguson re-examined all documented cases of Yanomami warfare.
但是，幾十年后又被布萊恩·弗格森推翻。
These, he found, were overwhelmingly in areas penetrated by settlers rather than in places where the Yanomami dwelt undisturbed.
他重新研究了諾馬米人所有的戰事文獻。他發現，這些戰事都發生在有人跡的地方，而不是諾馬米人安居的地方。
Something similar happened to chimpanzee researchers.
那些研究黑猩猩的學者們也進行了方式相似的研究。
The first big field study of these animals was done by Jane Goodall.
珍·古德進行了首次大型野外研究。
Her chimps, which live in Tanzania, are often aggressive, sometimes engage in cannibalism, and even steal and kill others' infants. And they do engage in something that looks like warfare.
她研究的黑猩猩生活在坦桑尼亞，好斗性強，有時會殘食同類，偷盜甚至殺死猩猩嬰兒，跟戰爭相似。
When a large group of chimps split, for instance, vicious intertribal conflict followed.
一大群猩猩內訌時，就會產生惡性沖突。
All this suggests an evolutionary origin for some of the darker aspects of human nature.
這些都表明了人性中那些較黑暗面的進化起源。
A second study, though, conducted in Congo-Brazzaville by David Morgan and Crickette Sanz of Washington University, in St Louis, came to contrary conclusions.
華盛頓大學圣路易斯分校的大衛·摩根和克瑞斯克特-桑茲在剛果共和國進行了又一項研究，得出了相反的結論：
It found chimps to be peaceful creatures.
此處的黑猩猩是安靜的動物。
For a while, that confused primatologists.
這又使靈長類學家迷惑不解。
The difference between the two populations turns out to be density.
兩處猩群的生活差別越來越大。
The Tanzanian chimps are crowded together as deforestation around their reserve reduces the amount of habitat available.
在坦桑尼亞，黑猩猩所生活的自然保護區周邊地區進行了大量的森林采伐，減少了棲息之地的數量，只能團抱度日。
Those in Congo do not, at least yet, suffer in this way.
剛果的則沒有。
Chimps, then, do offer a useful lesson on the origin of warfare—just not the one that was originally believed.
非洲黑猩猩確實能讓人了解到沖突的起源―并不是先前的那樣。
Groups of chimpanzees, like groups of people, will fight each other if need be, but will otherwise leave each other alone.
群居的黑猩猩跟群居的人類一樣，矛盾激化時也會打架，再不了就是誰也不理誰。
Whether modern, industrial man is less or more warlike than his hunter-gatherer ancestors is impossible to determine.
跟人類的獵狩祖先相比，現代化、工業化之下的人是否更加好戰，還是不太好戰，已經不得而知。
The machine gun is so much more lethal than the bow and arrow that comparisons are meaningless.
機槍的殺傷力比弓箭要更大，但這種比較是無意義的。
One thing that is true, though, is that murder rates have fallen over the centuries, as policing has spread and the routine carrying of weapons has diminished.
有一點是肯定的，近幾個世紀來，警力擴大了，帶槍的慣例減少了，謀殺率下降了。
Modern society may not have done anything about war. But peace is a lot more peaceful.
現代社會可能沒有改變戰爭，但社會秩序要更穩定了。
