I think we can all agree that society is learned and passed down from one generation to the next. To see the roots of our society, we can look to agrarian cultures from the Neolithic. Even from the pre-domestication Kebaran period, modern humans used violence as ritualized communication.
That in itself speaks volumes about our human legacy. The Kebaran is not a unique occurence; even the older skeletons we've found show signs of battle within the species. The rituals become more pronounced as we settle into cities in the Early Neolithic. Crushed skulls and pits with bodies, plural, in communal buildings prove this tendency. Some of you would tell me that this is natural. Of course that's what happens when you stick a bunch of people together! Moochiron!
But there is a people in the Congo River Basin only developing who use a different kind of ritual for conflict resolution. The Bonobo group scavenges during the day, leaving messages for each other to meet in larger groups of over 100 every night, to travel and meet again the next night. They resolve conflict through sex. They do not have lifelong partners, and will give themselves to anyone in the conglomerate for peace, food, or fun. Somehow this is sanctified by a mother-son bond; the only relation which is invulnerable to the free-sex rule. They do not discriminate for age, sex, or kinship except in the case of the mother-son. The society is fascinating, and relatively safe to live in becauseof the aversion to violence.
Would we have evolved better with the values seen in this hedonistic culture? I don't know. The point more is that violence is not natural, or unavoidable; just extremely institutionalized.
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