Analysis Of Human Nature In Cannibals And Kings

Marvin Harris’s extensive research into the ancient world and the peoples who lived in it give an insightful perspective of the modern world. Though this work of non-fiction does not focus on a central thesis, its plethora of information makes one easy to extract: that human nature is, although many would like to deny it, inherently competitive, and therefore violent. Although heavily focused in on the Aztecs, Harris proves that across all walks of life that human nature is to be inherently violent. Among other things, efficiency, conflict, and even culture all leads us towards violence.
Perpetually, I believe humans are always leading themselves towards improvement. With the aim to improve, comes competition over efficiency as to how best to accomplish this. With this, comes violence, which in turn, ends in peace. Once a peace is established, humanity then turns its focus back to advancement, and this “advancement cycle” repeats itself. This is all well supported by many of the facts regarding efficiency in Cannibals and Kings, such as how long we work a day. In the beginning, people only used to have to work about three total hours a day, and so efficiency hadn’t really begun yet, so violence was not a big part of our collective culture. However, as people started to
Efficiency is once again brought up in this chapter as a means to explain that girls were thought of as inferior to males in combat, and that is partially why they were killed more often. Early cultures had such an emphasis on fighting and waging war, that mother neglected their newborn girls in order to raise another son to maturity sooner.Even besides wars, it is unquestionably true that violence gets its roots in human nature. For any further convincing look to the Aztecs, a group of people whose most infamous acts of brutality occurred off the