That's something that happens in warfare, but that's not a definition of warfare. Even as a description, it's an over simplification. Palantas
The most basic definition of warfare I can find is fighting between competitors or competing factions which violently oppose each other. You can attribute elements of what commonly happens as a result of warfare (which you do shortly), or how warfare is usually conducted, but that is about the median of warfare, not the definition.
Defeated populations in war are either penalized, either monetarily or through some other political consequence, or they become conquered, governed by their former enemies. Very rarely is it the case that someone is just killed, and their land taken.Palantas
But it DOES happen. Which is why we don't define warfare by what the victor imposes on the vanquished.
Warfare is part of the political process, where one organized body attempts to influence another through the use of force. The objectives of war can be tangible things like land or resources, or they can be entirely intangible. Wars can be fought over ideals, like competing philosophical systems (one of your mentioned Christianity earlier), or as a consequence of a treaty, supporting someone else's war.
War is intrinsically linked to politics. Earlier, someone said that animals have war, but not government, which I didn't think made any sense; one is an extention of the other. The fact that animals kill each other and do so in a cooperative fashion does not mean they conduct warfare. Even the sources you provided acknowledge this:
[quote="Cell dot com"]Human warfare is a heterogeneous phenomenon that varies with respect to who participates, what is involved, and why it occurs. Because of this, whether chimpanzee intergroup aggression can be employed to provide insights into the origins and causes of warfare is likely to remain moot.Palantas
Even so, Mitani is very careful about drawing an analogy between chimp and human aggression, given the myriad of reasons that humans have for waging war.Guardian dot couk
If you want to identify warfare as a trait common to animals and man, fine, but at least do so with a solid definition of warfare.
The rest of your post seems to be a picking of the very advanced, and thus narrow, definitions of warfare, and thus by claiming animals don't serve these definitions of warfare, they cannot serve any definition of warfare. You also seem pleased you can say human and chimpanzee warfare are very different, which I'm not sure many of us would debate.
You're overall point seems to be warfare fundamentally needs to be linked to politics. But you stop short and never consider exactly what politics means; power and governance. Again, chimpanzees, and other primates, do practice power relationships and governance in very basic forms. They have hierarchy, and social dominances; they kill with tools, for material and territorial gain.
If you can't see how that can be defined as warfare, our debate has to shift to semanitcs, rather than sociology and anthropology.
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