Since humans learned to stand upright without wobbling too much, they also learned how to organize confrontation—and how to justify it, which sometimes requires more invention than the act itself.
The archers painted on the rock shelters of the Spanish Levant—particularly in the Castellón region, around sites such as Morella and the Cueva del Roure area—belong to a broad artistic tradition dated to the late Mesolithic and early Neolithic (roughly the 7th to 6th millennia BCE). They are among the earliest narrative images known in Europe. The scenes show hunting in motion, and in some cases have been read as episodes of intergroup conflict.
What is clear is not the confirmed presence of war, but the early shaping of its story. From very early on, humans did more than strike—they composed. They organized action into sequence, gave it form, and turned events into something legible. And perhaps that is where the deeper history of power begins: in the ability to convert chaos into composition.
P.S. Early language systems such as Proto-Indo-European—the reconstructed ancestor behind many European and some South Asian languages—did not rely on a single abstract word for “war.” Conflict was instead described through specific acts like raiding, fighting bands, or disputes. The idea of “war” as a unified concept came much later, which is why Indo-European languages still reflect different, unrelated roots for it today.