Peace Systems: A New Perspective on Human Nature

An emerging evolutionary perspective suggests that nature and human nature are less “red in

tooth and claw” than generally acknowledged by a competition-based view of the biological world.

War is not always present in human societies. Peace systems, defined as groups

of neighboring societies that do not make war on each other, exist on different

continents. A comparison of three peace systems—the Upper Xingu River

basin tribes of Brazil, the Iroquois Confederacy of upper New York State,

and the European Union—highlight six features hypothesized to be important in

the creation and maintenance of intersocietal peace: (i) an overarching social identity,