[coldtea]

>This does not sound compatible with your conjecture that pre-agricultural era banishment was not a real threat.

It doesn't have to be a real threat to be considered "extremely harsh".

That is, it's not just physical damage or potential danger that's "harsh". Isolation from the community you belong too could be considered just as harsh, from a social standpoint.

[dalke]

I do not understand your comment. I was asking for clarification as the statement did not match my understanding of banishment across several cultures, nor does the logic used to reach the conclusion make sense.

In this context I used "threat" as a short-hand for the previous poster's "Therefore, most of the time, banishment did not lead to starvation or even necessarily isolation". I did not mean it as a purely physical threat. Indeed, the link I gave to Aboriginal customary law uses 'threat' for both physical and non-physical punishments ("In addition to the threat of being killed for a breach of customary law it has been reported that in some cases the threat also involved the denial of mortuary rites"), so my broader use does not appear to be unusual.

Therefore, I agree with your comment, as it is a restatement of mine. But my experience is that comments with similar structure to yours are meant to point out incorrect or incomplete statement. Yet I don't see how that's the case here.

Would you kindly elaborate the intent behind your response?