We come away from the Iliad with a vivid sense of the battles fought there on the plains of Troy. We see warriors dying in battle after battle. On one day we see Diomedes sweeping all before him. Hektor has his day. When Achilles returns to the fight, he kills Trojans in shoals. Homer describes all this in such detail as to compel belief. But in fact, when tribe faced tribe in set battles, the body count was seldom high. The battle we see in the film Dead Birds is closer to the tribal norm: we see the warriors of two tribes facing each other on a grassy field. They meet each other in ragged lines. As the battle begins, one side surges forward, as the other side moves back. After fifty feet or so, the surge— we cannot call it a charge— begins to weaken, like surf spending itself on beach sands. Spears are more often brandished than thrown. Once a warrior has cast his spear, after all, he has lost his favorite weapon. An arrow shot is an arrow lost. Arrows and spears are personal property— and they take a long time to make. And to approach close enough to throw a spear or loose an arrow is to come within range of the enemy's spears and arrows.

The typical tribal battle is remarkably like the battles of Hamadryas baboons described by the ethologist Hans Kummer: