The peaceful landscape at Monte Albán in Mexico belies the fact that the culture that built it, the Zapotec, were quite violent. Photograph by Christina Elson.

I’m glad to see National Geographic news report on the Zapotec civilization whose roots are in the lovely Oaxaca Valley, Mexico. In the news story archaeologists offer ideas about what led to the decline of one of Mesoamerica’s earliest states. Some of their ideas echo what’s going on around us today—environmental instability, the collapse of the economic system, and loss of faith in state leaders. These problems caused people to drift away from a political organization they’d lived under for almost a thousand years.

There is another aspect of Zapotec culture that echoes current events—violence. This is a subject that is now receiving a lot of attention among archaeologists.  

Early Zapotec rulers had no qualms about using extreme violence to subdue local rivals and near neighbors. Monte Albán, the Zapotec capital, was founded about 500 B.C. One of its earliest civic structures is covered in hundreds of slabs showing nude, mutilated people—often men who have had their genitals removed—suggesting political leaders inflicted gruesome punishments on anyone who stood in their way. In a nearby valley conquered by the Zapotec, archaeologists Charles Spencer and Elsa Redmond found a the remnants of a wooden rack dating to about 10 B.C. that held at least 61 human skulls. This terrifying feature was set up in the town square. Today we’d call it an example of mass murder.

In the decades after the last World War great thinkers suggested that violence grew from cultural conflict inherent in “civilized” life. It’s true that archaeologists often discover that violence plays a role in the formation of many early states. For example, recent work at Tell Brak in Syria led by Augusta McMahon uncovered mass burials dating to the early-to-mid 4th millennium B.C. containing hundreds of adults who met a sudden, simultaneous, and violent, death.

At the same time, archaeological evidence shows violence doesn’t only spring up with states—it’s also common and pervasive in village societies. Today’s anthropologists and evolutionary biologists don’t think it’s civilization that makes us violent. Sadly, they say, humans have an intrinsic capacity for violence.

Sociologist Rosemary Gartner identified three elements common in societies that tend to be more violent: extreme wealth disparity; a culture that extols violent acts; and a lack of state institutions that create a shared sense of community. Most ancient states exhibit extreme wealth disparity. Many extolled the violent conquest of rivals. The archaeological record also suggests ancient cultures developed community-oriented mechanisms, especially games and scripted battles, to mitigate violence. For example, many scholars think the Mesoamerican ballgame was often played between rival groups to defuse tensions and create opportunities for shared ritual. In South America, a modern example of a behavior that reduces endemic violence between groups is the Tinku, an event where neighboring groups get together, get drunk, and beat each other up.

Today some of the worst violence is in places like Sudan and Myanmar where states kill citizens with impunity. Archaeology can help us understand the history of violence and contribute to the debate on how both culture and the state mitigate and encourage its expression. If anthropolgists and evolutionary biologists are right about our intrinsic capacity for violence, then it’s up to us to understand how to tame our worst tendencies.

Do you think people intrinsically violent? What social and cultural factors contribute most to violence? Do you think things like sports, games, or contests channel violent tenancies? —Dr. Christina Elson for Stones, Bones, 'n Things

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