    18

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    feel

    s rejected and complains miserably about her unbruised condition.

    It is a sign, she is certain, that her husband does not love her.34

    Yanomamo men have two great sports--hunting and war.  The

    patterns of their warfare bear a strange resemblance to those of the

    langur.  Yanomamo men sneak up on a neighboring village and attack.

    If they are successful, they kill or chase away the men.  They leave the

    sexually-capable young women unharmed.  But they move

    methodically through the lean-to-like homes, grabbing babies from the

    screaming captives.  Like the langurs, the Yanomamo men beat these

    infants against the ground, bash their brains out on the rocks, and

    make the footpaths wet with babies' blood.  They spear the older

    children with the sharp ends of their bows, pinning their quivering

    bodies to the ground.  Others they simply throw from the edge of a

    cliff.  To the Yanomamo, this an exhilarating entertainment.  They brag

    and boast as they smash fresh newborns against the stones.  When the

    winning warriors have finished, not a single suckling child remains.

    Then the triumphant Yanomamo men lead the captured women back

    to a new life as secondary wives.35  No wonder the Yanomamo word

    for marriage means "dragging something away."36

    What have the Yanomamo victors accomplished?  The same

    thing the langurs did.  They have freed the females from the biochemi-

    cal birth control device that keeps a suckling woman from bearing new

    progeny.  The Yanomamo fighters have made the wombs of their

    captured consorts available to carry fresh children...their children.

    The Yanomamo are not some strange aberration  dragged out of

    the jungle to illustrate a far-fetched point.  In the early fourth century,

    Eusebius --the first historian of the Christian Church-- summarized

    what the study of history had focused on until his time: war, slaughters

    for the sake of country and children.37  Hugo Grotius in 1625 published

    De Jure Belli ac Pacis (Concerning The Law of War and Peace), a book that

    tried to make Christian  war more humane.  In it, Grotius justified

    killing children.  He cited the 137th psalm, which said, "Happy shall he

    be who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock."  So Grotius

    was well aware of two things.  That killing the children of the people

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