During warfare, the killing of males is a human attribute (Obermeyer et al. 2008; as well as an attribute of other primates, Wilson et al. 2014), which to all historians of war is well-accepted. Such killing is woven into human mythology. The Book of Exodus opens with the Egyptian pharaoh believing that his citizenry is being over-populated by its enslaved labor force originating from abroad:

“And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other was Pauh: And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew woman, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.” (Exodus 1:15-16, see Footnote 1).

The strategic advantage of focusing on one gender for conquest is that half as much effort needs to be employed to subdue a tribe or nation while the surviving members of the conquered are absorbed along with the other resources. Bands that roamed the plains of Europe and Asia to subjugate tribes is documented for the Neolithic era between 10,000 and 10 BCE (Horn and Molloy 2025; Meyer et al. 2015; Novak et al. 2021; Schroeder et al. 2019; Szeverényi and Kiss 2018), a period when agriculture due to a stable climate was developed (see Footnote 2). There is now genetic evidence that at about 5,000 BCE the violence between competing clans throughout Eurasia (under male leadership) was so intense that the Y chromosomal composition was radically altered to suggest that the most violent and thus the most successful clans replaced the population of males while absorbing the spared women and children (Karmin et al. 2015; Poznik et al. 2016; Zeng et al. 2018).

In modern times, populations of males are still disproportionately eliminated during war (Ormhaug et al. 2009). For the 2002 to 2006 Iraq war, 82% of the population of Iraqis killed in combat were males between the age of 15 and 59 (Alkhuzai et al. 2008). Likewise, during the Kosovo war (1998-99) 90% of the population that died in combat were men and the remainder were women (Spiegel and Salama 2000).

It is the non-combat deaths (often caused by disease and starvation) that greatly exacerbate the overall mortality rate of a population experiencing war (Ormhaug et al. 2009). Of the nine major conflicts in Africa between 1963 and 2002, the average number of deaths ranged from 150,000 to 2.5 million, with some 11% dying in combat and the remaining 89% dying outside of combat (Lacina and Gleditsch 2005). Non-combat deaths tend to include men, women, and children and they are realized in countries with poor infrastructure.

There are more combat deaths for proxy wars that are supported by superpowers. For example, the Korean and Vietnam wars produced 1.3 and 2.1 million combat deaths, respectively, which are the highest combat death numbers post-WWII and which disproportionately include men (Lacina and Gleditsch 2005). Expect the Ukraine war to produce lots of combat death due to superpower engagement; so far there have been 350,000 combat deaths mainly composed of males [i.e., 100,000 Ukrainians and 250,000 Russians, Jones and McCabe 2025].

Overall, since 1945 the number of combat deaths has decreased (see Figure 1). This is largely due to the end of the Cold War in 1991 between the United States and the Soviet Union. However, in 2016 Donald Trump provoked a new cold war, a cold war between the United States and China who are currently engaged in a technology/ resource dispute over computer chips and rare earth minerals. Current hegemonic leaders such as Donald Trump and Vladamir Putin have adopted an antediluvian philosophy for resolving conflicts, namely, that there can be one winner only, as was practiced by the clans roaming the steppes of Eurasia during the Neolithic period (Karmin et al. 2015; Poznik et al. 2016; Zeng et al. 2018). Expect the number of combat deaths to surge in the post-Neoliberal period that we are now in.

Footnote 1: Exodus is perhaps based on fictional impressions of Egypt/Israel at 1,200-600 BCE (Finkelstein and Siberman 2002) which were all transferred from storytelling to written text by about 300 BCE (the age of the Book of Exodus/Dead Sea Scrolls).

Footnote 2: The average world temperature was stabilized at ~ 0 degrees C between 10,000 BCE and 1950 CE (Rockström and Gaffney 2021). This stability allowed groups of humans to secure control over their environment; this led to the invention of writing during the Neolithic period and two millennia later it triggered a scientific revolution (between 1,500 CE and the present) since written information could be assessed for its truthfulness by employing invented technologies, e.g., the microscope, the telescope, etc.

Figure 1. World battle deaths are plotted from 1946 to 2002. The first peak of death (1946 to 1954) is due to the Korean war and the Chinese civil war. The second peak of death (1964 to 1976) is due to the Vietnam war. And the last peak of death (1978 to 1990) is due to the Iran-Iraq war and the Afghan war. Note that other lesser wars of the period are also included in the plot. Data from figure 2 of Lacina and Gleditsch (2005).