If you have a society bottom-heavy with young, unmarried and violence-prone males, it seems you're a war zone waiting to happen, says Christian Mesquida.

    To test his hypothesis, he correlated population demographics of major countries around the world with conflicts that occurred during the last 10 years. "I mapped mortality figures, rather than wounded. They're the most accurate measure of a conflict's intensity," says Mesquida, a graduate student in psychology.

    What he found was a strong match between violent outbreaks (minor and major civil wars, terrorism, and major and minor international wars) and growth periods in the young male population.

    "This is a new way to look at conflict," he says. "More from the bottom up than the top down. The old belief was old men started wars, sending young men off to battle. But those leaders are probably as much a creation of the coalition [of young men] as they are the instigators."

    According to Mesquida's theory, one explanation of war is that it is "a form of intra-sexual male competition among groups, occasionally to obtain mates but more often to acquire the resources necessary to attract and retain mates [i.e., women]." In other words, war isn't caused by ideology, national pride or matters of honour - just an overabundance of young guys.

    The analysis of population patterns shows that this evolutionary perspective explains conflicts from ancient times to today's hot spots such as Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and the Congo.

    Mesquida and his research supervisor, psychology professor Neil Wiener, found that when rapid population growth shifted demographics so that the proportion of young males (aged 15-19) rose in comparison to older males there was a high potential for violence. They discovered conflict was likely and would be severe in countries where young men made up 35 to 55 per cent of the adult male population.

    Mesquida says his data can accurately predict where conflict may occur. "Right now we don't have to worry about Russia because their population is static. But we
might want to keep an eye on countries like India and
Pakistan."

Illustration: Cellia Calle