I mean Ridley Scott's The Last Duel features the last instance in France of its eponymous jurisprudence technique which came from Germanic tribal law before the

I mean Ridley Scott's The Last Duel features the last instance in France of its eponymous jurisprudence technique which came from Germanic tribal law before they were even literate (Germanic tribal warlords becoming the aristocracy everywhere but Ireland in post-Roman Western Europe), and this is about 500 or 600 years ago, never mind how much further back into the Bronze or previous time periods that dueling as juridical adjudication came from and what the world looked like to make such an idea palpable. Wasn't an American President killed in a pistol duel not 130 years ago or so? My grandfather grew up on a farm and never went to high school (which was a perfectly fine life decision in that milieu) and fought in WWII at 16 by lying about his age cause there were no birth certificates to prove otherwise I think we very much underestimate how different human reality is as far back as 4000 years ago, nevermind 50k