It is widely believed that "war is a part of human nature". This is simply not true. While aggression is an innate drive, it does not necessarily follow that warfare is its inevitable expression. Neither is it true that warfare is an inevitable concomitant of the development; of civilization, with large hierarchical societies needing more resources. Rather, warfare, in the form of open hostilities between two groups, can be regarded as a social institution, in much the same way as we view others in our culture - marriage, funeral rites, trial by jury, and so on. The difference is that, though this institution has grown increasingly savage over the course of history, so universal is its acceptance that we think of it, not as a social construct, but as an attribute of humanity itself.

War is a social construct. It is also quite recent. Prior to about 10,000 BC, there is evidence that human beings engaged in ritual conflict, but not in actual inter- group warfare. There is a possibility that early agricultural settlements may have been raided by "marauding nomads", but the evidence for this is very tenuous. The first walled settlement, Jericho, dates from around 7000 BC, though most are several thousand years later. But not until 3000 BC did resource and territorial competition become warlike, with the first recorded "war" between Upper and Lower Egypt occurring around 3200 BC.

With the emergence of secular power elites, and rivalry for dominance, war became established as a social institution. Autocrats were able to accumulate power and wealth by encouraging its use, and for some, their armies provided an opportunity for enhancing their prestige.

War is not a part of human nature. There is no evidence to suggest that humanity engaged in any inter-group violence until about 12,000 years ago. The first recorded "war" was not until 3,200BC. It was between Upper and Lower Egypt and concerned the acquisition of land. In hunter/gatherer societies today, aggressive behaviour is generally ritualized, and if there is violence, injuries are few; there is no reason to believe that early societies were different. War is, historically speaking, a social construct, a culturally determined phenomenon. It is "civilized" people who kill each other with ever greater violence as our technology and numbers increase. We are faced with a paradox. Our very co- operative and social nature, which provides the impetus for civilization, can also lead to war - through a deep- rooted distortion of our society, and thus of our nature.

When the prerequisites for sustainable peace are not fulfilled, a society is unstable and prone to violence - either civil conflict or external wars. These underlying causes are aggravated by establishment control of the way in which we view "outsiders", and by our tendency to blame an external agency for the problems that beset our own society.