The Ecology of East African Homicide

Abstract

Recent investigations suggest that high levels of environmental stress increase individual susceptibility to hypoglycemia, which, in turn, raises the level of aggression in a society. In this paper we examine various eco logical factors which might be functioning as stressors in the environment of thirty-four East African tribes. Using homicide rates as our indicator of aggressiveness, we test a set of hypotheses dealing with the relationships between these stressors and tribal levels of aggressivity.