The international community has managed to cause the Russian economy great pain in a very short time. In principle, this is quite enough to bury the current regime in the RF, should it decide to keep playing out an already lost war. But this will a) take a long time, b) bring enormous losses to all states and private companies that joined the sanctions against the RF, c) in no way help a fundamental solution to the problem of aggression by a nuclear power against a non-nuclear one (the PRC can wait until the governments that so joyfully implemented sanctions against the RF are swept away by an opposition promising a return to normalcy—and immediately after that move to restore its own territorial integrity across the strait).
How to solve the problem faster, cheaper, and more reliably? Simply use not only the stick, but also the carrot. You are already trying to apply this method by offering Russian pilots rewards for flying military aircraft abroad, but, agree, this is small-scale; act on a larger scale. Declare that your sanctions are only against the RF. If any territorial entity declares its separation from the RF, states that it does not support the RF’s invasion of Ukraine, and joins the sanctions against the RF, promise to immediately recognize the sovereignty of this new state, admit it to the UN, recognize its nuclear status if nuclear warheads are located on its territory—and, since this state is not the RF, no sanctions will apply to it.
For decades, the leadership of the RF has told its population that the collective West dreams of dismembering Mother Russia. So, bring this nightmare to life! Let Vladimir, the gatherer of Russian lands, go down in history as the one who left Russia as a principality the size of the Moscow region. It would be elegant. It would be instructive. It would put the PRC in its place.
A compact state, whose activity mostly consists of ensuring the operation of infrastructure and legal frameworks, is something that even libertarians agree to tolerate with some distaste. Yes, it is an outdated interface, but perhaps it is worth preserving temporarily for reasons of backward compatibility until the last statists die out naturally. However, vast empires are a dark past that belonged in the dustbin of history a hundred years ago, and there is simply no reason to preserve the RF (or the PRC) within its existing borders. If even the Ukrainian crisis does not push these empires toward collapse, it is frightening to imagine how great a crisis these empires will cause next time.
The previous post sparked a number of critical remarks. To ensure they don’t go unanswered, I am not editing that publication, but rather releasing a supplement.
First, I messed up, and instead of Zelensky, I published another man in overalls, a certain head of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration, Vitaly Kim. I wish many years of life to this owner of cheerful socks! For myself, I wish for a bit more attentiveness when looking at pictures, although I realize this is hardly feasible.
Second, I was quoted the legal norms based on which the distribution of weapons was carried out. They imply presenting a passport, enrolling in the territorial defense, certain other formalities, and, most disgustingly, an obligation under threat of criminal prosecution to return the received state property within ten days after the lifting of martial law. I believe the wretchedness of these norms will be slightly more than completely negated by their non-fulfillment. Almost certainly, the lion’s share of the issued firearms will eventually be tragically lost in battle according to the documents—much like hunting rifles have a striking tendency to sink according to the documents during duck hunting.
As a series of posts directed against the Russian state was published, about forty people unsubscribed from my Telegram channel, and now I intend to exacerbate the situation by taking a swipe at the state of Ukraine.
The Great Patriotic War is taking place in Ukraine. The national spirit is strong, and the Javelins are fast; if only there were a no-fly zone, the occupiers would have been destroyed in a week, and without it, the task will stretch until summer, provided, of course, that the “snuffbox” factor doesn’t play a role. The state trusts its citizens so much that it distributes combat weapons to them without any documents and has officially declared that the killing of Russian soldiers by private individuals is not a criminal offense. In essence: be partisans, you have our blessing. Foreign volunteers are flocking to the country because human hunting is the most exciting of hunts, as we have read much about in the classics. To top it all off, the Ukrainian government is receiving serious amounts of aid not only in weapons and humanitarian cargo, but also in money.
The question is, why the hell does military conscription still exist in Ukraine? Why the hell are men up to 60 years old not allowed to leave the country? Firstly, this is sexism (well, that’s me lightly touching upon the “agenda”). Secondly, this is direct state slave-ownership. Thirdly, it is simply inefficient. If a man has already reached the border, he certainly does not intend to fight. He intends to get his family to a safe place, and there, in that safe place, he will at least no longer be a burden to the Ukrainian state social security system, will not increase the casualty count of the civilian population, and will hover before Russian embassies with a Ukrainian flag—and then, who knows, he might even return to join the war, but voluntarily. This is quite likely, especially given the fact that Ukraine is able to pay its soldiers quite generously, while refugees can only rely on their own savings and the help of the local Russian-Ukrainian diaspora.
The question is, why the hell has Ukraine kept border guards and especially customs officers on its western border at all? Does the state have nowhere to put its people? Does the state wish to obstruct the free movement of goods under conditions of extreme tension within civil society? Has the state lost its fucking mind? Customs should have been sent in full to the front on the first day of the war, so they could have all perished there. Or at least fired, for goodness’ sake.
In short, I am far from admiring the actions of the current Ukrainian leadership. It could destroy Putin’s occupiers no less effectively while not tyrannizing its own people. This would serve as a much more weighty moral example to the world than the president keeping an automatic rifle at his workplace. Look, Lukashenko also posed with an automatic rifle; some knight he is.
Literally yesterday I was in a gloomy and completely non-festive mood, but this morning I’m almost squealing with delight: the first news of a military enlistment office being burned down in the Russian Federation has arrived. This is exactly what I called for in one of my anti-Russian posts. The news was anonymously published in a Ukrainian Telegram channel, which is understandable, as such things wouldn’t be shown on the first state channel.
The target was chosen magnificently: a solitary building, locked for the night, without any guards or other possible victims. The area is rural, which means that the conscripts registered here are likely not wealthy and have no means to dodge the draft, so this event could be a real help for them. Now I would really like to see daytime photos demonstrating the result of the work, but we’ll see how it goes.
Guy, well done! Now, after the trial by fire, you face the trial of “copper pipes”: not to brag about your heroic act and not to get caught by the authorities. It is precisely the impunity of such actions that will best encourage their repetition throughout Russia. And for now, it’s better to hide the proofs securely and not take them out until the end of the war or successful emigration. In any case, thank you so much!
I urge my readers outside of Russia to actively repost this news, and those in Russia to send it to friends in private messages. And gather your courage to creatively develop this amateur activity. Once things really catch fire, it will be possible to start burning other interesting objects besides military enlistment offices: police stations and tax offices. But those are better guarded, so please be more careful with them. Again, collateral victims are possible in police stations, and not only among employees, so everything must be weighed three times here before deciding.
Six months ago, Mikhail spoke in Latin America and said that the state has no incentives to “leave you alone and let you live as you wish,” but it does have economic and power-based incentives not to do so.
And at the end of the lecture, he stated directly that libertarianism is a revolutionary ideology. And if you are not an extremist-revolutionary at heart, then you are not a true libertarian.
How do you feel about this statement and the lecture as a whole?
Anonymous question
With a feeling of slight nostalgia, I reread my post about the conversation between Svetov and Shulman. I noted that neither Svetov’s premonition of a civil war nor Shulman’s premonition that the government would continue to lose ground during elections came true. Instead, we have a hecatomb that Putin is orchestrating for his own voters by the hands of the AFU, which, of course, almost no one predicted back in 2018. I suppose this means that these voters are not actually that necessary to him.
In the Latin American lecture you mentioned, Svetov launched an interesting take: that we do not resist the state not because it has the biggest club, but because deep down we actually believe in its legitimacy, even if we position ourselves as ancaps. This corresponds with Belkovich’s well-known take that we already live under ancap; it’s just that all the territories have been divided among bandits, and people mostly endure their subordinate status without complaint, although, in general, they are not obliged to.
As justification for his thesis, Svetov brings onto the stage a poor Afghan with a Kalashnikov, who first drove out the Soviet and then the American “civilizers” because his belief that he alone knew how to live correctly was far stronger.
Since Svetov spent the entire first part of his lecture savoring how he was beaten and humiliated by representatives and henchmen of the state while he was organizing the coolest events in Eastern Europe, it can be concluded that he, too, believes in the legitimacy of the state deep down. After all, a proper, sincere ancap with a bunch of bitcoins would surely have found a way to personally avenge those miserable lackeys who dared to violate the NAP against him, and thus set a good example of how to deal with violators of the non-aggression principle.
As you may have noticed, my tone was always quite extremist even in Russia, and once I left the RF, it became completely unrestrained. In practice, however, my activism very rarely goes beyond tax evasion. Perhaps I am simply waiting for a talented libertarian revolutionary who will raise the people to the barricades for freedom and the market—so that I may stand under his banner. But for now, while the fiery libertarians limit themselves to looking reprovingly at the Latin American audience in search of radicals, I must also limit myself to purely peaceful activities in building my own village ancap.
To put it very briefly, it is not worth going to rallies in Russia; it is an irrational waste of strength. A public appearance against the regime today is considered treason to the motherland in Russia and is punished with prison terms of up to fifteen years. But, as they say, if you’re going to be hanged for stealing a lamb, you might as well steal a sheep. A campaign of civil disobedience implies far more than just taking to the squares. It implies total sabotage of the state.
As I suggested earlier, you can burn down military recruitment offices. These are poorly protected targets containing a mass of paper personal files of conscripts. Their destruction will seriously hinder mobilization. If you work as a system administrator in one government institution or another, you can delete, corrupt, or leak databases and other important information into the public domain, leaving an Anonymous team business card on the screen—let them think it was hackers. You can embezzle any state property you can get your hands on, and even if you are caught, theft carries a lighter sentence than treason to the motherland. You can make calls reporting bomb threats.
One can and should savor all stories of such sabotage and spread rumors about it to the widest possible audience. If a “vatnik” only receives information that new sanctions are being introduced from the outside, he may rally around the flag. But if he receives a constant stream of rumors that a partisan war against the regime is underway in Russia—that citizen A had their tires slashed for the letter Z, that citizen B was beaten up, that the republican administration has gathered for a secret meeting on the topic of seceding from Russia—then his morale will be undermined much more effectively.
There is no point in telling regime supporters that the war was condemned by someone like Chichvarkin. He is already a traitor; what can be expected from him. On the other hand, it is useful to tell them that people like Abramovich have condemned the war. As in, look how smart people act: they’ve fled far away themselves and are atoning for their sins before the West. And tomorrow, slightly less smart guys, who have stolen not billions, but hundreds of millions, will do the same. And the day after tomorrow, the head of a city FSB office will flee and ask for political asylum. Only the most incorrigible idiots will support the regime until the end—they are the ones who will be appointed as scapegoats. Though, an idiot might not live to see that moment because he will go to the front and be killed there.
And such defeatist talk is far more effective than various stupid rallies. Leave the rallies to the diaspora; they can do it much more safely and with much more positive media coverage. For instance, we have a rally tomorrow at 14:00 in Podgorica; if you are already in Montenegro and have Sunday off, then come. People are actively coordinating in local chats, so you’ll figure out the most convenient way to get there.
Another important direction of effort for the diaspora is helping everyone fleeing the war. This is useful first and foremost not even to the refugees, but to the volunteers themselves. Just think about the fact that the proportion of Ukrainians among Russian-speaking emigrants will grow sharply, and all these people will be damn angry. Do not give a reason to direct this anger at Russian expats. Let’s make it clear that Putinism is strictly limited to the territory where Putin’s tanks graze and is powerless to penetrate beyond its borders. And here live the “right” Russians, who saw that Putin roughly in the same place as the Russian warship.
Now we can clearly observe where violence as a method for solving problems and achieving goals leads. Regardless of who holds what views regarding the conflict in Donbas, the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, the relations between Ukraine and Russia, the state of affairs in both countries, or who is right and who is wrong, in all possible positions, the attempt to achieve something by violent—in this case, military—means can be called both the root cause and an aggravating factor of the existing problems.
Indeed, what can we expect in a world where governments and states declare themselves “monopolists” of the right to “legally” use violence to achieve certain goals. And now, the Russian government has simply exercised this “right to violence.” As any other government that relies on force instruments will do, if it seems profitable enough.
Some may justify what is happening by saying that it is a response to the violence of the Ukrainian government toward the residents of Donbas who are unwilling to submit to it. But even if that is the case—can any force measures be justified in this instance other than purely defensive ones? Can an invasion of peaceful cities with accompanying human casualties be justified? No, and again no! And if someone thinks otherwise, if someone considers the death of people to be an adequate and acceptable price for achieving some geopolitical goals, then their opinion can only be called the position of a rapist and a psychopath who does not care about human life. And I have said more than once that a position allowing for forceful coercion, the infliction of harm, and the killing of people simply has no right to exist.
Of course, actual rapists and psychopaths make up only a tiny percentage of society; far more people simply hold such a position due to their own stupidity and lack of understanding. It was a tiny percentage of people who were responsible for violent attacks throughout all of human history, while the vast majority of people never needed this—they have their own families, concerns, and goals, and in general, they simply feel an instinctive aversion to violence and would never be able to commit a murder with their own hands.
Understanding all this, we must first and foremost fight against violence as an approach to achieving any goals, against the existence of any force structures in society that may have an advantage in their potential for violence relative to ordinary people, and most importantly—against rapists for whom committing a murder costs nothing, and with such a position, they successfully advance either into force structures or government bodies. After all, as long as someone has the opportunity to freely commit violence, they will do so in pursuit of their goals at the first convenient opportunity. And if someone holds violent views and possesses power over certain force structures staffed by violent people, then even war ceases to be something surprising and unexpected.
Fight against violence and war. And stay with us to learn more about how we can deal with the problem of violence and achieve a free, non-violent society.
As you can see, my imagination is not very rich when it comes to headlines. Usually, the authors of the questions provide them for me, preventing me from revealing my inadequacy.
A march in support of Ukraine’s defenders took place in Podgorica today. Unfortunately, I work without days off, and I couldn’t find a replacement, so I didn’t attend; I only watched the videos. By my estimates, there were between five hundred and a thousand people. Considering that it is currently the off-season for tourism, this means that a very large proportion of the Russian-speaking diaspora showed up. In local chats, statements from those who approve of the war are literally solitary. People have split into those discussing how to help the victims of the attack, and those who snort irritably at the discussion of politics, after first assuring that they, of course, deeply sympathize with the Ukrainians, but the topic is simply off-topic for the chat.
Several people who had previously expressed interest in the Montelibero project in the vein of “I should visit you in the summer and have a look” have now changed their tone to “I’m urgently gathering my documents and moving to you for good.” I recommend you join their ranks as soon as possible. You need a foreign passport, a diploma or certificate, a police clearance certificate, a Tinkoff Bank card, and the standard COVID kit that grants the right to cross borders. There are no direct connections between Russia and Montenegro; for now, the most reliable route is via Istanbul. If possible, bring cash Euros. If this is difficult (I fully admit that there may be unjustifiably large spreads when buying currency in Russia now), bring bitcoins. Dollars are not needed here at all.
It feels like the Russian leadership has frightened the whole world quite a bit, and under the influence of panic, people are prone to impulsive actions. Pavel Durov almost closed the Russian segment of Telegram. European countries are stopping the issuance of visas to citizens of the Russian Federation. There are rumors about crypto-exchanges blocking Russian wallets. In short, in every “watchman,” there awakens a desire to immediately close some entrance or exit, because something must be done, given what a fucking disaster is happening.
Therefore, if you have so far neglected the recommendations to store savings in non-custodial bitcoin wallets, it is quite likely that you have suddenly become significantly poorer. This also means that if you rush abroad right now, you will find yourself there completely unprepared. Do not hesitate to ask for help, but also do not assume that anyone owes you anything. As I have written repeatedly about social welfare under ancap — the main virtue of the poor is to be sweet and grateful.
If you decide to stay in Russia — it is difficult for me to give detailed recommendations here; I am no longer well-oriented in the situation and do not know where it is more dangerous — in a conditional Moscow or in a conditional village. I will be very surprised if Russia does not see a wave of reports about the mining of various government institutions, or even defense enterprises, as well as cyberattacks. Actual terrorist attacks are more likely in the border zone. Try not to end up in the troops; that is the stupidest thing you can do right now. If the military enlistment office becomes interested in you, do not try to sue or count on alternative civilian service (AGS); just get out, at least by moving to another district outside your registered address. They are unlikely to be ceremonious with you now, so do not contact the state more than necessary.
Final paragraph — for those who want to be heroes in this war. Burn down the military enlistment offices. It is hard to think of a more effective peaceful anti-war action. The recipe for a Molotov cocktail is publicly available, and enlistment offices are usually not in residential buildings, so in a nighttime arson, the probability of casualties is minimal, while the benefit is obvious: destroying the infrastructure for conscription undermines mobilization capabilities. With literally a couple of liters of gasoline and a liter of oil, you are capable of saving several hundred human fates. In the worst-case scenario, you will ruin your own, so try not to get caught stupidly.
Sorry that I didn’t cancel Bitarch’s scheduled post; it completely slipped my mind with everything going on, and the publication was somewhat out of place. Now, let’s get to the point.
In a recent post about mercantilism, I pointed out that today it is a tool not for achieving wealth, but for war. The market is a tool for peaceful people, and economic sanctions are the flip side of that tool. Specifically, if you, the reader, can find any way to make the Russian state poorer, I will be glad if you apply it. I will be even gladder if you can do this without danger to your life, and if it doesn’t hit your own wallet too hard—after all, the resources of a peaceful person and a state differ greatly, and it’s better to avoid clearly suicidal actions, unless, of course, you believe you can achieve some truly important goal for yourself this way.
If you go out onto Russian streets to protest the war, try not to get arrested. If you do get arrested, at least try not to pay the fines afterward. If there is an opportunity to emigrate immediately (for example, if you have remote work, you are not burdened by real estate, sick relatives, and so on), do it. Even if you continue to work remotely for some Russian enterprise, at least you won’t be paying consumption taxes to Russia. If you are burdened by things like clothes, cats, or studying political science, I hope you will soon rethink the priorities in your life, although you certainly know best.
Montenegro remains visa-free for Russians for now, so for some time it will still be possible to get here relatively freely. One of the MonteLibero participants has already issued a statement that they are ready to help free of charge in obtaining a residence permit for everyone who is forced to leave Ukraine for Montenegro and asks for help. I cannot formulate a similarly broad offer for everyone wishing to urgently ditch Russia on my part, but I will certainly help with advice on settling in.
Even if you are thrilled that Putin is finally cracking down on Ukrainian Nazis, I still hope that you leave Russia, but preferably far away from me.
In general, the best thing that could happen to Russians in the coming years is if they completely lose their own statehood and scatter across the world. Change my mind.
I reread what I wrote and see that it came out terribly dry. That’s why I love texts. You can write three paragraphs of emotion and pathos, exhale, and erase them.
It is a fairly common assertion that the level of lethal violence (deaths of people at the hands of other people) in prehistoric times was extremely high and could normally reach as much as 50%. This means that half of the “savages” became victims of murder rather than dying of natural causes or other reasons. Such a claim is used, among other things, to refute the argument that humans possess natural inhibitors of aggression, calling the aversion to violence and non-violent relationships purely sociocultural inventions that have nothing to do with what humans are by nature.
Indeed, archaeological evidence demonstrates cases of an extremely high level of lethal violence. Moreover, even in some primitive societies today, a significant portion of people still die from murder. However, the argument that murder is a natural and widespread phenomenon for humans is greatly exaggerated and based on individual, limited examples rather than general statistics. For instance, a study examining 600 human populations shows that throughout the history of Homo sapiens, the level of lethal violence was only 2%, and this includes cases of war and genocide [1]. Some studies also state that theories about the universality of war in human history lack empirical support, and data on high levels of prehistoric violence (for example, those presented in the work “War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage”) may be unjustifiably inflated [2][3].
Relying on the sample provided by the study of 600 human populations, as well as data from several other studies, let us analyze the level of lethal violence in different eras and in different human societies in more detail to confirm its rather low prevalence throughout human history.
The Old World
During the Paleolithic period in the Old World, the level of lethal violence was 3.97%. In archaeological excavations relating to this period, generally, few human remains were found, at best only a few dozen. However, excavations of the Natufian culture from the Epipaleolithic period in the territory of modern Israel draw attention. Of 400 human remains dating from 11,000 to 15,000 years ago, only 5 indicated a violent nature of death.
This example is taken from a study of prehistoric wars in Europe and the Near East [4]. The claim that wars were the cause of death for 15% of prehistoric people is called absurd in it. It also states that humans have no evolutionary predisposition to attack people from other social groups, and excavations related to the European Paleolithic show no evidence of wars, only extremely rare cases of cannibalism. Of course, this same study mentions the possibility of humans easily entering violent conflicts, based on the fact that wars did eventually arise later. But as we will see further, participation in violent conflicts never became something inherent to the majority of people.
The Neolithic, Mesolithic, and Bronze Age were also not characterized by a high level of lethal violence (3.59%, 3.39%, and 2.33%, respectively). However, the cases of the Iron Age and the Middle Ages require more detailed study, where the level of lethal violence, as claimed in the study of human populations, was 5.82% and 12.08%, respectively.
From the considered sample of Iron Age populations, cases of an extremely high level of lethal violence relate to Britain during the rule of the Roman Empire. For instance, one of the archaeological excavations in London, while demonstrating a large number of men killed by violence, explained this as “headhunting” by the Roman army and/or defeats in gladiatorial combat [5]. And the most “violent” Celtic excavations (though containing the remains of at most a few dozen people) relate to the Maiden Castle fortress.
On the other hand, all other major excavations, both in Britain and in other places such as Spain, Italy, the Near East, and North Africa, show an extremely low level of lethal violence. Many such pieces of evidence relating to the territory of modern Syria showed no cases of murder. The study providing them, covering 25 archaeological Mesopotamian excavations, shows that only 28 out of 1278 (i.e., 2.2%) of the examined remains have traces of healed cranial traumas related to violence. Based on evidence of bloody military conflicts and some level of violence in daily life in this territory, researchers expected to find a much larger number of traumas of this nature [6].
Such a difference between “violent” and “non-violent” Iron Age excavations may suggest that the emergence of organized armies was precisely the cause of the increase in the overall level of lethal violence in this period. But this says nothing about the violent nature of humans in general, since the professional soldiers who attack and kill other people are an overwhelming minority in society. And if we exclude from the sample only the London excavations relating to the actions of soldiers and gladiators of the Roman Empire, we get a lethal violence level of only 2.9%.
Similar results are shown by evidence from the Middle Ages, because in the case of the sample of archaeological excavations we are considering, the statistics of lethal violence are significantly increased by literally two battles: the Battle of Visby and the Battle of Aljubarrota. By excluding only these from the sample, we get a lethal violence level of only 3.3% (and this is without excluding other battles that left behind fewer remains).
Extremely interesting evidence is provided by more modern records of death and its causes for residents of London between 1629 and 1659, as well as in 1665. In the first case, out of 263,440 records, only 470 related to violent death (i.e., 0.18% of all deaths), and in the second, out of 97,306 records, only 30 (i.e., 0.03%) [7][8]. On average, although this is dozens of times higher than the modern global murder rate (and a hundred times higher than the murder rate in modern Britain), we clearly see that murderers in those times (as in any other times) constituted only an overwhelming minority of the population.
The New World
The level of lethal violence in the New World was 3.19% in the Archaic period, 3.52% in the Formative period, 5.28% in the Classic period, and 9.94% in the Post-Classic period.
The Archaic and Formative periods do not demonstrate a high level of lethal violence. A slightly higher level is observed in the Classic period, however, I would like to highlight the largest excavations from Central California. Among 2,182 remains, only 11 (i.e., 0.5%) had traces of violent death. Similar excavations from Central California, but relating to the Post-Classic period, also showed an extremely low level of lethal violence (less than 0.3%).
The level of lethal violence in Mexican California, based on evidence from colonial missions sent there, was 10%, which is much higher than the indicators for Central California. However, it should be noted that almost half of the cases relate to actions of a military nature [9]. Furthermore, the total number of registered deaths was dozens of times smaller than the sample provided by Central Californian archaeological excavations.
Among the extremely violent examples, the Crow Creek massacre should be highlighted, in which an entire Indian settlement was destroyed at once by attackers whose identity is not reliably known. Once again, we can see that lethal violence statistics increase precisely due to violent attacks of a military nature by specific groups of people.
The question of the violent nature of some modern tribes
Claims about the extremely violent nature of prehistoric humans very often rely on an analogy with the high violence of some modern hunter-gatherer tribes, especially the Hiwi and Ache of South America, with 55% and 30% lethal violence, respectively. However, such an argument would be fundamentally incorrect, because if these tribes are compared with other similar tribes, the latter turn out to be far less violent [10]. There are also cases of entirely non-violent tribes, a well-known example being the Paliyan people of South India. In general, one cannot determine how inherent violence is to humans based on individual cases of extremely violent isolated tribes. Nor can one lightheartedly draw conclusions about the level of lethal violence in tribes of the past—an error made by some researchers [2].
Conclusions
From the statistics of 600 human populations and other evidence we have examined, we can conclude that lethal violence was not an excessively widespread phenomenon in human history. Also, as mentioned at the very beginning, theories about the universality of war in human history lack empirical support, and data on high levels of prehistoric violence may be unjustifiably inflated. In general, cases of populations with an extremely high level of lethal violence can easily be categorized as statistical outliers.
And most importantly—mass killings are most often associated with violent attacks by organized armies. Therefore, the bulk of all lethal violence is merely the result of the actions of a small percentage of people initiating attacks of a military nature. Against the backdrop of an extremely non-violent daily life throughout human history, this only proves that many people who entered battles and became victims of military attacks died from lethal violence, not that many people in general did. For was participation in battles the norm for the majority of people? Except for isolated cases—no.
Sources
1. Gómez, J. M., Verdú, M., González-Megías, A., & Méndez, M. (2016). The phylogenetic roots of human lethal violence. Nature, 538(7624), 233–237. doi:10.1038/nature19758;
2. Haas, J. & Piscitelli, M. (2013). The Prehistory of Warfare: Misled by Ethnography. Pp. 168-190 In: DP Fry ed. War peace and human nature: the convergence of evolutionary and cultural views. Oxford Univ. Press.;
3. Ferguson, R. B. (1997). War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. American Anthropologist, 99(2), 424-425;
4. Ferguson, R. B. (2013). The prehistory of war and peace in Europe and the Near East. Pp. 191-240 In: DP Fry ed. War peace and human nature: the convergence of evolutionary and cultural views. Oxford Univ. Press.;
5. Redfern, R. & Bonney, H. (2014). Headhunting and amphitheatre combat in Roman London England: new evidence from the Walbrook Valley. Journal of Archaeology Science 43: 214-226;
6. Sołtysiak, A. (2015). Antemortem Cranial Trauma in Ancient Mesopotamia. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 27(1), 119–128. doi:10.1002/oa.2478;
8. Champion, J. (1993). Epidemics and the Built Environment in 1665. Champion. Centre for Metropolitan Hist. Working Papers Ser 1 35-52;
9. Hackel, S. W. (2012). From Ahogado to Zorrillo: external causes of mortality in the California missions. The History of the Family 17: 77-104;
10. Gurven, M., & Kaplan, H. (2007). Longevity Among Hunter- Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination. Population and Development Review, 33(2), 321–365. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2007.00171.x.
