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Most contemporary evidence on hunter gatherers does lean towards them being considerably more violent than both agricultural societies and industrialized societ

Most contemporary evidence on hunter gatherers does lean towards them being considerably more violent than both agricultural societies and industrialized societies on proportional terms. It's true massive wars did not occur, but populations are also smaller. 1 person dying violently every other year out of a tribe of 50 is still an incredibly high rate of violent death. Contemporary evidence puts figures of about 25% of Hunter gatherers men dying violently and 15% of women and children: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/evan.21446 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/evan.21446

AndrewKemendo 3y ago
I think that is an old understanding. "Small- and medium-scale collective violence, in the form of confrontations between neighboring groups, may be as old as humankind [e.g.,1, 2]. By contrast, larger-scale organized and sanctioned lethal violence between sociopolitical groups (i.e., warfare), seems to be associated with certain socio-economic conditions that generally accompanied the shift to a farming economy,3 such as higher population densities and greater degrees of sedentism4, 5, in parallel to the increasing importance of resource ownership and property that led to the concentration of resources and power [e.g.,6, 7]." [1]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-43026-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-43026-9 The references above: 1. Fry, D. P. Cooperation for survival: Creating a global peace system. In War, Peace and Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views (ed. Fry, D. P.) 543–558 (Oxford University Press, 2013). 2. Kim, N. C. & Kissel, M. Emergent Warfare in Our Evolutionary Past (Routledge, 2018). 3. Fibiger, L., Ahlström, T., Meyer, C. & Smith, M. Conflict, violence and warfare among early farmers in Northwestern Europe. PNAS 120(4), e2209481119 (2023). 4. Ferguson, R. B. Archaeology, cultural anthropology, and the origins and intensifications of war. In The Archaeology of Warfare: Prehistories of Raiding and Conquest (eds Arkush, E. & Allen, M.) 469–523 (University Press of Florida, 2006). 5. Fry, D. P. & Soderberg, P. Lethal aggression in mobile forager bands and implications for the origins of war. Science 341, 270–273 (2013). 6. Golitko, M. LBK Realpolitik: An Archaeometric Study of Conflict and Social Structure in the Belgian Early Neolithic (Archaeo Press, 2015). 7. Bogaard, A., Fochesato, M. & Bowles, S. The farming-inequality nexus: New insights from ancient Western Eurasia. Antiquity 93(371), 1129–1143 (2019). 8. Chenal, F., Perrin, B., Barrand-Emam, H. & Boulestin, B. A farewell to arms: a deposit of human limbs and bodies at Bergheim, France, c. 4000 BC. Antiquity 89, 1313–1330 (2015).
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  But again, small and medium scale violence in the context of a smaller population means each individual has a substantially higher rate of violence. Which is more violent? 10 people killed out of a tribe of 100? Or 100 people being killed out of a city state of 10,000 people? The latter is 10x more violent in raw numbers, but it's a lower rate of violent death. Yes, agricultural societies had larger populations and had the ability to organize larger armies than hunter gatherers. That's not doubted by anthropologists or historians. The point is that the small scale hunter gatherers violence was still more violent proportional to the population than warfare in agricultural societies.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    I’m not sure how you come to those conclusions. You’re talking about brief intermittent literal “sticks and stones” based “warfare.” The entire transition into the neolithic was based on violent and persistent coercive usurpation of land and resources. So what was intermittent became persistent and over arching. For example, slavery is a nonstop, coercive warfare condition. Further warfare itself became larger scale, bloodier and more impactful on your average citizen, with entire populations killed as opposed to people here and there in select group of class. I can tell you that the brutality of modern wars, and when I talk about modern, I’m talking about Rwanda, World War II, the Japanese invasion in China etc… These are unmatched in pre-agricultural periods if for no other reason than the technology and depravity of concept (copper bulls are uniquely terrifying creations of pain) didn’t exist yet. So neither the scope, type, nor scale of persistent warfare will ever match the period 0-2000AD
    - Manuel_D 3y ago
      > You’re talking about brief intermittent literal “sticks and stones” based “warfare.” My whole point (and the point of the body of research cited above), is that this "brief intermittent" warfare was, proportionally, more lethal than both agricultural and industrialized warfare. Again, which is deadlier: a group of 10 people killed out of a society of 100 people. Or a group of 100 people killed out of a society of 100,000 people? Yes, warfare with literal sticks and stones kills fewer people than organized agricultural armies. But pre-agricultural populations were so much smaller that the proportion of people killed violently was larger than in agricultural societies. > For example, slavery is a nonstop, coercive warfare condition. About a quarter of hunter-gatherer societies practices hereditary slavery [1], so this is also applicable to hunter gatherers. >These are unmatched in pre-agricultural periods if for no other reason than the technology and depravity of concept (copper bulls are uniquely terrifying creations of pain) didn’t exist yet. They were unmatched in absolute terms because populations of agricultural societies were way larger than hunter gatherers. Again, in proportional terms, pre-agricultural societies were substantially more violent. The takes you're describing here were popular from the 1950s through around the 1970s, and it's easy to see why the "noble savage" perspective was compelling: If humankind was inherently good and peaceful, and it was society that made humanity into violent beings then we could undo these changes. But after evidence about pre-agricultural violence became more clear, this view has become a lot less popular outside of activist academics. It's sobering to realize that the 20th century was the most peaceful century in human existence so far, but that's the academic consensus. 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2999363/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2999363/

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

I think that is an old understanding. "Small- and medium-scale collective violence, in the form of confrontations between neighboring groups, may be as old as humankind [e.g.,1, 2]. By contrast, larger-scale organized and sanctioned lethal violence between sociopolitical groups (i.e., warfare), seems to be associated with certain socio-economic conditions that generally accompanied the shift to a farming economy,3 such as higher population densities and greater degrees of sedentism4, 5, in parallel to the increasing importance of resource ownership and property that led to the concentration of resources and power [e.g.,6, 7]." [1]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-43026-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-43026-9 The references above: 1. Fry, D. P. Cooperation for survival: Creating a global peace system. In War, Peace and Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views (ed. Fry, D. P.) 543–558 (Oxford University Press, 2013). 2. Kim, N. C. & Kissel, M. Emergent Warfare in Our Evolutionary Past (Routledge, 2018). 3. Fibiger, L., Ahlström, T., Meyer, C. & Smith, M. Conflict, violence and warfare among early farmers in Northwestern Europe. PNAS 120(4), e2209481119 (2023). 4. Ferguson, R. B. Archaeology, cultural anthropology, and the origins and intensifications of war. In The Archaeology of Warfare: Prehistories of Raiding and Conquest (eds Arkush, E. & Allen, M.) 469–523 (University Press of Florida, 2006). 5. Fry, D. P. & Soderberg, P. Lethal aggression in mobile forager bands and implications for the origins of war. Science 341, 270–273 (2013). 6. Golitko, M. LBK Realpolitik: An Archaeometric Study of Conflict and Social Structure in the Belgian Early Neolithic (Archaeo Press, 2015). 7. Bogaard, A., Fochesato, M. & Bowles, S. The farming-inequality nexus: New insights from ancient Western Eurasia. Antiquity 93(371), 1129–1143 (2019). 8. Chenal, F., Perrin, B., Barrand-Emam, H. & Boulestin, B. A farewell to arms: a deposit of human limbs and bodies at Bergheim, France, c. 4000 BC. Antiquity 89, 1313–1330 (2015).

Manuel_D 3y ago
But again, small and medium scale violence in the context of a smaller population means each individual has a substantially higher rate of violence. Which is more violent? 10 people killed out of a tribe of 100? Or 100 people being killed out of a city state of 10,000 people? The latter is 10x more violent in raw numbers, but it's a lower rate of violent death. Yes, agricultural societies had larger populations and had the ability to organize larger armies than hunter gatherers. That's not doubted by anthropologists or historians. The point is that the small scale hunter gatherers violence was still more violent proportional to the population than warfare in agricultural societies.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  I’m not sure how you come to those conclusions. You’re talking about brief intermittent literal “sticks and stones” based “warfare.” The entire transition into the neolithic was based on violent and persistent coercive usurpation of land and resources. So what was intermittent became persistent and over arching. For example, slavery is a nonstop, coercive warfare condition. Further warfare itself became larger scale, bloodier and more impactful on your average citizen, with entire populations killed as opposed to people here and there in select group of class. I can tell you that the brutality of modern wars, and when I talk about modern, I’m talking about Rwanda, World War II, the Japanese invasion in China etc… These are unmatched in pre-agricultural periods if for no other reason than the technology and depravity of concept (copper bulls are uniquely terrifying creations of pain) didn’t exist yet. So neither the scope, type, nor scale of persistent warfare will ever match the period 0-2000AD
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    > You’re talking about brief intermittent literal “sticks and stones” based “warfare.” My whole point (and the point of the body of research cited above), is that this "brief intermittent" warfare was, proportionally, more lethal than both agricultural and industrialized warfare. Again, which is deadlier: a group of 10 people killed out of a society of 100 people. Or a group of 100 people killed out of a society of 100,000 people? Yes, warfare with literal sticks and stones kills fewer people than organized agricultural armies. But pre-agricultural populations were so much smaller that the proportion of people killed violently was larger than in agricultural societies. > For example, slavery is a nonstop, coercive warfare condition. About a quarter of hunter-gatherer societies practices hereditary slavery [1], so this is also applicable to hunter gatherers. >These are unmatched in pre-agricultural periods if for no other reason than the technology and depravity of concept (copper bulls are uniquely terrifying creations of pain) didn’t exist yet. They were unmatched in absolute terms because populations of agricultural societies were way larger than hunter gatherers. Again, in proportional terms, pre-agricultural societies were substantially more violent. The takes you're describing here were popular from the 1950s through around the 1970s, and it's easy to see why the "noble savage" perspective was compelling: If humankind was inherently good and peaceful, and it was society that made humanity into violent beings then we could undo these changes. But after evidence about pre-agricultural violence became more clear, this view has become a lot less popular outside of activist academics. It's sobering to realize that the 20th century was the most peaceful century in human existence so far, but that's the academic consensus. 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2999363/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2999363/