[tnjm]

The evidence is very sparse, and what we do have suggests that modern hunter-gatherer societies are, on average, no more violent than humanity in general. (My personal if limited observation, having lived briefly with several, is that they seem to be notably less violent than the -- often frontier -- communities around them.)

Steven Pinker has muddied the water with quite a lot of nonsense in The Better Angels of our Nature. An interesting, better-sourced and less cherry-picked read is a 2013 paper in Science[0].

[0] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1235675

[Manuel_D]

The evidence is not sparse, it comes from a diverse set of sources from observation of existing hunter-gatheter communities across different continents as well as archaeological evidence. It's true that violence is much lower in absolute numbers. But by virtue of drastically lower overall populations, the proportional rate is much higher. 5 people killed our of a kin-group of 100 people is like 15 million people killed in the USA.

There is an appeal to the thought that humans in a natural state are peaceful. Because if modern society has made mankind violent, then we can hopefully roll back it's influence and restore us to that peaceful state. But that's not what our evidence suggests.

This article examines existing hunter gatherers: https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2007/12/19/nobl...

For a book that dives into the archaeological evidence, see War in Human Civilization by Azar Gat.

[tnjm]

The problem with this is that all modern hunter-gatherer societies are under extreme pressure due to the theft of their lands and resources. This is particularly true in the context of the anecdotes given in the linked article, even if its characterization of today's !Kung or aboriginal peoples in Australia as being in a state of "almost constant tribal warfare" is bizarre (to put it kindly and assume good faith).

There is also an idealogical appeal by the likes of Pinker to the idea that nation states are the only structures that can prevent us from a return to a kind of endemic violence amongst hunter-gatherers. This thought has historically been exploited by those who would steal their lands, and do it "for their own good".

You might call it "doing a Chagnon" - precipitate violence, use that to characterize a people as warlike, then use that as a pretext to take even more resources.

Of course it's possible to find a hunter-gatherer society which is more violent than a particular modern nation state. It's also trivial to find an inverse example. When you look at what evidence we do have, you see that hunter-gatherers are no more or less violent than the rest of us, and when violence does flare it happens for the very same reasons it happens anywhere else.

[Manuel_D]

Your point about butter gatherers being pressured by the encroachment of civilization is true. But in those situations, the rates of violent death are mostly in the 25-60% range, as was observed in many of the Native American societies during the colonial period. It's important to exclude these outliers due to the influence of encroaching civilizations. But even absent these outliers, and exclusively drawing on archaeological evidence, the rates of violence in hunter-gatheter societies is drastically higher [1].

1. https://ourworldindata.org/ethnographic-and-archaeological-e...

[tnjm]

Therein lies the problem though. Even if we take the numbers from the linked article (whose starting point was... Steven Pinker!):

- the "ethnographic evidence", which I accept you're not defending, largely features indigenous peoples during an active genocide.

- the archaeological evidence is, naturally and obviously, extremely few and far between. Much of it doesn't relate to hunter-gatherers at all. As for the rest? Taking one at random: the 12% violent death share at Ile Téviec. Read the sources and this is extrapolated from three (3!) bodies. Two of which were apparently not violent deaths after all. The remaining body? We have no clue if the incoming arrowhead was from warfare or a hunting accident. How unfortunate if a single 6,000 year old hunting accident is labeling entire peoples violent and uncivilized. Either way, it's nonsense all the way down.

What was the historical rate of violence amongst, say, the Zo'é people? They are very isolated today and violence is apparently unheard of, but what happened in the past? We can't possibly know. What of the Awá? No hint. The Sentinelese, even? Who knows?

My point is that all of these data are so limited, so compromised and often so cherry-picked it's revealing nothing very helpful. What little we do know is that rates of violence amongst different hunter-gatherer peoples today, despite them all being under immense outside pressures, are extremely variable... as it is between all other different groups of humans. That observation doesn't sell books, though.

[Manuel_D]

> the "ethnographic evidence", which I accept you're not defending, largely features indigenous peoples during an active genocide.

Incorrect. Plenty of hunter gatherer societies are highly isolated and are not experiencing active genocide or displacement. Even ignoring those outliers that are in such a situation, they still exhibit rates of violence many times greater than modern societies.

> - the archaeological evidence is, naturally and obviously, extremely few and far between. Much of it doesn't relate to hunter-gatherers at all. As for the rest? Taking one at random: the 12% violent death share at Ile Téviec. Read the sources and this is extrapolated from three (3!) bodies. Two of which were apparently not violent deaths after all. The remaining body? We have no clue if the incoming arrowhead was from warfare or a hunting accident. How unfortunate if a single 6,000 year old hunting accident is labeling entire peoples violent and uncivilized. Either way, it's nonsense all the way down.

Correct, no sane anthropologists would use a single sample to draw conclusions. But there are many such sites and estimates are drawn across a wider body of samples.

> What little we do know is that rates of violence amongst different hunter-gatherer peoples today, despite them all being under immense outside pressures, are extremely variable... as it is between all other different groups of humans

For the third time, no, this is incorrect. Rates of violence among hunter gatherers, even among those highly isolated from other societies, is much greater than modern societies. You're probably reading sources that claim that few death occur due to war. But that's because the authors of these papers just categorize the motivation for killing as something else, like revenge. The rate of death is usually in the 10-15% range.

[tnjm]

The data you've presented just don't allow us to make those claims, and fall apart at the gentlest interrogation:

- much doesn't relate to hunter-gatherers at all - some is a tiny sample size (in the only case I dug into, n<=1!) - the bulk of it involves peoples under pressure from encroachment (and worse) - by its nature it's woefully incomplete, some of it cherry-picked, and ignores the majority of hunter-gatherer peoples

It's a fascinating and important question, though.