I am compelled to put down here something that I am studying, part of John Keegans history of warfare, refering to studies made of hostilities between primitive tribes, namely the Maring Tribe of Highland New Guinea: "The timing of Maring warfare always coincided with the readiness of a tribe to offer the necessary thank-offering to their ancestor spirits for assistance in the fight. Such thank-offerings took the form of killing and eating mature pigs in the ratio of one for each tribe member. Since it takes about 10 years to raise and fatten such a number of pigs, fights seemed only to occur every 10 years. And strangly, it was only toward the end of each 10 year period that neighbouring tribes began to offer each other the slights and injuries which were the occasion of such battles. In any event, to undertake battle without the means of thanking ancestors was to court defeat; on the other hand, to have a surplus of pigs without the excuse to eat them was to lose the point of fattening them in the first place.....It might be thought that the Maring fought out of habit rather than for any reason that anthropological theory can advance". On actual warfare itself; "Each morning when there was to be fighting, the able bodied men assembled near their hamlets and went en-masse to the fight ground for the days combat while the women remained behind to attend to routine gardening and domestic duties. The men themselves did not fight daily during the period of warfare. When it rained both sides stayed at home, and by mutual agreement, all combatants sometimes took the day off to repaint their shields, attend ceremonies or simply to rest. There could be intervals as long as three weeks during which hostilities were suspended while the men worked at making new gardens". Once I stopped laughing, I began to wonder what was so primitive about that. Now, where are the pigs....
