This question has been asked by hundreds of thinkers and scientists throughout the history of mankind, but never came to a consensus.

Nature laws

There is a hypothesis that war is one of the natural mechanisms that regulate the human population. There is a certain logic in this statement, because humanity has long learned to effectively defend itself from predators and many other natural misfortunes. Consequently, as Mr Freeman, a well-known character on the Internet, said in one of his speeches, there are too many of us.

overpopulation

Based on the previous theory, we can conclude the following: due to the fact that the population of the planet is increasing every year, and the territories suitable for life, food, water and minerals, on the contrary, are rapidly decreasing, military conflicts become inevitable.

Thomas Malthus believed that war is the inevitable result of population growth in conditions of limited access to resources.

Ambition of kings

Unfortunately, often the civilian population decides little in political games " big bosses". Thus, nations sometimes become mere pawns to satisfy the mania of power to seize new territories and spheres of influence on the world stage.

ancient instincts

Some researchers believe that a person strives to fight because of undefeated animal instincts. That is, not because he really needs this territory or resource, but because of an irresistible desire to protect "his own", even if it is not.

Politics and nothing else

Many sociologists agree that the roots and causes of military conflicts should not be sought in psychology and biology; rather, they are sure that this is just one of the political maneuvers that has nothing to do with human nature. War in this case is not much different from other instruments in political relations between countries.

Dan Reuter wrote that the war should not be taken as a rejection of diplomacy, but as a continuation of trade relations by other means.

Origins in religion

If you look into a history textbook, you can trace an interesting pattern: all wars, one way or another, are connected with the religious preferences of people. So, for example, they believed that only a warrior can get into the desired afterlife. Christians waged wars with the "infidels", wanting to impose their faith on other peoples. And even in recent history we can see the manipulation of people through the pressure on their religious feelings.

Whatever the real reasons for the emergence of military conflicts, modern man must understand their consequences and try to avoid inciting new wars.

"-Uncle Yura, are you a spy? - You see, Pavlik..." WIKIPEDIA: "In early 1212, thousands of peasants (including children and adolescents) from Germany and France gathered in an army to conquer the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem (according to According to some reports, the French children did not go to Jerusalem, but to Paris to the court of Philip Augustus, where a certain preacher promised to present the king with a letter from Jesus Christ and perform miracles; Philip ordered the children to go home).

In May 1212, when the German people's army passed through Cologne, there were about twenty-five thousand children and adolescents in its ranks, heading to Italy in order to reach Palestine by sea from there. In the chronicles of the 13th century, this campaign, which was called the "Children's Crusade", is mentioned more than fifty times.

In France, in May of the same year, the shepherdess Stephen of Cloix had a vision: Jesus “appeared” to him in the form of a white monk, ordering him to lead a new Crusade, in which only children would take part, in order to free them without weapons with the name of God on their lips. Jerusalem. Perhaps the idea of ​​a children's crusade had to do with the "holiness" and "blamelessness" of young souls, and the judgment that they could not be physically harmed by weapons. The shepherd began to preach so passionately that the children ran out of the house after him. Vendome was declared the gathering place of the "holy host" and by the middle of the summer it was estimated that more than 30,000 teenagers had gathered. Stephen was revered as a miracle worker. In July, they went to Marseille with the singing of psalms and banners to sail to the Holy Land, but no one thought about the ships in advance. Outlaws often joined the host; playing the role of participants, they lived off the alms of pious Catholics.

The crusade was supported by the Franciscan order.

On July 25, 1212, the German crusaders arrived in Speyer. The local chronicler made the following entry: "And a great pilgrimage happened, men and virgins, young men and old men, and they were all common people."

On August 20, the army reached Piacenza. A local chronicler noted that they asked the way to the sea: back in Germany, they set off on a campaign, assuring that “the sea would part before them,” since the Lord would help them achieve their sacred goal. On the same days in Cremona they saw a crowd of children who had come here from Cologne.

German children endured terrible hardships crossing the Alps on their way from Germany to Italy, and those who survived the journey faced hostility in Italy local residents who still remembered the sack of Italy by the crusaders under Frederick Barbarossa. The road to the sea across the plain was much easier for French children. Having reached Marseilles, the participants of the campaign prayed daily that the sea would part before them. Finally, two local merchants - Hugo Ferreus and Guillaume Porkus - "have mercy" on them and put at their disposal 7 ships, each of which could hold about 700 knights, to sail to the Holy Land. Then their trail was lost, and only 18 years later, in 1230, a monk appeared in Europe, accompanying the children (both German and French children, in all likelihood, were accompanied by churchmen, although this has not been proven in any way), and said that the ships with young crusaders they arrived to the shores of Algiers, where they were already waiting. It turned out that the merchants provided them with ships not out of mercy, but in agreement with Muslim slave traders.

No matter how caring parents and elderly teachers say that all this is a whim, and you need to think about children and work, people all over the world again and again discover an amazing interest in ideas, even in the age of Internet hypermarkets. People take to the streets, fight with the police, go to fight in hot spots, blow themselves up in buses, and generally behave differently from the norms of a safe hostel.

What makes a person stand up for his beliefs, sometimes risking peace and even security? Why is it that such an abstraction, as ideas, is defended with that emotional involvement, which each of us had the opportunity to observe?

The French sociologist Michel Maffesoli in his book "Postmodern Man" connects the need to uphold beliefs with the phenomenon of neotribolism and the formation of "new urban tribes" - groups in which the unification of individuals occurs not only according to the principle of unity of the territory, characteristic of the social structure of previous eras, but also principle of unity of views and tastes. At the heart of any association, according to Maffesoli, is the need for a sense of belonging. This feeling makes a person defend the community that he considers "his own" and, accordingly, first of all, protect what constitutes his essential core - the views shared by this community. But is this the only reason? To understand this issue, we turned to specialists - a psychologist, biologist, sociologist and philosopher.

What makes a person stand up for his beliefs, sometimes risking peace and even security?

Maria Maksimova

candidate of psychological sciences,
Moscow State University

Why does a person have a need to defend their beliefs? Beliefs are part of a person's identity. Identity is the core of personality, a sense of one's own continuity and self-identity. This is a set of self-determinations of a person, accepted by him regarding himself and his life. In fact, this is the answer to the question “Who am I?”. Defending our beliefs, we indirectly answer this question, we maintain our identity. The more we invest in defending our point of view, the closer identity is to the pole of "achieved" as opposed to "diffuse". Achieved identity is a characteristic of a mature personality that has gone through a crisis. The main sources of belief are education, personal experience, social stereotypes, authorities, as well as art, science and religion. Beliefs are associated with the concept of socialization, interaction with other people. Beliefs, as well as attitudes and many other socio-psychological phenomena, have a three-component structure, three elements: cognitive (awareness, content, knowledge), emotional (assessment, attitude, feelings) and behavioral (what I do based on my beliefs) .

If you think in terms of Gestalt therapy, beliefs can consist of introjects - other people's views and judgments taken into themselves, "undetermined" pieces of other people's experience. Or beliefs can be the result of reflection and integration of experience, and then it is an indicator of maturity and awareness.

The struggle for beliefs contributes, maintains self-esteem, allows you to feel your importance.

One way or another, beliefs are the fabric of identity, and the need to defend them is the search for support and the definition of one's coordinates in a changing world.

I remember the words of my Gestalt therapy teacher: “Whatever a person does, this is his way of maintaining his self-esteem.” Of course, the struggle for beliefs contributes, maintains self-esteem, allows you to feel your importance, and if you compare this with basic needs, this is closer to the need for respect and recognition. According to the results of gender studies, meeting the needs of this order is especially important for men.

On the other hand, beliefs are indeed quite an abstract thing that do not directly address basic needs. Rather, they actualize the needs of a higher order - the desire for self-realization and self-fulfillment. And even when a person struggles to prove to others simple things or paradoxes, for example, that there is love, the world is good, and the sky is green, at that moment his main need is to appear, to be seen and heard and just be.

Alexander Panchin

Candidate of Biological Sciences, Senior
Researcher at the Institute for Information Transmission Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences

I think it's the beliefs themselves that use the vulnerabilities of our brains to spread more efficiently. Just as viruses can force cells to make copies of themselves (even to the detriment of the cell itself), so certain ideas (such as religious ones) can even force a person to sacrifice himself for the sake of their propagation. Those ideas that incline a person to such behavior will capture more and more minds until there is a way to protect against such zombies.

Polina Colozaridi

Researcher, National Research University Higher School of Economics

Why is it important for people to stand up for their beliefs?

If you are told that your neighbor, say Pavel, is risking his safety for some idea or value, you are likely to imagine a fantastic picture. It will have Pavel fighting with the riot police, because you can’t continue to live in a lie. Pavel, saving the children of a distant country, where there is a war, because there are no other people's children. Or at least Pavel, who signs a collective letter, knowing that he will be fired from his job because of this. Paul's motivation becomes clear to you. If you like his heroism, you will say that the neighbor belongs to those people for whom their group faith (or, more broadly, identity) is more important than private well-being. If Paul's ideas are not close to you, you will find that he is driven by a thirst for fame and social approval. That is, of course, you will say wrong, you will mark his courage or altruism, or, conversely, brand him for excessive zeal and thirst for attention.

In any case, your assessment will include the recognition that Paul is driven by some socially important motives. The collective becomes more important than the private. Further, many interpretations can be offered. For example, that it is not the strongest who survive, but the most adapted to collective life, as evolutionists say. Or, moreover, that this happens, because in evolution the main thing is not individuals, but genes, as he says Richard Dawkins. Or that altruism is profitable, as the philosopher Peter Singer writes. Or that the risk for the sake of collective values ​​is redeemed by the possible good in the future. And even death is red in the world, a neighbor will tell you, looking sympathetically at Pavel.

But the main thing is different. The very fact that we oppose values ordinary life and some ideas - this is a very mobile fact. We are accustomed to a stable life in which own security is a constant, as if inseparable from a person. And the struggle for ideals is something abstract, as if separated from us. But let's look at it differently. If neighbor Pavel is a trucker, then his need for security is connected with the idea of ​​liberation from the dictates of the state in a vital and indivisible way. Paul in this case will not agree with you at all what kind of idea he is. “You have to feed your family,” he says. And he will be right, because people go to defend their beliefs when they become material and inseparable from life itself.

Vladimir Kartavtsev

PhD in Philosophy,
University of Manchester

So, if we are interested in why people tend to act in accordance with their beliefs, and not otherwise, we can ask the following.

First, what are these "people"? Fortunately, our discipline is not concerned with people. Sociologists are interested in something else - how the social order within which people live is possible. This means, among other things, that the specific actions of people (or their groups) are the result of specific configurations of the elements of this order.

Secondly, what does it mean to "act"? Max Weber would have answered that an action is social, which, in its meaning, correlates with the actions of other people and is oriented towards them. The whole point here is in the word “meaning” - we may well perform some actions while alone with ourselves, but they will still be social; the main thing is to give this meaning - for example, to your experiences. This is how we relate ourselves to the world, formulating a certain set of values. The path from the values ​​we share to our own beliefs is shortened.

We cannot but complete our society within the framework of the daily practical actions that we perform.

Third, what does it mean to "act in accordance with one's convictions"? Can we fully consider our beliefs as “ours”? In part, the answer to this question has already been given - if society is predestined to us, if it exists before any “I” (and, most likely, this is exactly the case), then our beliefs are not what we invent, but what we assimilate. In general, the set of those stable patterns of action and thought that we assimilate as we socialize can be designated using the term "habitus" used by Pierre Bourdieu.

Finally, fourthly, we have the right to ask ourselves (and others) about what is it all about - beliefs? Maybe our beliefs are nothing more than an artifact of one or another tradition (national, religious, political), which we just reproduce uncritically. On the other hand, it may be that our beliefs are the result of a cunning substitution, which Marxist theorists have designated by the term "false consciousness." This is the case when our beliefs exist in such a way that they mask the true state of affairs. For example, you can justify the existence of such a political system (sincerely based on your “beliefs”), the structure of which brings you nothing but misfortunes, but the cause of these misfortunes remains indistinguishable for you.

In short, it can be argued with great reservations that it is important for people to defend their beliefs because this is how we build our social “I”: we cannot live outside the world that is predetermined for us, we cannot act exclusively affectively (after all, we still and rational), we cannot but complete our society within the framework of the daily practical actions that we perform.

Military historians rarely devote much space to discussing the causes of wars. But this topic, in addition to history, is also studied by other humanitarian disciplines. The debate about the origins of war and peace over the past few hundred years has revolved around one single question. It looks like this: is war the result of the predatory instinct inherent in human nature, or is it the result of principles learned in the process of education?

Social Darwinism and its criticism

The basic ideas for both answers go back to the concepts of the philosophers of the New Age - the Englishman T. Hobbes and the Frenchman J. J. Rousseau. In accordance with the concept of Hobbes, war is the result of the natural aggressiveness inherent in man, which is overcome as a result of the conclusion of a social contract. According to Rousseau's ideas, man is inherently good, war and aggression are a late invention and arise only with the advent of modern civilization. These ideas retained their significance even in the second half of the 19th century.

The modern phase of this debate began in 1859 with the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. In it, life on Earth was presented as a competitive process in which the fittest individuals survived. The concept of social Darwinism, which became most widespread at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, considered war as a continuation of the natural competition that we observe in wildlife.

A group of chimpanzees patrolling the area

Critics of this trend noted that war is a collective process in which separate groups and communities act against each other, while in nature this process takes place at the level of individual individuals. Moreover, the most fierce competition unfolded among the closest neighbors, who occupied the same ecological niche, ate the same food and claimed the same females. So the similarity here could be purely external.

On the other hand, if we follow the logic of the cultural anthropologists of the second half of the 20th century, who saw war only as a bad habit and the result of an inappropriate system of education, it is not clear why this habit is so difficult to correct. War is still a characteristic element of modern life, and this sad fact stimulates new research into the problem of its origin.

To date, the main results in this area have been brought by the development of the ethological approach. According to him, various patterns of human activity, including aggression, are considered as genetically determined programs. Each of these programs arose and developed at a certain stage of evolution, as they contributed to the successful resolution of problems as diverse as the search and distribution of food, sexual behavior, communication, or response to threat.

The peculiarity of the ethological approach in comparison with earlier directions is that here human behavior is considered not as the result of an instinct laid down once and for all, but as a kind of predisposition, which, depending on a particular situation, can be realized or not. This approach partly explains the variability of warlike behavior that we observe in nature and in history.

Ethological approach

From the point of view of ethology, war is a coalition intraspecific aggression that is associated with organized and often deadly conflicts between two groups of the same species. It should not be identified either with aggression as such, which has a purely individual dimension and is ubiquitous in the animal kingdom, or with predation directed against representatives of another species. Warfare, although traditionally a male activity, should not be equated with activities such as female rivalry, which by definition is an individual behavior. Genuine coalition aggression is very rare in the animal world. As a special form of behavior, it has developed only in two groups of animals: ants and primates.

According to Darwin's theory, natural selection encourages behavioral strategies that enhance the survival of a certain set of genes that are passed from one generation of descendants of a common ancestor to another. This condition imposes a natural limitation on the size of the social group, since with each new generation this set will change more and more. However, the insects managed to break this limitation and create related groups of huge sizes.

Up to 20 million insects live in a tropical anthill, while all of them are siblings. The ant colony behaves like a single organism. Ants fight neighboring communities for territory, food, and slaves. Often their wars end with the total extermination of one of the opponents. The analogies with human behavior are obvious here. But among humans, anthill-like forms of society—with numerous, permanent, compactly living populations strictly organized along territorial lines—arose comparatively late, only with the advent of the first agrarian civilizations about 5,000 years ago.

And even after that, the formation and development of civilized communities proceeded at an extremely slow pace and was accompanied by centrifugal processes that bear little resemblance to the rigid solidarity of ants. Accordingly, the expansion of our knowledge about insects, primarily about ants, is still not able to explain the origin of coalition aggression on the most early stages human development.

War among primates

Great apes, such as gorillas and chimpanzees, are the closest relatives of humans. At the same time, for a long time, the results of their observation were practically not used in any way to explain the origin of coalition aggression in humans. There were two reasons for this.

First, they were seen as extremely peaceful animals, living in harmony with nature and with themselves. In such relationships, there was simply no room for conflict that went beyond the traditional male rivalry over females or food. Secondly, great apes were considered strict vegetarians, eating only greens and fruits, while the ancestors of humans were specialized big game hunters.

Chimpanzees eat a killed monkey - a red-headed colobus

Only in the 1970s. it has been proven that chimpanzees are much more omnivorous than previously thought. It turned out that in addition to fruits, they sometimes eat birds and small animals they have caught, including other monkeys. It also turned out that they actively conflict with each other and, most strikingly, carry out group raids on the territories occupied by neighboring groups.

In this activity, according to one of the researchers, something eerily human is visible. Only males participate in raids, although female chimpanzees actively take part in hunting and intra-group conflicts. These groups of young males move to the border area and patrol the perimeter of their possessions. Having discovered the presence of single alien individuals, as a rule, also males, chimpanzees begin to pursue them, while demonstrating a fairly high level of collective interaction. Having driven the victim into a corner, they pounce on it and tear it apart.

The results of these observations seemed so incredible to the researchers that a whole discussion flared up in the academic environment regarding the possibility of chimpanzees killing their own kind. Opponents of this view insisted that these unprecedented behaviors were the result of an artificially created situation in the Gombe Stream Reserve. They argued that feeding bananas to chimpanzees led to increased competition and struggle for resources between them.

However, subsequent observations, purposefully carried out in 18 chimpanzee communities and 4 bonobo communities, still confirmed the ability of chimpanzees to kill their relatives in natural environment. It has also been shown that such behaviors are not the result of human presence and have been observed, among other things, where human impact on the chimpanzee's habitat was minimal or non-existent.

The researchers recorded 152 murders (58 directly observed, 41 determined from the remains and 53 suspected). It has been noted that collective aggression in chimpanzees is a conscious act, in 66% of cases directed against alien individuals. Finally, we are talking about a group action, when the forces of attackers and victims are not equal (on average, the ratio of forces was 8:1), so the risk of killers in this case was minimal.

This research also contributed to the destruction of another myth about the great apes, namely the supposedly devoid of aggressiveness bonobos. It turned out that bonobos, like their larger relatives, are capable of showing aggression, including in its lethal forms.

Why are they fighting?

Anthropologists have identified three factors that link chimpanzees to human ancestors and that are potentially responsible for the emergence of coalition aggression in both cases. First, chimpanzees, like humans, are one of the few primate species in which males remain in their natal group after maturation, while females are forced to leave it. Accordingly, the core of the group in chimpanzees is formed by males related to each other, and females come from outside. In most other primates, the situation is exactly the opposite.

Secondly, chimpanzees are moderate polygamists. They live in a ranking society in which males usually compete with each other for females, but at the same time there is no life-and-death struggle among them. Sometimes dominants tend to restrict access to females for low-ranking individuals. Sometimes chimpanzees form pairs for a long time.

Third, chimpanzees show little sexual dimorphism. Males are about a quarter larger than females, about the same as in humans. Gorillas and orangutans, unlike chimpanzees, are pronounced polygamists. In these species of anthropoid males, there is a fierce struggle for females, which are almost half their size. The larger size and large fangs of individual male gorillas are a serious advantage in the fight against a rival. The winner monopolizes all the females in the group, driving the losing opponent out of the group. Chimpanzees do not have such intraspecific polymorphism and advantage over rivals. Therefore, it is easier for them, like people, to cooperate with each other within their group in order to compete with males of other groups, protecting them from encroachments on their territory and their females.

It is also important that great apes, and especially chimpanzees, are endowed with a fairly complex brain. It gives them the opportunity to show empathy, to understand the meaning of the actions of other animals, attributing certain intentions to them. These abilities make real collective action possible on their part in a human-like sense.

A group of chimpanzees kill an intruder

The most important prerequisite for the latter is the ability to adequately perceive the intentions of others, soberly assess their capabilities and plan long-term strategies for interaction. There are other types of monkeys in which, like chimpanzees, the males coordinate with each other. However, without the appropriate qualities of the brain, they are not able to maintain such interaction for a long time.

Much of what is known today about chimpanzees is also relevant for our common ancestors, who existed about 6 million years ago. They were probably quite advanced and intelligent primates living in a closed, stable community, with high opportunities for male coalition behavior.

Over the past two decades, a number of large papers have been published proving that the sense of altruism underlying the ability of people to form stable coalitions was laid in close connection with the development of parochialism. In other words, hatred of a stranger is the reverse side of love for one's own, and militancy is an inevitable companion of friendliness. In the light of the data obtained by primatologists, it can be assumed that some semblance of parochialism is also present in chimpanzees, whose last common ancestor with humans lived only 6 million years ago.

Literature

• Kazankov A. A. Aggression in archaic societies / A. A. Kazankov. - M.: Institute for Africa RAS, 2002. - 208 p.
• Markov A. Human evolution. In 2 books. Book 1. Monkeys, bones and genes. M.: Corpus, 2012. 496 p.
• Shnirelman V.A. At the origins of war and peace. War and peace in the early history of mankind / V. A. Shnirelman. - M.: Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1994. - p. 9–176.
• Dawson D. The First Armies / D. Dawson. - London, 2001. - 124p.
• Wilson M. L., Wrangham, R. W. Intergroup relations in chimpanzees. // Annual Review of Anthropology 2003, vol. 32, pp. 363–392.
• Wilson M. L. et al. Lethal aggression in Pan is better explained by adaptive strategies than human impacts // Nature 2014, vol.513, p.413–419.

Simple questions. A book similar to an encyclopedia Antonets Vladimir Aleksandrovich

Why do people fight?

Why do people fight?

About 15,000 wars of various scales have taken place on Earth in 5-6 thousand years of human civilization. The time of absolute peace was about 300 years - less than 2%. So say the American researchers of wars and military conflicts Leo and Marion Bressler.

I cannot judge how they received such ratings, but it is known that only Russia after the Battle of Kulikovo spent more than half of its time in wars.

Before the 20th century, wars always had a clear justification. They fought for Elena the Beautiful, the Holy Sepulcher, for the throne, freedom, land, cattle. They fought for the prisoners. So, the South American Indians did not have enough people for sacrifices to their bloody gods. The Babylonian kingdom lacked qualified workers, and its soldiers captured the Israelites. It always turned out that the war is something beneficial to someone. As the Russian proverb says, to whom is war, and to whom is mother dear. Therefore, the war was often explained as a profit.

The twentieth century changed everything. If earlier, by the will of the leaders, the war could be both started and stopped, then in the last century, armed clashes got out of control. Those who could not have any benefits were also drawn into the war. Paradoxically, for many ordinary people participation in the war was the only chance to survive. For example, can you imagine a Soviet or German conscript during World War II who would refuse to join the army? Many veterans say that the main result of their war is that they survived.

The underlying causes that push people to war, unfortunately, remain unclear. Biologists have discovered that even the closest evolutionary relatives of humans are waging wars. Chimpanzees kill their own kind from another flock without any obvious benefit - they do not get food, territory, or females.

The disasters caused by wars have forced people to focus not on the causes of battles, but on ways to prevent them and minimize the damage they cause. In 1962, the American writer Barbara Tuckman published The Guns of August. Before the Caribbean crisis, that is, before the possible outbreak of the Third World War, there was about a month left. The book caught the eye of 45-year-old US President John F. Kennedy. He was shocked at how, due to a lack of information, the people who ruled the countries made the most important decisions not on the basis of facts, but on the basis of considerations and conjectures. The escalation of the war went against their will.

Historical facts confirm that both Kennedy and Khrushchev experienced tremendous pressure from their entourage. Many historians are inclined to believe that it was this book that influenced Kennedy's decision to call Khrushchev directly in the midst of the crisis. Since then, direct lines of communication and regular meetings of even potential adversaries have become the norm that keeps the peace.

Another American writer, Lois Bujold, pointing out that politicians and the military cannot prevent wars, suggested using a technological approach rather than a political and military one. It consists in treating war as a preventable catastrophe and developing procedures to prevent its occurrence. It is not easy to argue with Bujold, because even the military who read her books are amazed at the accuracy and depth of strategic vision.

There is probably nothing more valuable in the world than a peaceful life. Unfortunately, as the facts show, humanity spends most of its time in wars and does not know the true causes of their occurrence. It is encouraging that people are thinking more and more about how relations between peoples should be built so that there are no wars.

From the book All About Everything. Volume 1 the author Likum Arkady

Why are some people left-handed? Many parents of left-handed children are very worried about this, but are even more surprised when they are told that they should not try to fix it. Authorities argue that if there is a strong advantage of the left hand and a person

From the book All About Everything. Volume 2 the author Likum Arkady

Why do people get old? Do you know that in ancient Rome, the average life expectancy for people was only 23 years? Even 100 years ago in the USA it was 40 years. Most people prefer to live long and no one wants to grow old. But aging is a process that starts from the very

From the book All About Everything. Volume 3 the author Likum Arkady

Why do people stutter? The most complex and demanding musical instrument imaginable is probably the human vocal apparatus. It includes the belly rib cage, larynx, mouth, nose, tongue, palate, lips, teeth. Most important when

From the book Political Science: Reader author Isaev Boris Akimovich

Why do people walk in their sleep? Such cases are rare. But since sleepwalking is a certain form of behavior, there is nothing mysterious about it. To understand this phenomenon, one must start with the dream itself. We need sleep so that tired organs and tissues

From the book All About Everything. Volume 4 the author Likum Arkady

T. Gorr. Why People Revolt The dimension of violent unrest is characterized to a large extent by spontaneous struggles in the form of riots and demonstrations. This is fundamentally different - both statistically and in substance - from what might be called the measure of revolutionism,

From the book All About Everything. Volume 5 the author Likum Arkady

Why do people stutter? We have all met people who stutter. Such people should be treated with understanding and sympathy, but, unfortunately, there are many such people, including jokers, who consider this a subject for ridicule. Stuttering or stammering occurs

From the book Oddities of Our Body - 2 by Juan Steven

Why do people smoke? Millions of people know that smoking is dangerous to health, and yet millions of people smoke. Why? Experts from many branches of knowledge who have dealt with this issue believe that the process by which smoking becomes a habit, as well as

From the book Myths of the Finno-Ugric peoples author Petrukhin Vladimir Yakovlevich

How and why do people cough? Cough is an important lung defense mechanism. This is a strong, sharp exhalation of air as a result of contraction of the muscles of the respiratory tract. The air is pushed out at high speed, which allows you to clean Airways from foreign substances. Cough can

From the book Especially Dangerous Criminals [Crimes that shocked the world] author Globus Nina Vladimirovna

From the book Animal World author Sitnikov Vitaly Pavlovich

WHY DO PEOPLE BE KILLERS? Perhaps most of all this question worries psychologists and writers. There are enough theories about this. But if you generalize them, it turns out that they are divided into several main groups. So, what makes a person a reasonable person

From the book Republic of South Africa. Demo version for tourists from Russia the author Zgersky Ivan

Why are people afraid of scorpions? I must say that people are afraid of scorpions for a reason. Although scorpions in search of food attack primarily insects, wood lice and their closest relatives - spiders, they can also bite humans. Scorpion stings are not only very

From the book The Question. The strangest questions about everything author Team of authors

Why do people fight crows? Crows are very interesting creatures. Some of them are considered centenarians and seem to live up to 300 years. These ravens even deserve special respect, because they have seen so much in their lifetime and should be wise. But people don't really like

From the book Simple Questions. Book like an encyclopedia author Antonets Vladimir Alexandrovich

Why do people go to South Africa? Apparently, they had read Aibolit. For the first time, like many others, I set foot on the land of South Africa at the Johannesburg airport. It was summer, evening, it was very warm. The plain stretched around, built up with production facilities and hangars. The horizon was hazy. I AM

From the author's book

Why are Turkey, Israel and Iran not fighting the Islamic State in full force? GEORGY MIRSKYHistorian, political scientist, chief researcher at IMEMO RANTurkey does not fight, because ISIS is not even an enemy of tomorrow, but of the day after tomorrow. Turkey's main rival

From the author's book

Why and how do people age? Surprisingly, with scientific point view the problem of aging is quite young. While there were few old people on Earth, this problem did not seem relevant. So, in Europe at the end of the 19th century, the average life expectancy was 39 years, and Russia

From the author's book

Why do people yawn? If you turn to a medical encyclopedia of 30-40 years ago, you can read something similar to the fact that “yawning is an unconditioned reflex act, widespread among mammals, reptiles and fish. It has