Life and death on the Nile: Why did Stone Age hunters on the Nile wage war or keep peace?

Many skeletons buried in cemeteries along the Nile Valley in Sudan at the end of the last Ice age bear unhealed traumatic injuries, healed fractures, and embedded stone weapons, suggesting chronic, pervasive intergroup warfare during the era when the Sahara became green around 15,000 years ago (ka). Arid climate from 13-11 ka, coincided with abandonment of the Nile Valley. When the Green Sahara returned, the Nile Valley became densely populated by hunter-gatherer-fisher communities. Evidence for interpersonal violence was very rare. However, a skeleton excavated by the Charles University expedition bears compelling evidence for murder with a bone weapon.

Our search for answers to the question of why warfare was chronic before the dry millennium but rare thereafter, follows a trail of evidence and theories from our earliest ancestors to modern humans.