4 ms·

How did the sentinelese survive 50,000 years?

cultofmetatron 3y ago
yea, people always talk about how violent they are. but thats why they are still around. all the friendly people explorers onto the island and once they left, came back with guns and an army to take what they learned about.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  Look around your community, or the world: Who is more likely to live a long time, the violent people or the cooperative ones? IME the violent people destroy themselves and others.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    The most long-lived societies seem to be the ones that can suppress violence internally when at peace, but unleash it on a massive scale when attacked from the outside, thus deterring enemies from attempting to conquer them. Semi-isolated geographic location helps. Both England and Japan seem to fit this description.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      > The most long-lived societies seem to be the ones that can suppress violence internally when at peace, but unleash it on a massive scale when attacked from the outside, That seems pretty fearful: the outside attacks, the inside's violence must be suppressed. Look at the country you live in (probably); internal and external violence is not something that must be suppressed; people are naturally at peace, and growing and building. Violence is also extremely costly, on personal, community, national and international levels. It's not the natural state, as people like to imagine these days. It's at peace when we build things - and look how the world has prospered, unlike anything in human history, in the post-WWII peace.
      - inglor_cz 3y ago
        "internal and external violence is not something that must be suppressed; people are naturally at peace" That seems pretty optimistic. Most countries in the world have had very violent episodes in their past, indicating that chaotic or organized violence can erupt in any culture and that institutions like the police and prisons play a role in suppressing it. I can believe that most people are naturally at peace, but a few per cent of the population are psychopaths who can spoil it for everyone else. We have a live situation unfolding in front of our eyes in El Salvador: by imprisoning something like 1 per cent of the population, the previously hellish crime rate plunged precipitously. I am also old enough to remember the nasty civil wars around the breakup of Yugoslavia. In the 1980s, Yugoslavia was quite a prosperous and peaceful nation, somewhat envied from the Soviet Bloc for its better living standard. In a relatively short time, it turned into a bloodbath.
        wolverine876 3y ago
        > Most countries in the world have had very violent episodes in their past Most countries were populated by hunter-gatherers for almost their entire histories. By these bizarre regressive arguments, we are doomed to be hunter-gatherers and it's 'pretty optimistic' to think otherwise. We live in a modern world built by ancestors who believed and worked to do better, with astounding success. You couldn't have more evidence or more benefit of it. Here you are, literate, educated, speaking freely, with the leisure, wealth, peace, and technology to post on HN. That's how you and the advanced world has lived for generations, and it's spread: to Eastern Europe, to parts of east Asia, and other parts of the world have benefitted enormously - parts of Latin America, Indonesia, etc etc. What losers we are if we quit simply because someone told us, contrary to everything we see, that it's impossible, and we left the field of battle to bad people (who are probably spreading this nonsense - who else benefits?). > In the 1980s, Yugoslavia was quite a prosperous and peaceful nation It was a Communist dictatorship, just not part of the Soviet bloc. > by imprisoning something like 1 per cent of the population, the previously hellish crime rate plunged precipitously. By the government committing crimes against its people, they have pushed out other criminals. The story of dictators is the same every time. Free societies are more peaceful, prosperous, and most importantly, free. You can see it everywhere in the US, Europe, east Asia, etc. etc.
ffgjgf1 3y ago
To be fair the Canarian society was massively more complex and advance. which usually means more fragile so the significant aspect is that they didn’t degenerate to the level of the Sentinelese despite the isolation

yea, people always talk about how violent they are. but thats why they are still around. all the friendly people explorers onto the island and once they left, came back with guns and an army to take what they learned about.

wolverine876 3y ago
Look around your community, or the world: Who is more likely to live a long time, the violent people or the cooperative ones? IME the violent people destroy themselves and others.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  The most long-lived societies seem to be the ones that can suppress violence internally when at peace, but unleash it on a massive scale when attacked from the outside, thus deterring enemies from attempting to conquer them. Semi-isolated geographic location helps. Both England and Japan seem to fit this description.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    > The most long-lived societies seem to be the ones that can suppress violence internally when at peace, but unleash it on a massive scale when attacked from the outside, That seems pretty fearful: the outside attacks, the inside's violence must be suppressed. Look at the country you live in (probably); internal and external violence is not something that must be suppressed; people are naturally at peace, and growing and building. Violence is also extremely costly, on personal, community, national and international levels. It's not the natural state, as people like to imagine these days. It's at peace when we build things - and look how the world has prospered, unlike anything in human history, in the post-WWII peace.
    - inglor_cz 3y ago
      "internal and external violence is not something that must be suppressed; people are naturally at peace" That seems pretty optimistic. Most countries in the world have had very violent episodes in their past, indicating that chaotic or organized violence can erupt in any culture and that institutions like the police and prisons play a role in suppressing it. I can believe that most people are naturally at peace, but a few per cent of the population are psychopaths who can spoil it for everyone else. We have a live situation unfolding in front of our eyes in El Salvador: by imprisoning something like 1 per cent of the population, the previously hellish crime rate plunged precipitously. I am also old enough to remember the nasty civil wars around the breakup of Yugoslavia. In the 1980s, Yugoslavia was quite a prosperous and peaceful nation, somewhat envied from the Soviet Bloc for its better living standard. In a relatively short time, it turned into a bloodbath.
      - wolverine876 3y ago
        > Most countries in the world have had very violent episodes in their past Most countries were populated by hunter-gatherers for almost their entire histories. By these bizarre regressive arguments, we are doomed to be hunter-gatherers and it's 'pretty optimistic' to think otherwise. We live in a modern world built by ancestors who believed and worked to do better, with astounding success. You couldn't have more evidence or more benefit of it. Here you are, literate, educated, speaking freely, with the leisure, wealth, peace, and technology to post on HN. That's how you and the advanced world has lived for generations, and it's spread: to Eastern Europe, to parts of east Asia, and other parts of the world have benefitted enormously - parts of Latin America, Indonesia, etc etc. What losers we are if we quit simply because someone told us, contrary to everything we see, that it's impossible, and we left the field of battle to bad people (who are probably spreading this nonsense - who else benefits?). > In the 1980s, Yugoslavia was quite a prosperous and peaceful nation It was a Communist dictatorship, just not part of the Soviet bloc. > by imprisoning something like 1 per cent of the population, the previously hellish crime rate plunged precipitously. By the government committing crimes against its people, they have pushed out other criminals. The story of dictators is the same every time. Free societies are more peaceful, prosperous, and most importantly, free. You can see it everywhere in the US, Europe, east Asia, etc. etc.

ffgjgf1 3y ago

To be fair the Canarian society was massively more complex and advance. which usually means more fragile so the significant aspect is that they didn’t degenerate to the level of the Sentinelese despite the isolation