that the evidence of “premeditation and planning” of the attack “implies that the resources the people of Nataruk had at the time were valuable and worth fighting for…this shows that two of the conditions associated with warfare among settled societies – control of territory and resources were probably the same for these hunter gatherers…” The co-author of this study, Marta Mirazon Lahr, a researcher at the University of Cambridge, noted that “what we see at the prehistoric site of Nataruk is no different from the fights, wars and conquests that shaped so much of our history, and indeed sadly continue to shape our lives.” More Violence in the here and now But one doesn’t have to travel back tens of thousands of years to witness this type of violence over resources. Although not in the same class of organized warfare, news outlets regularly report stories of patrons in fast food or grocery stores getting into heated arguments and sometimes deadly physical confrontations when ordering and buying food. On October 16, 2018, a customer stabbed a South Carolina restaurant employee multiple times over a food order (Kulmala, 2018). The Inside Edition (IE) news program reported that “some fast food restaurants look more like a battleground than a place to grab a quick bite.” Citing Bureau of Labor Statistics studies, IE reported that fast food violence events “are not isolated incidents. Assaults on fast food workers have doubled in five years.” Competition for resources happens outside of the stores as well. Violent confrontations between store patrons over limited car parking spaces in many different cities occur with regularity; some of them turning deadly as in summer of 2018, when an unarmed Florida man was gunned down in front of his young son by another man after having a dispute over a parking space. Police say the killer was justified, according to the state’s “stand your ground” law (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGQQ3DY97w).
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