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Scandinavia's first farmers slaughtered hunter-gatherer population, DNA suggests
- darth_avocado 3y ago> This transition has previously been presented as peaceful People don’t realize this but, non violent societies is a relatively recent phenomenon. Anytime you hear about different human populations moving to a new area that was previously occupied by another population, if the narrative doesn’t include violence, be very skeptical.
- consumer451 3y agoYour comment led me to find this interesting wikipedia entry. [0] Is there anything like this which goes back even further? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anthropogenic_disaster...
- DiscourseFan 3y ago>WW2 is the worst I hope we don't top it this century!
- consumer451 3y agoIt's hard for me to imagine us reaching ~64 million deaths aside from nukes or bioweapons. Although, we have recently sleepwalked all the way to ~168,842 dead people due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...
- option 3y ago7M people died from COVID so far. There is strong evidence (no definite proof though) that it was made or at least cultivated in the lab in China. Also it came out at just at time when China didn't know what to do with pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong
- consumer451 3y agoI was only thinking of anthropogenic deaths. But hmm, the deaths in the conquest of the Americas were largely due to accidental infection. So maybe that's a blurry line. I have only heard of the biolabs theory from sources that I don't put a lot of faith in. But, I could have missed something. Could you share the best source on that?
- zdragnar 3y agoSeveral US government agencies, including the FBI: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chris-wray-covid-origin-likely-wuhan-labl-leak/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chris-wray-covid-origin-likely-... The WHO had plans to test animals and people around various locations to pinpoint the origin, but because their investigation was also going to include another look at the lab leak theory, they caved to pressure from China and abandoned the investigation: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00283-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00283-y Not evidence per se, but suspicious, and casts doubt on their earlier conclusions. There's plenty of coincidental and other high suspicious things, but if there were hard proof it wouldn't be much of a controversy.
- consumer451 3y agoThanks, forgot about the DOE. I'm not entirely discounting the lab leak theory, but WMD in Iraq were also low confidence intel. Either way, as far as action items: 1) We should tighten up all infectious disease labs AND 2) We should have higher global food standards (wet markets, etc) AND 3) Improve indoor air filtration, everywhere As far as I can tell, we've done none of those things.
- Gare 3y ago> 7M people died from COVID so far. In terms of QALYs lost War in Ukraine is most likely worse. Every premature death is a tragedy, but death of a 20 year old is much more tragic than that of an 80 year old.
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- pokepim 3y agoAnd like 20k slaughtered innocent civillians in the Gaza Genocide. Probably more at this moment. Humans are brutal.
- jemmyw 3y agoI'm genuinely surprised to learn that WWII had more casualties than WWI. I had always thought 1 was worse due to the trench warfare.
- throwanem 3y agoWWI was worse for soldiers for that reason, but the lines once drawn were static. WWII was extremely mobile by contrast especially considering its innovations in aerial warfare, which is why it was worse for civilians.
- DiscourseFan 3y agoStalin had an order to shoot any troops that tried to retreat, so Soviet casualties were particularly high. But when you're a communist and your enemy is fascism, no human toll would seem to be too high. Also all the genocide and mass rape and bioweapons and those numbers very easily add up. When you have one society that views the destruction of humanity as the greatest sublime pleasure, and others doing whatever they can to stop them, a lot of people are going to die.
- DyslexicAtheist 3y agowow, it seems nothing has kept human growth more in check than other humans and via means of modern technology. and we're getting better at it with every decade.
- mc32 3y agoAt least we're not Meerkat level...
- DyslexicAtheist 3y agoare we comparing the Meerkat? dot com?
- arthurcolle 3y agoMeerkat, dot animalia
- DiscourseFan 3y agoEspecially the Yamnaya, and all the ancient peoples who spoke the Indo-European languages, where all their great epics feature (and praise) strength in battle, fearlessness in times of great danger, and mass genocide. Conan the Barbarian was fictional, yes, but it was fiction written by a guy who was obsessed with ancient history and Nietzsche, in many ways its more true than any historical or archeological account.
- polski-g 3y ago"Population mixing" has generally meant enslaving the boys, murdering the men, and taking the women as forced wives.
- DiscourseFan 3y agoTo be fair, there are numerous non-violent societies in many parts of the world, its just that they tend to live in very isolated places and only made contact with outside powers well after the era of colonialism. We could take them as a model, but they often have very strange ontologies that don't mix with our own, and really only make sense in terms of their society (and, on account of them, they also never develop things like productive technology and reliably effective medical treatments).
- gerdesj 3y agoNon violent societies will tend to come second on contact with violent societies (by definition) and die out. They can apply to join NATO/OTAN. My comment here is just as daft as yours!
- DiscourseFan 3y agoI think that all the anthropologists who have gone around to remote tribes all over the world, and found a variety of social practices both incredibly violent and remarkably peaceful, would disagree
- jvanderbot 3y agoI don't think there's such a thing as violent / non at a societal level. There are nations at war, and nations at peace, and the ones at war use violence and the ones at peace do not.
- type0 3y ago> such a thing as violent / non at a societal level I do think it is, once it becomes a part of the culture it is very hard to get rig of. Just read about Maori culture how it escalated with arrival of Europeans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musket_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musket_Wars and there are countless other examples
- bewaretheirs 3y agoAs a NATO member, they'll have to promise to spend 2% of their GDP on defense -- though once they make the promise they will probably be able to get away with spending less!
- gerdesj 3y ago"non violent societies is a relatively recent phenomenon" There has always been war waged somewhere since humanity has been capable of defining the word "war". There have never been non violent societies, recently or otherwise. Can you name a country or society or population that has not been involved in a war within the - say - last 100 years?
- manmal 3y agoSwitzerland.
- gerdesj 3y agoI have a brother in law from Switzerland from a previous relationship. His family were very involved in WW2. Have another roll.
- DyslexicAtheist 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gold
- manmal 3y agoTo me that’s vile and all, but not “involved in a war”.
- SllX 3y agoSwitzerland did shoot down both Allied and German aircraft in World War II that trespassed their airspace. Neutral doesn’t mean non-violent. They weren’t one of the belligerents engaged in WWII but they did defend their neutrality and were a target of actions by the Nazis that didn’t amount to much by the end of the War.
- jvanderbot 3y agoYes, but don't over compensate and assume life was always "nasty brutish and short" there has always been wat, and war was never the norm. Our forefathers were just like us, and we fight, but not widespread and not frequently.
- TulliusCicero 3y agoTo our knowledge, rates of violent death were typically much higher in primitive stateless societies: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-violent-deaths-non-state-societies https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-violent-deaths-n... The state having a monopoly on violence is sometimes very bad, but overall it does seem to lead to fewer violent deaths.
- jvanderbot 3y ago"higher" is not what I was trying to push back against. "Higher" is obvious. "widespread, prevalent violence" is what I refute. But anyway, from your chart I'm not entirely convinced. The chart you linked seems to show a "most violent cultures that were also non-state", and it appears that it quickly decays to less than 4% chance in a dozen or two tribal societies. Out of how many? The long tail is going to include a randomly selected person almost surely, and I'd imagine a much lower rate of violent death in that long tail. Let alone states, which include larger populations, further increasing the chance you'd randomly exist in a less violent time or place. "The origin of everything" is a good book on how even tribal states had a strong inclination against violence and had structures in place to keep things peaceful
- TulliusCicero 3y agoThe median is like 20% in the chart. Not exactly a good look.
- jvanderbot 3y agoThe median of the the top 25 most violent tribes is absolutely going to have a very high level of violence. You're right! But if there are ten million tribes not shown on this chart that have less than 0.01% chance of violent death, then the real median is much lower, right? This is why I find the chart misleading: It chooses the most violent non-state tribes as a basis. It therefore is not a valid way of concluding "How likely was violence" because it eschews states (which may have been more organized / less violent), and does not include anywhere near all tribes, and so a meaningful comparison with the rest of the population is impossible. Imagine we were discussing people. You show me the top 25 most murderous people, and say "The median murders by these people were 10!", this does not mean anything about the number of murders committed by anyone else.
- observationist 3y agoBeyond violence, it's hard for people to contextualize how fragile life was prior to about 300 years ago - a scratch, some bad food, a broken finger, or any of a million tiny things that we just take for granted could kill you. Without an educational system, nobody knew anything except essentially what they gossiped about, learned from their trade or family, or picked up through direct experience. The world was a lot darker and scarier, and that made preemptive violence an effective cultural strategy. Things that reinforced tribal integrity and weakened other tribes, like violent traditions and religions, were effective memes for perpetuating lineages. There are no humans alive who do not have horrific monsters for ancestors. We are alive and civilized because our ancestors did terrible, monstrous things. It's wonderful that the dark, terrible things are the anomalies in this period of history, but we need to eliminate the notions of peaceful, paradaisical societies living in harmony with nature before the evil industrial revolution came along and ruined everything. Humans are vicious, territorial, tribal, warlike animals with a nearly unbroken history of brutality, terror, and murder of outsiders. Our modern civilizations are marvels, even as deeply flawed and imperfect as we are. It's important to honestly understand the good and the bad of our present situations, it helps us set the expectations for the trajectory of progress. You could take a human baby from 200,000 years ago and raise them in a modern family in New York and they'd be perfectly adapted to these times. The corollary to that is a little darker - any one of us could have been raised in any of the savage societies thousands of years ago, and we'd have been just as brutal, ignorant, and murderous as any others. The default assumption about anything before about 500 years ago should be that of a desperate fight for survival. The exceptions are few and far between vast and violent swathes of dead people.
- DyslexicAtheist 3y agolanguage matters. we are not more "monsters" than all the other animals. our hate is just more potent because we harness technology better than the average murderous ape. luckily we will end and we will not matter going forward.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> we are not more "monsters" than all the other animals We’re not. But the chimpanzee-bonobos violence disparity, together with our eradication of the Neanderthals (with some interbreeding) seems to point to humans being, naturally, on the more violent end of the spectrum. That isn’t immutable. But it means our tendency to be angry and vengeful is probably too high; we should be mindful in trusting those emotions.
- mc32 3y agoSome people are enamored with the idea of noble historic and prehistoric peoples for many reasons, but any peaceful society, and there were some, would be wiped out by the non-peaceful ones. Contention for meagre resources was intense. We did not have modern grains (yield and resistance) or farming methods (fertilizers, etc) nor weather prediction. For the great majority of history, it was more or less subsistence living, whether you were farmer, fisherman, etc. Famines were not so extraordinary, maybe once per decade, so yeah, people stole, raided and fought over food. It was essential to survival.
- martythemaniak 3y agoGenerally right, but also we don't know what war actually looked like. Here is footage of two traditional tribes at war in Papua New Guinea in 1963: https://youtu.be/JI4uirwxx1Y?si=ej9v6bdYX7y8i7Yv https://youtu.be/JI4uirwxx1Y?si=ej9v6bdYX7y8i7Yv War could have been anything ranging from killing everyone to two groups tussling like soccer hooligans until someone gets hurt and one group backs off.
- mlhpdx 3y agoIt’s a genuine miracle that human society functions. How do we have schools, hospitals and joy given all we are? I have no idea. But I’m deeply grateful.
- mistrial9 3y agoJeopardy question - What is religion for a hundred (thousand)
- optimalsolver 3y agoMy prior would've been hunters slaughtering farmers. How could these stone cold hunters let a bunch farmers get the drop on them???
- thaumasiotes 3y agoThis has been known for quite some time. The farmers always win because there are more of them. Hunters have very low population densities.
- nradov 3y agoIt turns out that hunting isn't very good training for mass warfare. What matters is discipline, organization, and technology.
- TulliusCicero 3y agoCivilization presents a number of advantages, especially in numbers.
- xboxnolifes 3y agoFarming = more/stable food = higher population = standing army.
- euroderf 3y agoand time and tools to tinker with tech ?
- optimalsolver 3y agoHunter gatherers have far more free time than agriculturalists.
- euroderf 3y agoDepends on the local climate ? Can't be easy to be a H/G and not have a surplus for the winter.
- type0 3y agoHistorically Scandinavians only fairly recently stopped slaughtering their native Sami hunter-gatherers that used to live in central regions. Most that are left today are northern nomadic herders.
- rags2riches 3y agoIn which period did the slaughtering take place? Mistreatment of Sami since the middle ages happened in many ways, like taxation, forced labour, relocations, forced cultural assimilation, discrimination. Most Sami living in Scandinavia today are culturally assimilated urban dwellers. A small minority of Scandinavian Sami work with reindeer husbandry. It's a modern, mechanized trade. The people involved can hardly be described as nomadic. It's more like moving with seasonal work. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reindeer_herding https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reindeer_herding https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi_peoples https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi_peoples
- throwawa14223 3y agoIt seems like there is an inherent and intractable conflict between farmers and nomads.
- imbnwa 3y agoIndian subcontinent, Central/Southern Africa, and Europe are all relatively recent hybrid populations of farmers/pastoralists running into hunter-gatherers; Europe and India are all three!
- anon84873628 3y agoSure, it's a pretty fundamental difference of opinion regarding land use.
- screye 3y agoHistory is brutal. If the native group's genetics don't get eradicated. The alternative can be just as grim. Often, the winners genetics in a person can be the result of wide-spread rape of the native population after the native males were slaughtered. Today's evils were ancient history's most peaceful methods for resolution. Colonialism and Slavery were merciful. On some occasions, explicit class/caste systems allowed the losers to continue living as the underclass. Mass exile to barren lands came with famine & drought, but at least a minority surivived and maintained self-governance. The world has civilizationally come a long way from then, thank god we did.
- panick21_ 3y agoIts the same in Britain as well. But in other places its not as strong, in Spain for example the is a much larger amount of mixing and it took much longer to happen. There are also difference in the ratio of men-to-woman mixing across populations depending on the location. I highly recommend the lectures by David Reich on youtube. Specially his recent lectures on India are brilliant. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pra7YZWVc-s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pra7YZWVc-s
- marojejian 3y agoAs far as can tell from TFA, there is no conclusive evidence that the genetic replacement was significantly due to "slaughter." And I am not aware that we have the tools to make such a distinction. But I didn't read the paper. Does anyone else know otherwise? The article also includes death from pathogens in the "slaughter" category, but to me this seems like a very different category. While intentional violence and pathogens both seem like very plausible contributors to genetic replacement, it seems to me we should hold a high bar before endorsing them as causes. One reason for this high bar is that powerful people in the past have drawn conclusions based on this sort of finding which have had strong effects upon human welfare. Slaughter is one of those effects.