Creatively and intellectually there is no other species that has
ever come close to equalling humanity's achievements, but nor is
any other species as suicidally prone to internecine conflict. We
are the only species on the planet whose ingrained habit of
conflict constitutes the chief threat to our own survival. Human
history can be seen as a catalogue of cold-hearted murders,
mindless blood-feuds, appalling massacres and devastating wars,
but, with developments in forensic science and modern psychology,
and with raised education levels throughout the world, might it
soon be possible to reign in humanity's homicidal habits? Falling
violent crime statistics in every part of the world seem to
indicate that something along those lines might indeed be
happening. Colin and Damon Wilson, who between them have been
covering the field of criminology for over fifty years, offer an
analysis of the overall spectrum of human violence. They consider
whether human beings are in reality as cruel and violent as is
generally believed and they explore the possibility that humankind
is on the verge of a fundamental change: that we are about to
become truly civilised. As well as offering an overview of violence
throughout our history - from the first hominids to the
twenty-first century, touching on key moments of change and also
indicating where things have not changed since the Stone Age - they
explore the latest psychological, forensic and social attempts to
understand and curb modern human violence. To begin with, they
examine questions such as: Were the first humans cannibalistic? Did
the birth of civilisation also lead to the invention of war and
slavery? Priests and kings brought social stability, but were they
also the instigators of the first mass murders? Is it in fact
wealth that is the ultimate weapon? They look at slavery and
ancient Roman sadism, but also the possibility that our own
distaste for pain and cruelty is no more than a social construct.
They show how the humanitarian ideas of the great religious
innovators all too quickly became distorted by organised religious
structures. The book ranges widely, from fifteenth-century Baron
Gilles de Rais, 'Bluebeard', the first known and possibly most
prolific serial killer in history, to Victorian domestic murder and
the invention of psychiatry and Sherlock Holmes and the invention
of forensic science; from the fifteenth-century Taiping Rebellion
in China, in which up to 36 million died to the First and Second
World Wars and more recent genocides and instances of 'ethnic
cleansing', and contemporary terrorism. They conclude by assessing
the very real possibility that the internet and the greater freedom
of information it has brought is leading, gradually, to a
profoundly more civilised world than at any time in the past.
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