I'll stick my neck out and claim that we know with a good degree of certainty that the incidence of violent assaults was far higher back then. Pinker's "The Bet

I'll stick my neck out and claim that we know with a good degree of certainty that the incidence of violent assaults was far higher back then. Pinker's "The Better Angels of our Nature" is a good source for the slow decline of violence over the centuries, pace spikes caused by industrialised warfare of course.