Violence... The story so far

Anthropology includes human origins and development of: races, mentalities, physical characteristics, institutions, myths and religions, languages, and technologies, all in a cultural and historic framework. It is a discipline of infinite curiosity about human beings. Anthropologists are interested in discovering when, where, how humans have changed since Homo sapiens appeared on the earth, and how and why modern human populations vary in features and behavior.

Anthropologists also want to know why societies in the past and present have varied in their customs. It seems to us that the accurate recording of actual terror events by historians and development of their root causes by anthropologists would be an effective marriage of disciplines in this age of terror. A Start has already been made, see:

• Carolyn Nordstrom and Antonius C.G.M. Robben, eds. (1995) Fieldwork under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival.
• Avram S. Bornstein (1991) Crossing the Green Line Between the West Bank and Israel.
• Neil L. Whitehead (2002) Dark Shamans: Kanaimà and the Poetics of Violent Death.
• Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Carolyn Sargent, eds (1998) Small Wars: The Cultural Politics of Childhood.

For those with time only for one contemporary book, see "Terror in the Name of God" by Jessica Stern. Since history dwells more on violence and conquest than parenting and altruism, a pair of good reads for that are Martha Stout and Justin Frank.

Below, we provide links to specialized areas of anthropology and cultural history for your research:

• Anthropology of Religion
• Anthropology on the Web
• Anthropology on the webII
• Encyclopedia of Social and cultural anthropology Buddhism
• History of Christianity--Religious Tolerance
• Perspectives on Judaism
• Museum of Anthropology
• Religion
• Social Anthropology
• Books on Terror "Anthropology"
• Virtual Library

These sites make it their business to report their studies and interpretations of human origins and their societal baggage. How can improved knowledge of origins affect our response to Terrorism? See Natural History and Homo sapiens Evolve for how humanity came to be. See Locus of Control for what we as individuals can do.

For a summary of what we have learned about the origins of violence and what we might do about it, see: Peace Via Nature's Way - Index for the hard lessons and some guidelines--simple in concept, yet not so simple in execution.