What We Can Learn From War

More+Events ♦ Published: October 31, 2018; 15:19 ♦ (Vindobona)

The aim of a special exhibition on "war. tracing an evolution" at the Natural History Museum (NHM - Naturhistorischen Museums Wien) is to make the phenomenon of "war" tangible on the basis of historical evidence. The big questions "Does man learn from his history?", "What is aggression?", "Since when has war existed?" and "Is war inevitable because it is human?" are to be answered.

In the Battle of Lützen (near Leipzig) more than 6,000 men were slaughtered during the Thirty Years' War in 1632. (Peeter Snayers (1592 – 1666); Schlacht bei Lützen, 1632. 1642) / Picture: © KHM-Museumsverband, Wissenschaftliche Anstalt öffentlichen Rechts / Gemäldegalerie 1820

The exhibition invites visitors to embark on an archeological journey, taking them back more than 7,000 years to the earliest origins of military conflict.

In humans, biological and cultural evolution interact strongly. Ironically, the creative power that results from this connection also produces deadly weapons. The development from tool to weapon, from single combat to mass…