14 Perry, An Ethnological Study of Warfare. 



that it must perform some useful function. Why is war useful 

 to certain forms of social organisation, and not to others? 



The social organisation of warrior peoples is such that one 

 class — the nobility — is parasitic. It demands work from the 

 lower classes, and commoners and slaves will supply the dif- 

 ferent forms of labour needed. How did the Pharoahs of 

 Egypt build their pyramids ? By slave labour. Whole popu- 

 lations were enslaved by Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, in order to 

 toil for their rulers, and the gigantic works of antiquity were 

 only made possible by the fact that the Egyptians and others 

 could wage war upon peoples and enslave them. If the savages 

 of early times were pacific, it is easy to understand how the 

 Egyptians and other peoples could have enslaved them. 



Does not this need of labour and wealth explain the utility 

 of warfare to a governing class ? It is a means of ensuring 

 their own luxury and ease. Much of the warfare of Africa 

 and other continents has been of the nature of slave-raiding, 

 and whole tribes have been made slaves by warrior peoples 

 such as the Masai, so that such warrior peoples might be saved 

 the trouble or working. 



Warfare formerly supplied another need. We have seen 

 how constantly slaves were sacrificed by warrior peoples. 

 Human victims were needed for the sun-cult, and for other 

 purposes, and the existence of human sacrifices among warrior 

 peoples is in keeping with the frequent presence among these 

 peoples of the sun-cult. Head-hunting is therefore explicable 

 on the hypothesis that it is a search for victims for the chiefs 

 of the warrior peoples, and for their cults; that, in fact, it is 

 a modification of human sacrifice. Head-hunting can indeed 

 exist along wath human sacrifice, as among the Kayan of 

 Borneo. 



Slaves are only found among peoples who practise war- 

 fare. Unwarlike peoples have no hereditary chiefs, no slavery, 

 and no human sacrifices; on the other hand, slavery and human 

 sacrifices are associated with a hereditary warrior aristocracy. 



The hypothesis that warfare originated among a sun- 

 worshipping aristocracy is therefore in accordance with the 

 facts. The enslavement of humanity has not proceeded from 

 any innately cruel motive, but from that powerful stimulant 

 which, once at work, will drive men to extremes — greed. It 

 can be shown that the motive which led the " children of the 

 sun " to the ends of the earth, was that of the exploitation of 

 wealth,'*^ and examples could be quoted of the manner in which 

 they enslaved whole populations to work in their mines. 



The history of slavery is one of the saddest, and the 

 motives at the back of the practice are still powerful to-day. 

 The exploitation of human labour still continues, and only 



48. " The Relationship between the Geographical Distribution of 

 Megalithic Monuments and Ancient Mines," Proceedings of the Man- 

 chester Literary and Philosophical Society, Manchester, 1915. 



