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I think the transition in human history from the age of Gilgamesh to the Homeric Epics and The Old Testament was very abrupt. Gilgamesh described a relatively peaceful society without much focus on lineage and vengeance where the characters were at times remorseful for being violent toward monsters they met in the forest for example. The Homeric epics and The Old Testament in contrast are filled with constant warfare, and brutality and a pathological focus on lineage. Has anyone else noticed this? It's not something that would have ever occurred to me without actually reading a lot of ancient literature.

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I think it's more likely that you are underestimating the violence, vengeance, and warfare of ancient Mesopotamia than human history got more violent, especially given the art we have available for Mesopotamia (vs. literature) for that period.

Gilgamesh described a world in which men and gods were equally capricious, and the strong took everything from the weak justly by virtue of their strength, justly, because there was no concept of justice (again, only divine caprice.)

There was a concept of justice, if the pre-socratics are to be believed (and if their view reflected the earlier views - which I conjecture it did). Thrasymachus (the Sophist) gives his understanding of justice and injustice as "justice is what is advantageous to the stronger, while injustice is to one's own profit and advantage". So you are right in saying that "the strong took everything from the weak justly by virtue of their strength" but this was seen as justice being done (the weak having no right to do anything about it. Might makes right, the law of the jungle, pre-Axial Age justice.

The Homeric epics and the Old Testament are both much, much larger works in terms of scope. You'd be better off comparing Gilgamesh to the Book of Job, or the Book of Ruth, or the Book of Esther, or something.

Interesting. Personally I conceive of the former, forest-dwelling example not as an older or distinct example but of a society with greater resources living in a more abundant part of the planet, perhaps primarily through settled agriculture. An environment of plenty, where the family and the group is more at the fore. Historically, perhaps occuring from Turkey to the west at the north of the Mediterranean. Wealthy lands in natural terms.

The later warmaking, by contrast, is an arid and inherently more competitive environment born of the Abrahamic old-world; with water-resources and petty states established under centralized, kingly rule, periodically extracting the ultimate taxation from their subjects by warmaking. I am by no means a scholar of that region's history but I perceive this model as carrying on primarily between Central Asia and the north-west of the Indian subcontinent in the east, to the easternmost edge of the Mediterranean in the west.

The world of Gilgamesh seems very sparsely populated and almost lonely. Perhaps this was why they were more peaceful.

To be fair it does sound a lot like evolution with civilisations as the unit of reproduction. Not getting wiped out by the war-like tribe next door is pretty much the only metric for survival. All the other stuff like self induced climate change is for long term civilisations

Although I do tend to look on these civilisations as being run by the bully at school who was beaten up by his dad and had no real idea why he was angry so much. If he was big clever and angry he could take over a tribe pretty quick and self select.

"Civilization requires persistent and widespread violence"

http://www.endgamethebook.org/Excerpts/1-Premises.htm

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