The Spread of Firearms among the Indians on the Anglo-French Frontiers

Worcester, Donald E.; Schilz, Thomas F.

doi:10.2307/1184207

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…For example, a group with a longer‐range bow or a stealthier submarine may be at a decisive military advantage. But technologies can be copied once they have proven their worth in battle, as indicated by the rapid spread of European firearms in the Americas . Therefore, as long as groups have similar abilities to adopt the new technologies, group success due to variance in technological innovation is likely fleeting.…”

Section: Warfare Meets the Conditions For Group‐structured Cultural Smentioning

confidence: 99%

An evolutionary theory of large‐scale human warfare: Group‐structured cultural selection

Zefferman

Mathew²

2015

Evolutionary Anthropology

104

114

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When humans wage war, it is not unusual for battlefields to be strewn with dead warriors. These warriors typically were men in their reproductive prime who, had they not died in battle, might have gone on to father more children. Typically, they are also genetically unrelated to one another. We know of no other animal species in which reproductively capable, genetically unrelated individuals risk their lives in this manner. Because the immense private costs borne by individual warriors create benefits that are shared widely by others in their group, warfare is a stark evolutionary puzzle that is difficult to explain. Although several scholars have posited models of the evolution of human warfare, these models do not adequately explain how humans solve the problem of collective action in warfare at the evolutionarily novel scale of hundreds of genetically unrelated individuals. We propose that group-structured cultural selection explains this phenomenon.

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Section: Warfare Meets the Conditions For Group‐structured Cultural Smentioning

confidence: 99%

An evolutionary theory of large‐scale human warfare: Group‐structured cultural selection

Zefferman

Mathew²

2015

Evolutionary Anthropology

104

114

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The competition for firearms intensified Chickasaw rivalries with other Indian groups and expanded the scale and range of their intertribal wars. 16 From the 1680s, Chickasaw war and diplomacy revolved around procuring firearms and blocking their enemies' access to the same. Because Europeans had a monopoly on gunpowder and ammunition, the Chickasaws and their neighbors lost their former self-sufficiency.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%