I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure early agricultural societies experienced more violence, not less. When you sit in one spot and have a bunch of stuff and food, other people may want to take that stuff from you.
Aaaah. That all makes sense, thank you! I’m also a lay history nerd only and have mostly only heard the “Doing agriculture early on mostly sucked compared to the alternative” thing people say a lot
think there was a sweet spot? like around Çatalhöyük's peak? the agricultural activity was less monoculture, maybe a mixture of farming and gathering. seems less hierarchical. i guess the next "sweet spot" wouldn't exist until palace economies which were basically just early centrally planned socialist systems.
I like to think, just total speculation here, but I think early agriculturalists probably did a fair bit of "hunting" but it was more like "killing the animals eating the crops"
And don’t forget just how many more animals there were. Even as recent that we have written records, the amount of animals there used to be just around everywhere is honestly unfathomable to me. And that was after the first 200,000 years of humans murdering every creature they could find wherever they went.
Would make sense what with most none bird animals people eat are plain grazers. Makes sense that A)it's the guys you used to hunt cause they're the easiest and B) if that herd shows up and chomps your crops those crops kinda double as bait to bring the meat to you. I dunno
I work in agriculture and half the job near harvest time is just scaring off birds and shit to keep them from eating (and shitting) all over the harvest. I like to think earlier humans would have thought similar but also "hey free food" if a sling or arrow could bring one down
It's mostly chuds who say that. They don't like offices and mobile phones and just want to live in some idealized Bronze Age where they would get Stacy and be allowed to kill anyone who makes fun of them for being a virgin.
human fossils from early humans indicate a high rate of violence experienced by males
I saw something that said that many of those fossils are probably the result of humans being killed and eaten by predators rather than human on human violence.
yeah i'm also a layperson but from what I do know there were various rules that tribes/clans put in place to avoid coming to blows with each other. Obviously it still happened but eventually it's in everyone's interest to agree on rules for usage of the good hunting grounds rather than have constant all out war
Yes exacty this was my point. Violence in pre state societies is a funcion mostly of population density and comletition of resources.
Another factor is that the people living in low density enviorments need a minimum number of members in their comunity to mantain their technological level. Thus the cost of violence is higher.
I was about to say, that doesn't indicate violence between male humans necessarily. It's probably from getting fucked up by mastodon voiced by Ray Romano.
Yeah, agriculturalists were just a big treasure box for nomads. They had zero compassion for anyone who wasn't a member of their tribe.
At least, until the farmers got their shit together and started building armies with metal weapons and armor. Then they wrecked the nomads' shit permanently.
no there is evidence of pre-agricultural societies taking very good care of their disabled and elderly. Mind you the same has also been true for various agricultural societies
Yeah there is. Maybe not a lot of it, but there are plenty of corpses with healed broken bones. Sometimes very bad breaks. There are skeletons of people with severe disabilities, including one case of a probably female person who likely was unable to walk from infancy but died in her 20s or 30s. Her teeth also show abnormal decay which some archeologists suggest was because her family and friends were providing her with honey she would have been unable to gather herself.
Don't forget "Hey Grampa, when winter comes, we're gonna abandon you, Grandma, and all the other old people because you can no longer contribute to the tribe"
One of the really important advantages humans have is a combination of long childhood periods, language, and living a long time after our peak reproductive years. Kids take a long time to grow so they can grow much larger and more complex brains than they could with only 9 months in utero. Humans live a long time after their peak reproductive age. That means old people can care for and teach children while young people are out doing important economic stuff. It gives us an enormous advantage over similar species.
I'll recommend you an Athabaskan story about Two Old Women on the topic of how some migratory tribes would treat their elderly and/or disabled, at least in relation to the more arctic regions.
I read a really interesting dissertation about windigo sickness in the far north, which was essentially a way to talk about the rare traumatic experience of killing someone when the rest of the group was in an extremely dire, starvation situation. The fur trade in Canada did create circumstances that made these crises somewhat more frequent.
They don't drill a hole into the skull and leave it permanently. They remove a section of skull to allow the brain to swell without causing damage, then replace it after the emergency is over.
Take this with a huge grain of salt. Because i dont trust molecular clocks i think their dates are older than they appear.
And many statistcal distributions are overly reliant on priors.
Some effects tend to be overstated in small samples.
but for what is worth it seems the operative sexual ratio increased during the transition to agriculture then decresed again. Thic could be a proxy for violence.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4381518/figure/KARMINGR186684F2/
Up to a point. But generaly if we asume violence is a function of economic base. Wether they are originaly horticulturalists or not would still mwan that such a base is caple of sustaining a more violent superstructure.
Or introduction of pigs and steel tools like in the case of the yanomame.
But the same can be said for more pure hunter gatheres who are on average more peaceful. The diference is that such a base has less potential to supprt violence.
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I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure early agricultural societies experienced more violence, not less. When you sit in one spot and have a bunch of stuff and food, other people may want to take that stuff from you.
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Aaaah. That all makes sense, thank you! I’m also a lay history nerd only and have mostly only heard the “Doing agriculture early on mostly sucked compared to the alternative” thing people say a lot
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think there was a sweet spot? like around Çatalhöyük's peak? the agricultural activity was less monoculture, maybe a mixture of farming and gathering. seems less hierarchical. i guess the next "sweet spot" wouldn't exist until palace economies which were basically just early centrally planned socialist systems.
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:data-laughing: got to be a tankie civilization for every era now
I like to think, just total speculation here, but I think early agriculturalists probably did a fair bit of "hunting" but it was more like "killing the animals eating the crops"
And don’t forget just how many more animals there were. Even as recent that we have written records, the amount of animals there used to be just around everywhere is honestly unfathomable to me. And that was after the first 200,000 years of humans murdering every creature they could find wherever they went.
True. It's wild to consider the biodiversity before we started chewing our way across the planet
Would make sense what with most none bird animals people eat are plain grazers. Makes sense that A)it's the guys you used to hunt cause they're the easiest and B) if that herd shows up and chomps your crops those crops kinda double as bait to bring the meat to you. I dunno
I work in agriculture and half the job near harvest time is just scaring off birds and shit to keep them from eating (and shitting) all over the harvest. I like to think earlier humans would have thought similar but also "hey free food" if a sling or arrow could bring one down
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It's mostly chuds who say that. They don't like offices and mobile phones and just want to live in some idealized Bronze Age where they would get Stacy and be allowed to kill anyone who makes fun of them for being a virgin.
When you have warrior castes you are not an early agriculturalists.
Lewis binford dissagrees that the best lands for agriculture are the best lands for a hunter gatherer society even if his analisis is crude.
Most academics such as graber or fry also disagree that hunter gatherers were more violent.
The guts from darker angels of our nature think the evidence is inconclusive.
On the surviving non state societies we know the more sedentary ones that is horticulturalists are more violent.
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I saw something that said that many of those fossils are probably the result of humans being killed and eaten by predators rather than human on human violence.
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yeah i'm also a layperson but from what I do know there were various rules that tribes/clans put in place to avoid coming to blows with each other. Obviously it still happened but eventually it's in everyone's interest to agree on rules for usage of the good hunting grounds rather than have constant all out war
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Yes exacty this was my point. Violence in pre state societies is a funcion mostly of population density and comletition of resources.
Another factor is that the people living in low density enviorments need a minimum number of members in their comunity to mantain their technological level. Thus the cost of violence is higher.
I was about to say, that doesn't indicate violence between male humans necessarily. It's probably from getting fucked up by mastodon voiced by Ray Romano.
This is why to this day the voice of Ray Romano triggers a primal fight or flight response
That makes a lot of sense!
Yeah, agriculturalists were just a big treasure box for nomads. They had zero compassion for anyone who wasn't a member of their tribe.
At least, until the farmers got their shit together and started building armies with metal weapons and armor. Then they wrecked the nomads' shit permanently.
also "Old age is like the late 30s, maybe 40's if you're lucky"
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no there is evidence of pre-agricultural societies taking very good care of their disabled and elderly. Mind you the same has also been true for various agricultural societies
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well they weren't exactly moving in random directions they would probably have set paths they migrated on seasonally
Put em in a travois or a dog cart and carry them with you.
Yeah there is. Maybe not a lot of it, but there are plenty of corpses with healed broken bones. Sometimes very bad breaks. There are skeletons of people with severe disabilities, including one case of a probably female person who likely was unable to walk from infancy but died in her 20s or 30s. Her teeth also show abnormal decay which some archeologists suggest was because her family and friends were providing her with honey she would have been unable to gather herself.
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And "You got a head ache? You have demons in your skull, let me get this pointy rock and gently let them out with blunt force trauma"
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Don't forget "Hey Grampa, when winter comes, we're gonna abandon you, Grandma, and all the other old people because you can no longer contribute to the tribe"
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One of the really important advantages humans have is a combination of long childhood periods, language, and living a long time after our peak reproductive years. Kids take a long time to grow so they can grow much larger and more complex brains than they could with only 9 months in utero. Humans live a long time after their peak reproductive age. That means old people can care for and teach children while young people are out doing important economic stuff. It gives us an enormous advantage over similar species.
Old people teach children superstition, old wives tales and sexism. There's a reason schools employ mostly younger people.
I'll recommend you an Athabaskan story about Two Old Women on the topic of how some migratory tribes would treat their elderly and/or disabled, at least in relation to the more arctic regions.
Seems that it's more of a cultural morality tale that reinforces against abandoning the elderly and sick
I read a really interesting dissertation about windigo sickness in the far north, which was essentially a way to talk about the rare traumatic experience of killing someone when the rest of the group was in an extremely dire, starvation situation. The fur trade in Canada did create circumstances that made these crises somewhat more frequent.
fucking canadians.
What fucked it up even more is that it actually helped sometimes
People still believe in trepanation even today.
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Negative.
They don't drill a hole into the skull and leave it permanently. They remove a section of skull to allow the brain to swell without causing damage, then replace it after the emergency is over.
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You're goddamn right :gigachad-hd:
:gigachad: :gigachad: :gigachad: :gigachad: :gigachad: :gigachad: :gigachad:
These are memorials, none of them made it to 30
I made it past 30 and I have regrets.,
Arent the most violent societies horticulturalists and early farmers? Think papua new guinea. Or early near easterners
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Take this with a huge grain of salt. Because i dont trust molecular clocks i think their dates are older than they appear.
And many statistcal distributions are overly reliant on priors.
Some effects tend to be overstated in small samples.
but for what is worth it seems the operative sexual ratio increased during the transition to agriculture then decresed again. Thic could be a proxy for violence.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4381518/figure/KARMINGR186684F2/
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Up to a point. But generaly if we asume violence is a function of economic base. Wether they are originaly horticulturalists or not would still mwan that such a base is caple of sustaining a more violent superstructure.
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Or introduction of pigs and steel tools like in the case of the yanomame.
But the same can be said for more pure hunter gatheres who are on average more peaceful. The diference is that such a base has less potential to supprt violence.
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Based and Impact-pilled.
Love to fall off my horse or slide off an embankment to my death, like a boss.