Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

Family Values 511your husband, your brothers, and your sons, or has raped and abductedyour wife, your daughters, and your sisters.) But the feuders do not stopat an eye for an eye. If they see an opportunity to get rid of a headacheonce and for all by massacring their opponents, they may do so, with thewomen as an extra incentive. The desire for women not only helps to fuelblood feuds; it also helps to spark them in the first place. Usually thefirst killing was over a woman: a man seduces or abducts someone's wife,or reneges on a deal to trade a daughter.Modern people have trouble believing that preliterate tribes go to warover women. One anthropologist wrote to Chagnon, "Women? Fightingover women? Gold and diamonds I can understand, but women? Never."The reaction, of course, is biologically topsy-turvy. Other anthropologistsargued that the Yanomamo suffered from a protein shortage and werefighting over game. But their protein intake, when measured, turned outto be more than adequate. Across the world the best-fed foraging peoplesare the most warlike. When Chagnon mentioned the meat-shortagehypothesis to his Yanomamo informants, they laughed incredulously andsaid, "Even though we like meat, we like women a whole lot more."Chagnon points out that they are not so different from us. "Some Saturdaynight just visit a hard-hat bar where fights are frequent. What are thefights usually about? Are they about the amount of meat in someone'shamburger? Or study the words of a dozen country-and-western songs.Do any of them say, 'Don't take your cow to town'?"The similarities run deeper. Warfare among Western peoples is differentfrom primitive warfare in many ways, but it is similar in at least oneway: the invaders rape or abduct women. It was codified in the Bible:And they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded Moses;and they slew all the males. . . . And the children of Israel took all thewomen of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of alltheir cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods. . . . And Moses saidunto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? . . . Now therefore killevery male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath knownman by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not knowna man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. (Numbers 31)When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaimpeace unto it. . . . And if it will make no peace with thee, but will makewar against thee, then thou shalt besiege it: And when the LORD thy Godhath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof