Product details
- ISBN 9780008775513
- Weight: 270g
- Dimensions: 153 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 19 Nov 2026
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Why do we fight? Is war a consequence of our development, or is it in our DNA? Can we ever truly be at peace with our fellow humans?
From Marathon to Waterloo, Saratoga to the Somme, humans have warred amongst themselves. Even now, kamikaze drones stalk tanks on the Ukrainian steppes and Tuareg nomads battle mercenaries in the Sahara. War, it seems, is everywhere.
Our popular understanding is that war is a product of modernity and civilisation, a tragic recent development, rather than the natural state of the human species. Our prehistoric ancestors, the thinking goes, lived relatively peaceful lives free of conflict or major violence. But this is an optimistic view.
Affirming Churchill’s adage that ‘the story of the human race is war’, evolutionary biologist Nick Longrich draws on cutting-edge archaeology to overturn these existing narratives. He argues that from the Stone Age to the nuclear era, war has been an innate part of the human condition. Not only does this tell us much about our own behaviour and about the societies in which we live, but it may also hold the key to understanding why homo sapiens became the preeminent species on earth.
As Longrich argues, if we want to extinguish war, we must first understand its origins. By analysing how and why we fight, we can shed fresh light on emerging conflicts. Perhaps most importantly, by understanding how war came to be, we can help future generations avoid its evolutionary trap.
Dr Nick Longrich is a palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist based at the University of Bath, England. Born in Alaska, he studied at Princeton before majoring in evolutionary biology.
Having spent time describing new dinosaurs, including a new species of Tyrannosaurus, in recent years he has become increasingly interested in the evolution of the human species and in the communication of science, inspired by writers like Charles Darwin, Jared Diamond and Richard Feynman. The Dawn of War is his first book for a popular audience.
