Warfare has been recognized as an almost universal element in non-state societies all over the world and through history. This situation can be explained in terms of an inherent political structure: the self-identification of the kinship group by materializing the contrast with the Other in war, and the rejection of the emergence of an autonomous political power as a premise for the survival of the community itself. This may also connect warfare to the emergence of an institutionalized leadership since the moment a warrior leader extends his prestige to all society in peaceful times. In the Nile Valley, archaeological record allows us to demonstrate the preponderance of warfare in prehistoric period and its relation with emergent social leadership. This evidence leads us to question traditional hypothesis about the relatively peaceful nature of prehistoric Nile Valley societies and concomitant consensual hypothesis on the emergence of nilothic chiefdoms, and allows us to suggest an alternative explanation on how social leadership arose in a context of recurrent warfare in the Nile Valley.