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> 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 t

> 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
Don’t put words in my mouth, I never made the noble savage argument and never will. I also disagree with your calculus. 1 million deaths is worse than 10 irrespective of the overall denominator. Even if I granted your hypothesis, there are more people pervasively living under coercive threat of death than any other time in history. However it is my claim that pervasive violence was caused by QME via the creation of domination based systems. You can read my thesis here: https://kemendo.com/Myth-of-Scarcity.html https://kemendo.com/Myth-of-Scarcity.html So far every expert in this field that reads it thinks it is likely correct. To wit, Riane Eisler read this and asked me to edit and submit the IJPS so I expect (hope) that it will take off from there and real anthropologists can test the hypothesis further to give it more power.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  To be clear, the "noble savage" trope I'm referring to is the idea that pre-agricultural societies were substantially less violent than agricultural and industrial societies. This does indeed seem to be the claims you're making. Your thesis focuses almost entirely on resource scarcity, not the prevalence of violence. > However it is my claim that pervasive violence was caused by QME via the creation of domination based systems. You can read my thesis here: And your claim has a massive hole in its logic: Proportionally (that is, how many people out of 1000 died violently) violence decreased with the advent of agriculture, not increased. The violence that did exist was larger in scale but so were populations. Violence became less pervasive with the advent of agriculture, not more. Your claims are based on the false premise that agricultural societies were more violent than hunter-gatherer societies. The idea that violence was less pervasive in pre-agricultural societies was the popular view (the Rousseauan view, if you've read the literature) for a while up until the 1970s. But it is pretty firmly contradicted by the available evidence we have today. Both archaeological and case studies of existing hunter gatherer populations show rates of violence substantially larger than both agricultural societies, and industrial societies - on the order of 5-10x more violent than the 20th century despite two world wars. You can still find academics that insist on the Rousseauan views on hunter-gatherers, because they've used that assumption as the foundation for a large body of their work. But that doesn't make it true.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    You haven’t cited anything and especially haven’t cited anything about how violence is decreased because it’s just not true. Look at all the references I gave you, so unless you wanna bring references then I’m done
    - Manuel_D 3y ago
      The first reply I linked a source arriving at 10-20% overall mortality rates (as in, 10-20% of humans were eventually killed by another human) among hunter gatherer societies. Even the lowest end of this estimate is five times the 1-2% rate of violent death throughout the 20th century [1]. Some estimate even lower than that, Steve Pinker arrived at the figure of 0.7% but his criteria for violent death is more narrow. Rates of violence in agricultural societies varied from 3% on the low end, and even the high end is still in the single digits. In fact your own sources gives a figure for this [2]: > In any case, the rate is clearly elevated compared to overall crude prevalence rates of individuals with unhealed trauma estimated for the European Neolithic, which are on the order of 2–5%. To recap: Hunter-gatherers: 10-20% rate of people die violent deaths. Agriculturalists: 2-5% Industrialized societies: 1-2%, maybe even under 1% See War In Human Civilization by Azar Gat for a detailed explanation of the shift in warfare between hunter gatherers, agriculturalists, and industrial societies. The proportion of people who died violent deaths was way higher in hunter gatherer societies, than in agricultural societies, which was itself in turn higher than industrialized societies. Over time warfare grew larger, but populations grew larger, faster. I saw that paragraph with a ton of endnotes, but it didn't even engage with the core point: That the rate of violence was larger in hunter gatherer societies than in agricultural societies. > 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 Again it doesn't matter if the warfare grows in scale if the population grows even larger. What percentage of hunter gatherers dies violently at the hands of other humans? What percentage of agriculturalists died at the hands of other humans? This question isn't even touched on here. Again, if all you're trying to say is that warfare grew in scale in agricultural societies absolutely yes we agree! But the population grew even larger, and thus the overall rate of violence went down. 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? The reason why I keep asking you this, is because if all you're trying to claim is that warfare grew larger and more organized in agricultural societies, but overall violent mortality went down then we have no disagreement. But if your claim is that people are less likely to die violently in hunter-gatherer societies than in agricultural societies, then no, that's not what the existing consensus is. 1. https://independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_06_3_payne.pdf https://independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_06_3_payne.pdf 2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-43026-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-43026-9

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

Don’t put words in my mouth, I never made the noble savage argument and never will. I also disagree with your calculus. 1 million deaths is worse than 10 irrespective of the overall denominator. Even if I granted your hypothesis, there are more people pervasively living under coercive threat of death than any other time in history. However it is my claim that pervasive violence was caused by QME via the creation of domination based systems. You can read my thesis here: https://kemendo.com/Myth-of-Scarcity.html https://kemendo.com/Myth-of-Scarcity.html So far every expert in this field that reads it thinks it is likely correct. To wit, Riane Eisler read this and asked me to edit and submit the IJPS so I expect (hope) that it will take off from there and real anthropologists can test the hypothesis further to give it more power.

Manuel_D 3y ago
To be clear, the "noble savage" trope I'm referring to is the idea that pre-agricultural societies were substantially less violent than agricultural and industrial societies. This does indeed seem to be the claims you're making. Your thesis focuses almost entirely on resource scarcity, not the prevalence of violence. > However it is my claim that pervasive violence was caused by QME via the creation of domination based systems. You can read my thesis here: And your claim has a massive hole in its logic: Proportionally (that is, how many people out of 1000 died violently) violence decreased with the advent of agriculture, not increased. The violence that did exist was larger in scale but so were populations. Violence became less pervasive with the advent of agriculture, not more. Your claims are based on the false premise that agricultural societies were more violent than hunter-gatherer societies. The idea that violence was less pervasive in pre-agricultural societies was the popular view (the Rousseauan view, if you've read the literature) for a while up until the 1970s. But it is pretty firmly contradicted by the available evidence we have today. Both archaeological and case studies of existing hunter gatherer populations show rates of violence substantially larger than both agricultural societies, and industrial societies - on the order of 5-10x more violent than the 20th century despite two world wars. You can still find academics that insist on the Rousseauan views on hunter-gatherers, because they've used that assumption as the foundation for a large body of their work. But that doesn't make it true.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  You haven’t cited anything and especially haven’t cited anything about how violence is decreased because it’s just not true. Look at all the references I gave you, so unless you wanna bring references then I’m done
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    The first reply I linked a source arriving at 10-20% overall mortality rates (as in, 10-20% of humans were eventually killed by another human) among hunter gatherer societies. Even the lowest end of this estimate is five times the 1-2% rate of violent death throughout the 20th century [1]. Some estimate even lower than that, Steve Pinker arrived at the figure of 0.7% but his criteria for violent death is more narrow. Rates of violence in agricultural societies varied from 3% on the low end, and even the high end is still in the single digits. In fact your own sources gives a figure for this [2]: > In any case, the rate is clearly elevated compared to overall crude prevalence rates of individuals with unhealed trauma estimated for the European Neolithic, which are on the order of 2–5%. To recap: Hunter-gatherers: 10-20% rate of people die violent deaths. Agriculturalists: 2-5% Industrialized societies: 1-2%, maybe even under 1% See War In Human Civilization by Azar Gat for a detailed explanation of the shift in warfare between hunter gatherers, agriculturalists, and industrial societies. The proportion of people who died violent deaths was way higher in hunter gatherer societies, than in agricultural societies, which was itself in turn higher than industrialized societies. Over time warfare grew larger, but populations grew larger, faster. I saw that paragraph with a ton of endnotes, but it didn't even engage with the core point: That the rate of violence was larger in hunter gatherer societies than in agricultural societies. > 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 Again it doesn't matter if the warfare grows in scale if the population grows even larger. What percentage of hunter gatherers dies violently at the hands of other humans? What percentage of agriculturalists died at the hands of other humans? This question isn't even touched on here. Again, if all you're trying to say is that warfare grew in scale in agricultural societies absolutely yes we agree! But the population grew even larger, and thus the overall rate of violence went down. 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? The reason why I keep asking you this, is because if all you're trying to claim is that warfare grew larger and more organized in agricultural societies, but overall violent mortality went down then we have no disagreement. But if your claim is that people are less likely to die violently in hunter-gatherer societies than in agricultural societies, then no, that's not what the existing consensus is. 1. https://independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_06_3_payne.pdf https://independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_06_3_payne.pdf 2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-43026-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-43026-9