One of Steven Pinker’s well-known works is the book “The Better Angels of Our Nature.” Based on it, societies that existed before the emergence of agricultural civilizations with cities and monopoly governments suffered from chronic violence and endless wars, and the level of violence has steadily declined over time, partly due to the monopolization of power and law. But has violence actually decreased, did the emergence of the state play an important role in this, and is man cruel by nature?
According to Pinker, for hunter-gatherer societies, the average level of lethal violence was as high as 14%. But where does this data come from? Analyzing it, anthropologists Douglas Fry and Brian Ferguson found that it is inaccurate and represents “cherry-picking”[1][2]. For example, Pinker provides homicide data for 8 tribal peoples, yet he does not mention that in the case of two of them (the Hiví and the Ache), all killings were related to the extermination of the indigenous population by border guards. Meanwhile, the tribes tried to live in peace with one another. Taking these and other similar cases explained by colonialism into account, Pinker’s estimate can already be reduced by half, to 7%.
But other data of his are also doubtful. Modern tribes have been “infected” by colonialists, slave traders, globalization, and simply farming. They have little in common with the tribes that lived thousands of years ago. Additionally, anthropologists may prefer to study more violent societies. 20% of Pinker’s data are provided by a single person—Napoleon Chagnon, who is criticized within the anthropological community, makes methodological errors, and was even exiled from one tribe due to intrusive interference.
Using a different approach, Fry reviewed a sample of 186 societies studied by anthropologists. Only 24 of them were hunter-gatherers, and only 8 had many mentions. In the case of 7 of these 8 societies, killings were reported as a rare or even entirely absent phenomenon. He also searched anthropological literature for cultures that never waged war. He counted as many as 70 such cultures.
As Pinker claims, citing 21 archaeological excavations, 15% of savages died from violence. However, some of this data is very limited and may also be misinterpreted. For example, burials of people with arrowheads may simply mean that they were hunters.
Can better evidence be provided? A study of up to 3,000 remains found in France showed 1.9% cases of lethal injuries. It is not on Pinker’s list. Nor are studies of 350 remains in Britain with 2%, 418 remains in Serbia and Romania with 2.3%, or 2,500 in Japan with 2% traces of lethal violence. A study of 1,107 remains in Europe showed a minimum estimate of 3.7% and a maximum of 5.5% lethal violence. Not even close to Pinker’s 15%.
Finally, all examples cited by Pinker are no older than 12,000 years, meaning they could have been influenced by the agricultural revolution. And as anthropologist Leslie Sponsel writes, “at the stage of hunter-gatherer cultural evolution, which dominated 99% of human existence… the absence of archaeological evidence of war suggests that they were rare or absent throughout most of human prehistory.”
Ultimately, the following data on the level of lethal violence can be derived: 2% for hunter-gatherers, up to 5% for societies after the agricultural revolution, 7% for modern hunter-gatherers, 5% for early states, and 3% for the 20th century. They confirm Ferguson’s theory that wars suddenly emerged in a world without war due to the complication of social structure, as well as Fry’s words that we are dealing not with a continuous decline in the level of violence, but with an n-type curve.
People in hunter-gatherer societies—a social structure closest to the natural state of man—lived in peace and solved many problems without violence long before the state imposed discipline upon them. There was no Hobbesian “war of all against all,” and the data indicating otherwise are inaccurate and selective.
