Violence was a part & parcel of ancient societies, claims new study

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Atacama Desert in northern Chile, researchers say. Absence of a central political system and competition for resources in the extreme desert environment may have enabled consistent violence for many millennia in the region, the researchers from universities in the US and Chile said in their study.
They were examining signs of violent trauma on the skeletal remains of 288 adult individuals dating from 10,000 years ago to 1450 AD from funerary sites across the coast of the Atacama Desert, a desert plateau located on the Pacific coast of South America.

They analysed whether the injuries had healed or were likely to have been fatal, along with determining if the wounds had been accidental or caused by intentional interpersonal violence. They further analysed patterns in weaponry and artistic depictions of combat over this time.
They have published their findings in the journal PLOS ONE.

Rates of violence were surprisingly static over time, the team of researchers including a biological anthropologist found.
However, a notable increase in lethal violence during the Formative Period started around 1000 BC, a trend also found in similar studies of the Andean region, they said. The Andes is a South American mountain range running more than 8,000 kilometres along the Pacific coast.

The Formative Period is one of the chronologies in the archaeology of the Americas, preceded by the Archaic Stage and followed by the Classic Stage.
This interpersonal violence occurred between local groups, and not between local and foreign populations, the researchers found upon analysing data from strontium isotopes which are used to measure the chemical signal of an individual and to infer if they were local or foreign in origin.
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