Rating: 
Summary: Full of Distortions
Review: To my knowledge, no anthropologist today claims that war didn't exist in pre-state societies. However, the evidence indicates that prior to the advent of agriculture, it was a relatively rare occurance. Most of the author's examples of "primitive" warfare are from agricultural societies, and therefore not applicable.The book is also full of mind-boggling distortions of the archeological record. For more on this point, I urge readers to see the review of War Before Civilization in American Anthropologist.
Rating:
Summary: Full of Distortions
Review: To my knowledge, no anthropologist today claims that war didn't exist in pre-state societies. However, the evidence indicates that prior to the advent of agriculture, it was a relatively rare occurance. Most of the author's examples of "primitive" warfare are from agricultural societies, and therefore not applicable. The book is also full of mind-boggling distortions of the archeological record. For more on this point, I urge readers to see the review of War Before Civilization in American Anthropologist.
Rating: 
Summary: Overall picture is right on--conclusion faulty
Review: Vital for understanding how tribal people were hardly the peaceful sages of the earth but were in fact in often in a constant state of low-level warfare. Keeley misses, or dismisses, some major points made by other anthropologists about how hunter-gatherers were indeed healthy and free of the stresses of modern life. Keeley doesn't always differentiate between hunter-gatherers, tribes, and chiefdoms but rather analyzes data based on prehistoric people of all social organizations, many of which I suspect behaved more like civilized cultures in terms of territorial expansion and warfare. Instead Keeley focuses on instances when that was/is not the case and ends up glorifying civilization by saying what humans need is increased civilization in a global sense because our death rates are lower than in prehistoric times. To him the choice is obvious; then again, he barely mentions the consequences of civilization that many other anthropologists, scientists, philosophers, politicians, etc. have examined to death. A final aside: Despite Keeley's case, his argument appears to rely more on a scientific view than that of the experiences of those who have actually spent time with tribal people (see, e.g., Jean Liedloff and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas).
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