The book brings together a group of authors who are addressing the nature and causes of warfare in simpler, tribal societies. The authors represent a range of different opinions about why humans engage in warfare, why wars start, and the role of war in human evolution. Warfare in cultures from several different world areas is considered, ranging over the Amazon, the Caribbean, the Andes, the Southwestern United States, Southeast Asia, Polynesia, and Malaysia. To explain the origins and maintenance of war in tribal societies, different authors appeal to a broad spectrum of demographic,...

The Islamic culture that developed in the ninth and tenth centuries AD in what is now Eastern Iran was to have a significant impact on most Muslims of west, south and central Asia. Under the patronage of Persianized Turkic Muslim rulers, the culture spread westward to the Mediterranean and eastward into India. Up to the fifteenth century AD, Turko-Persia represented a distinctive variant of Islamic life and thought in these regions, particularly among the elite, but thereafter regional variants started to emerge. This collection of essays comprises an historical survey of the culture, a...