When has humanity been at its most peaceful in history?

[Zain_SF 10]

With the price of oil as it is i cant see things changing in the near future

 

If oil could be replaced, what are the other main issues that prevent peace?

 

A list would be nice so I can work on it in my spare time and hopefully get the worlds greatest minds to do the same.

[Mangoes 10]

i dont think we have had one.

 

i remember reading years ago, about a time during an iceage. when its thought human numbers were down to 10,000. maybe that was the most peacful time.

 

in the sense that we were so spread out we could not find each other to kill.

 

Accessibility is another key to waging war. Nobody is safe now wherever they are in the world. If we look at the massive advances made since WW2for example, historically it was not so long ago, but technologically it was a million years ago.

Sadly most of the great technological advances were speeded up by various wars.

[HeadingNorth 11]

If oil could be replaced, what are the other main issues that prevent peace?

 

Greed.

 

At a trivially low level, you find it in online computer games, where there will be a huge number of small guilds that would all benefit from merging into one big one, but it never happens because each guild master is determined to be in charge of his own little empire. On a grand scale, it leads to the Napoleons, Genghis Khans and Caesars of the world.

 

I don't think any country has ever been immune. It is depressingly unlikely that any country ever will be.

[Mangoes 10]

You paint a dull and likely realistic picture, but I hope your wrong. With so much of the worlds poppulation wanting peace, how is it that such a small amount drag the majority into a war.

 

Jabberwocky your last sentence hit the nail on the head, but if only a society didnt need a crisis to be distracted from "scrapping" as you put it.

 

If 95% of people want peace and 5% want war, there will be war. That is unless the ones wanting peace actively do something to prevent it.

 

"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing"

 

One of my favourite quotes.

[HeadingNorth 11]

If 95% of people want peace and 5% want war, there will be war. That is unless the ones wanting peace actively do something to prevent it.

 

And, of course, the only way to prevent it would be to go to war with the warmongers and force them to surrender ...

[Mangoes 10]

And, of course, the only way to prevent it would be to go to war with the warmongers and force them to surrender ...

 

There is some truth in that I agree. But I really believe that peaceful people together have an excellent power of pursuasion without violence. But they usually cannot be assed.

[Zain_SF 10]

If 95% of people want peace and 5% want war, there will be war. That is unless the ones wanting peace actively do something to prevent it.

 

"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing"

 

One of my favourite quotes.

 

Has just became one of mine aswell who/what is it from?

 

Jose Mourinho - "It is a world that sometimes disgusts me to live in and earn a living from, but it is my world".

I like this one also but at the end it emphasis the point made about Greed.

[Mangoes 10]

Has just became one of mine aswell who/what is it from?

 

Jose Mourinho - "It is a world that sometimes disgusts me to live in and earn a living from, but it is my world".

I like this one also but at the end it emphasis the point made about Greed.

 

I think it was ...errrrr Wayne Rooney....:hihi:

[HeadingNorth 11]

Has just became one of mine aswell who/what is it from?

 

It was famously used in a speech by John F. Kennedy; I don't know if he coined it, or borrowed it from somewhere else.

[Zain_SF 10]

I think it was ...errrrr Wayne Rooney....:hihi:

 

That was a real LOL for me.

[Cavegirl 10]

Possibly during the ice ages when man was first heading into Europe. We were pretty scarce then and information was more important than warfare so when groups met, instead of fighting they exchanged information about animal migrations and stuff like that.

 

People were generally too busy trying to survive to think about fighting each other and it appears that warfare is a luxury that only rich or safe societies can afford. Give a society a crisis and they`ll be too busy trying to overcome that to think about scrapping.

 

I totally agree with you Jabberwocky. A huge amount of evidence points to the idea that hunter-gatherer societies consisted of small, widely dispersed, family groups and as they needed to cooperate in order to survive, it is highly unlikely they they would have resorted to warlike behaviour. That is not to say that violence wasn't present in early societies though. There is evidence of infanticide occuring when a group was not capable of supporting the children that they produced and I would imagine that some individuals would have been capable of murder through passion just as they are today.

 

Warlike behaviour and the technology of war seems to have evolved in the same way that societies have evolved. The Bronze Age Greeks for example, being early farmers would send out their 'heroes' to determine who would win the battle rather than allowing people to die needlessly because people at that time were still a valuable resource. The Romans could afford to raise armies because their farming methods were advanced enough to feed many through the work of a few and they had acquired extra 'free' labour through enslaving people. The recent advancement of technology, through coal and oil, has meant that people are no longer the valuable resource they once were and so we see mass deaths, in their millions sometimes, occurring on the battlefield.

[Mangoes 10]

I totally agree with you Jabberwocky. A huge amount of evidence points to the idea that hunter-gatherer societies consisted of small, widely dispersed, family groups and as they needed to cooperate in order to survive, it is highly unlikely they they would have resorted to warlike behaviour. That is not to say that violence wasn't present in early societies though. There is evidence of infanticide occuring when a group was not capable of supporting the children that they produced and I would imagine that some individuals would have been capable of murder through passion just as they are today.

 

Warlike behaviour and the technology of war seems to have evolved in the same way that societies have evolved. The Bronze Age Greeks for example, being early farmers would send out their 'heroes' to determine who would win the battle rather than allowing people to die needlessly because people at that time were still a valuable resource. The Romans could afford to raise armies because their farming methods were advanced enough to feed many through the work of a few and they had acquired extra 'free' labour through enslaving people. The recent advancement of technology, through coal and oil, has meant that people are no longer the valuable resource they once were and so we see mass deaths, in their millions sometimes, occurring on the battlefield.

 

 

What a lovely way of explaining mans inhumanity to man!