War Between Men and Women

Steven Mithin summarizes research (by Napoleon Chagnon) on the Yanomano people who lived in the Amazonian forest, “believed to be the most primitive, culturally intact people in existence in the world.”[1]:

Duels often start when one man catches another in flagrante with his wife. In Chagnon’s words, ‘the enraged husband challenges his opponent to strike him on the head with a club. He holds his own club vertically, leans against it, and exposes his head for the opponent to strike. After he has sustained as blow on the head, he can then deliver one on the culprit’s skull. But as soon as the blood starts to flow, almost everybody rips a pole out of the house frame and joins in the fighting, supporting one or other of the contestants.’ The tops of most men’s heads are covered with deep, ugly scars of which they are immensely proud. In fact, some men display their scars by shaving and rubbing red pigments to ensure these are clearly defined.

Many raids between villages were in order to abduct women, even if it was claimed that their purpose was to end sorcery being undertaken by members of one village against another. Chagnon describes extremely violent conflicts, especially those that involve nomohori—treachery—in which people visit another village on false pretences and then brutally kill the welcoming residents and flee with their women. A captured woman is typically raped by all members of the raiding party, and then by any other man in the village who so chooses. One of the men then takes her as a wife.

--Steven Mithin, After the Ice: A Global Human History 175-6 (Harvard UP 2003)

[1] Link here.