> 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.
Beyond 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.
language 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.
> 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.
you had me here, and I would love to read more about that.
> seems to point to humans being, naturally, on the more violent end of the spectrum.
I read Agner Fog's work on this topic (https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0128.pdf) but I always lumped humanity in with other animals and attributed our numbers of violent casualties to our weapons. But maybe we are really more viscous and violent on this spectrum. I wonder though would other primates be equally prone to it if they had the tools (and same disease of consciousness).
> maybe we are really more viscous and violent on this spectrum
To my knowledge, the two species with genocidal tendencies are humans and chimpanzees [1]. The drive for not only defeating but thoroughly eliminating an adversary appears to be, at least in modern biology, unique.
Generally 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
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.
To 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).
I 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
I 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.
> 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
As 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!
Some 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.
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
I 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?
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:
Thanks, 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.
WWI 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.
Stalin 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.
wow, 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.
It’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.
"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?
Warfare does not seem to have been a significant element in Chavín culture. The archaeological evidence shows a lack of basic defensive structures in Chavín centres, and warriors are not depicted in art, in notable contrast to the earlier art at Cerro Sechín. Effective social control may have been exercised by religious pressure, and the ability to exclude dissidents from managed water resources. The climate and terrain of the neighbouring areas outside the managed land were a daunting option for farmers wishing to flee the culture. Evidence of warfare has been found only in contemporaneous sites that were not influenced by Chavín culture, almost as if those other civilizations were defending themselves via warfare from Chavín cultural influence.
Sweden are joining NATO right now due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and so did Finland. Both of them border Russia and did not join NATO in the past to try and avoid any form of escalation.
Switzerland may have been formally neutral during WW2 but some individuals had other ideas. Was Switzerland neutral through WW1? My 100 years thing goes back to 1924, so post 1914-18.
Joining NATO does not mean they are involved in a war. Not yet at least. And Switzerland was not involved in WW1 - the last war involving Switzerland was in the 1840s.
You could look at Iceland too. It was declared it's own country in 1918, and other than a brief, zero-casualty "occupation" during WW2 has never been involved in a war. It has no military and no legal mechanism to be able to declare war.
Switzerland doesn't count being one of the main beneficiaries of Nazi ideologies and literally hording the gold that used to be part of the teeth of the jews getting killed in concentration camps. Nazi Gold is a synonym to Swiss banking. A visit to Auschwitz or Mauthausen might help to get some perspective.
Pacifism can only endure as a privileged lifestyle on the backs of warriors. Defenseless, clueless folk get wiped out, enslaved, or subjugated by the first "Viking raid".
Easy: Switzerland comes to mind for example, unless you also count as involvement looming starvation from supply chain issues and accidentally getting bombed due to navigation failure and/or preventing that by violent means.
How many of the Caribbean states have been involved in wars? (I know Cuba had a civil war that occasionally appeared more external than civil wars reasonably should)
this is hilariously myopic that no one can imagine a non-aggressive society at all. No they did not all hunt and kill other humans methodically, no they did not. The winners on a large scale did hunt and kill other humans methodically, with very fancy costumes on at the time, actually. Therefore most everyone alive is yes, descended from those winners. Genghis Khan at 100 children or something? yes, true. No not everyone did that.
'A country that has been in a war in the last 100 years is a violent society'
That is quite the stretch. There are many countries that live in peace with each other and within for most of the time. Only occasional defensive operations might have been violent, but does it make the society as a whole 'violent'?
Switzerland 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.
"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
The 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.
Reexamining the chart, you're right, it is in fact the full data analyzed. It's fair to reconsider at this point, but I think my initial reservations about the selection of the data still apply - author did not choose the 25 most deadly tribes, but he did choose only data for which violence was the subject. Ostensibly, there must be some under-representation among peoples that didn't leave mass graves, burned villages, etc.
So we see a 100x increase over modern day USA murder rates among chiefdoms and anarchic tribes, which who knows how much of the population that represents. Again, I also take issue generalizing from that.
So, how many lived in states vs tribes over time? And where are all the other states and tribes? I'd expect a power-law relationship, with the worst atrocities being highly visible, and a long tail of less-awful areas to live. The problem is did lots or a little people live in those places
All I'm saying is "Was life basically nasty brutish and short for everyone?" I doubt it was all that bad, though I would never want to go back.
Especially 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.
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.
Historically 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.
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.
As 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.
Acoup, which seems to be an HN favorite, has a series basically about this. It describes why/how the Roman state became so successful at warfare and conquest:
Its 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]
Indian 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!
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.