Wigmen.

This is coolbert:

Primitive warfare.

Am watching the other night the public television broadcast of the Travelscope "adventure" series as hosted by Joseph Rosendo.

"Travelscope"

"In TRAVELSCOPE, award-winning travel journalist Joseph Rosendo explores the world's treasures"

In this particular episode, Joseph travels to the highlands of New Guinea, visiting a western-style lodge from which day-trips can be done, exploring the surrounding jungle and observing the traditional life of the Huli Wigmen tribal group.

"Papua New Guinea - Cultural Encounters in an Ancient World"

"Joseph heads to Papua New Guinea's remote highlands for cultural encounters with the Huli Wigmen"

As shown during the broadcast is a formidable structure, a pair of earthen and packed clay berms, pretty substantial, with a moat in between. Berms delineating and marking the boundary between the territories of two clans. Berms hand-constructed and maintained over a period of decades, centuries, millennium?

High fences make for good neighbors! And earthen berms server the same purpose as well!

Earthen berms not only a marker but a defensive structure in time of war. Primitive warfare being endemic to the highlands of New Guinea. Primitive warfare as fought by traditional people still occurring, the rationale, the reasons, the motivations for war being: [from top to bottom, in descending order of importance]

* Land.

* Pigs.

* Women.

The denial of access to land and the resources thereof historically quite often a motivation for war!

Pigs not only a valuable food source but a status symbol too among the highlanders. Wealth measured in the number of pigs a man possesses. [in the ancient Indo-European tradition, cattle is the status symbol]

Bride-snatching also a common practice among "primitive peoples". Men not able to defend their females not worthy of respect in any society, New Guinea or elsewhere.

See also at these web sites other instances of primitive warfare, brutal and merciless, as practiced by various American Indian tribes, prior and after the arrival of Columbus:

"Peaceful tribe met a violent end in long-ago wars"

"Massacre at Sacred Ridge"

Warfare is part of the human condition, whether we like to admit it or not!

coolbert.