re: #110 freetoken

I don’t know enough about the indigenous cultures of the Americas, or Africa, or SE Asia, to be confident to say that sectarianism (as we understand it) was a driver in their conflicts.

In NE Asia I do not believe that (formal) religious beliefs played a central role in their warfare. The Mongols, the Han, and those who came to be known as the Koreans and Japanese certainly had their own bloodthirstiness, but I can’t pick any particularly religious wars from memory.

There could be a debate on the meaning of “war”, or how it is reported, but it is a simple matter to ask why there are so many fewer Christians or Jews in Muslim countries than there were centuries ago, or Armenians or Baathist in their areas, or Muslims in India. Perhaps the Neanderthals had a similar problem?

War is not an instructive word in this context.