avatarElle Beau ❇︎

Summary

The evidence suggests that large-scale human violence began with the Agricultural Revolution, contrary to the belief that humans have always been inherently violent.

Abstract

Archaeological and sociological data indicate that widespread violence among humans is a relatively recent phenomenon, emerging with the transition to agricultural societies around 10,000 years ago. Prior to this, humans lived in small, egalitarian tribes that relied on cooperation and shared resources, with no substantial evidence of large-scale violence. The agricultural revolution introduced sedentism, which led to raids on settlements, social hierarchies, and the emergence of violence as a means of resource acquisition and conflict resolution. This shift also coincided with gendered labor roles, social inequality, and health disparities between classes, which were not present in hunter-gatherer societies. The article emphasizes that the perception of humans as naturally violent is a misconception, largely debunked by the work of male anthropologists and other experts who have studied the behavior of our Paleolithic ancestors.

Opinions

  • The author challenges the notion that humans have always been violent, attributing this belief to cultural views embedded in Western thinking rather than empirical evidence.
  • The article criticizes the idea that scarcity of natural resources inherently leads to violence, pointing out that Paleolithic and early Neolithic populations likely did not experience significant scarcity due to low population density and abundant resources.
  • It is suggested that the agricultural revolution led to a more precarious food supply, which, along with increased population density, may have contributed to the rise of violence and warfare.
  • The author posits that hunter-gatherer societies maintained peace and group cohesion through social norms and egalitarian practices, which were deliberately designed to prevent conflict and the accumulation of power by individuals or groups.
  • The article highlights the importance of social connections, suggesting that the pain of social disconnection is as real as physical pain, and that this is indicative of the evolutionary importance of social cohesion for human survival.
  • The author argues that the emergence of dominance hierarchies, violence, and social inequality is a recent development in human history, directly linked to the shift from nomad

Large Scale Violence Only Began with the Agricultural Revolution

The story the evidence paints is crystal clear

Photo by Akin on Unsplash

From time to time various men (it’s always men, it seems) leave comments on my anthropological stories indicating that I really don’t know what I’m talking about. Despite the fact that all the archeological and sociological data indicates that wide-scale violence amongst humans only emerged with the agricultural revolution, they are just sure that we’ve always been a violent species. Why they want to cling so desperately to that belief, I’ll never know, but sometimes they even tell me that what I’m presenting is just a feminist pipedream.

I find this curious because what I’m invariably basing my stories on are quotes and data from male anthropologists coming out of scientific journals. These all paint a very clear picture — one that is quite different than the one these guys are for some reason rabidly attached to. How feminism is supposed to figure into this, I’m not entirely sure, except that perhaps these are the types of men who think that any time a woman says something they don’t like, she must be a feminist. Perhaps any time a woman speaks publicly, she’s a feminist, which automatically discredits her? Who knows?

In any case, the picture that the actual evidence supports is pretty definitive. Until the time of the agricultural revolution, humans lived in small tribes and proto-agricultural settlements that relied on cooperation and egalitarianism as a large part of their survival strategy. Aside from the fact that there is no archeological evidence of wide-scale violence prior to 13,000 years ago, and the bulk of that stems from 8,000 years ago to the present, the social structure of these groups was specifically designed to keep peace and group coherence.

One of the “yeah, buts” that I often hear is that scarce natural resources have been shown to lead to violence. This is certainly a well-documented phenomenon, but the only problem is, there is no reason to believe that our Paleolithic and early Neolithic ancestors experienced a lot of scarcity. Population density was low, and natural resources were abundant.

The population of the earth at this time was still remarkably small. “Toward 7000 b.c.e., population size in Europe as a whole may have approached 400,000.” This is around the population of modern-day Tuscon, Arizona and the time frame that we are looking at is several thousand years before that where it would have been an even lower population density.

According to cultural anthropologist and ethnographer Raymond C. Kelly, the earliest hunter-gatherer societies of Homo erectus population density was probably low enough to avoid armed conflict. The development of the throwing-spear, together with ambush hunting techniques, made potential violence between hunting parties very costly, dictating cooperation and maintenance of low population densities to prevent competition for resources.

This behavior may have accelerated the migration out of Africa of H. Erectus some 1.8 million years ago as a natural consequence of conflict avoidance.

Kelly and many other anthropologists believe that it was only with sedentism (i.e. agriculture) that raids of other settlements began to take place. This makes sense for a couple of reasons. First off, agriculture was a much more precarious way of feeding the group. Bad weather or a blight of some kind could practically wipe out the food supply. Conversely, hunter-gatherers typically eat about 50+ different things, so if one or two of those is in short supply, they still have plenty of other foods to choose from. They can also move to a different area with more available resources if needs be.

Secondly, hunter-gatherer groups are widely believed to have contained about 20–50 people, including children, just as with many modern tribes. These groups are known to have had reciprocal relationships with neighboring tribes, in part because they often contained family members.

Small family bands are likely to have interconnected with larger networks, facilitating the exchange of people between groups in order to maintain diversity,said Professor Martin Sikora, from the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen. This appears to have been done purposely and with the understanding that genetic diversity was desirable. It was a cooperative strategy undertaken by a highly social species. Science shows us that working together feels good and strife or disconnection feels bad in the same ways that physical pain does. Not only did cooperation and egalitarianism help us to stay alive, but it was self-reinforcing because it felt good as well.

As it turns out it is more than a metaphor — social pain is real pain. With respect to understanding human nature, I think this finding is pretty significant. The things that cause us to feel pain are things that are evolutionary recognized as threats to our survival and the existence of social pain is a sign that evolution has treated social connection like a necessity, not a luxury. It also alters our motivational landscape. We tend to assume that people’s behavior is narrowly self-interested, focused on getting more material benefits for themselves and avoiding physical threats and the exertion of effort. But because of how social pain and pleasure are wired into our operating system, these are motivational ends in and of themselves. We don’t focus on being connected solely in order to extract money and other resources from people — being connected needs no ulterior motive. Scientific American

Paleolithic peoples had little or no reason to make war or to indulge in large-scale interpersonal violence and every reason to maintain peace, including a social structure that was based on maintaining order and cohesion rather than being based in conflict. We do not see the arrival of dominance hierarchies or any sort of commonly occurring violence until about 6–9 thousand years ago.

And as a large body of anthropological research shows, long before we organized ourselves into hierarchies of wealth, social status and power, these groups rigorously enforced norms that prevented any individual or group from acquiring more status, authority or resources than others.New Scientist

The question isn’t whether or not human beings have a capacity for violence under the right circumstances. Clearly, they do. The most salient point is that up until the agricultural revolution, about 10 thousand years ago, the cultures that human beings lived in used specific ways of managing and countering those inclinations to violence. We see the same types of systems in place in modern hunter-gatherer groups today.

When (anthropologist Richard) Lee asked one of the elders of the group about this practice (of insulting the meat from a kill), the response he received was the following: “When a young man kills much meat, he comes to think of himself as a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his inferiors. We can’t accept this. We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. In this way we cool his heart and make him gentle.” How Hunter-Gatherers Maintained Their Egalitarian Ways

Social norms and group pressures on anyone who violates them are still a common part of how modern hunter-gatherer groups maintain peace and cohesion. The social structure of all true band hunter-gatherer tribes is remarkably similar.

As anthropologist, Dr. Peter Gray says, “During the 20th century, anthropologists discovered and studied dozens of different hunter-gatherer societies, in various remote parts of the world, who had been nearly untouched by modern influences. Wherever they were found — in Africa, Asia, South America, or elsewhere; in deserts or in jungles — these societies had many characteristics in common. The people lived in small bands, of about 20 to 50 persons (including children) per band, who moved from camp to camp within a relatively circumscribed area to follow the available game and edible vegetation. The people had friends and relatives in neighboring bands and maintained peaceful relationships with neighboring bands. Warfare was unknown to most of these societies, and where it was known it was the result of interactions with warlike groups of people who were not hunter-gatherers. In each of these societies, the dominant cultural ethos was one that emphasized individual autonomy, non-directive childrearing methods, nonviolence, sharing, cooperation, and consensual decision-making. Their core value, which underlay all of the rest, was that of the equality of individuals.”

This is not a culture that tolerates squabbling or greed, and it is certainly not a culture that condones or allows indiscriminate violence. In other words, they had no reason to fight their neighbors and they did not allow for that sort of behavior amongst themselves.

When you put together all of the factors, both archeological and anthropological, the picture that they paint is not one of ever-present violence and warfare — it’s affirmatively the exact opposite. When I first began studying this topic, I had no preconceived ideas, although if any assumptions were made, it was probably that the world has always been much the way it is now, only with different technology.

But as I read and studied and learned more over the course of several years, what comes through loud and clear is that there really isn’t any substantive evidence of warfare — and in fact, the overwhelming evidence from a huge variety of sources and subject areas is just the opposite. Invariably, any purported evidence to the contrary is so paltry as to be laughable or reflects the past 10,000 thousand years or so, and this coincides with the agricultural revolution — which is precisely what I’ve been saying.

Sure, human beings can resort to violence when the population exceeds the resources available. But humans didn’t experience that until just a few thousand years ago. Sure, sometimes people get angry at each other and try to kill each other, but this is not the same thing as violence as a fundamental aspect of life, something that there is no evidence of with our Paleolithic ancestors. And besides, Paleolithic and early Neolithic cultures were based in egalitarianism and caring for the wellbeing of the entire community because this was a part of their survival strategy.

It is only with the rise of sedentism, and the hierarchies as well as the scarcities that came with it, that any sort of wide-scale violence even makes any sense. With the advent of agriculture, we see new social structures for the first time which are based on getting the most for yourself and your family, rather than the good of the entire community.

Labor roles became more gendered as well. Generally, men did the majority of the fieldwork while women were relegated to child-rearing and household work. Without contributing food (and by association, without control over it), women became second-class citizens. Women also had babies more frequently, on average once every two years rather than once every four in hunter-gatherer societies.

Because somebody had to have control over surplus food, it became necessary to divide society into roles that supported this hierarchy. The roles of an administrator, a servant, a priest, and a soldier were invented. The soldier was especially important because agriculture was so unsustainable compared to hunting and gathering. The fickleness of agriculture ironically encouraged more migration into neighboring lands in search of more resources and warfare with neighboring groups. Capturing slaves was also important since farming was hard work, and more people were working in these new roles.

This division of labor and social inequality had very real consequences. For instance, while the majority of people had disastrous health compared to their hunter-gatherer ancestors, the skeletons of Mycenean royalty had better teeth and were three inches taller than their subjects. Chilean mummies from A.D. 1000 had a fourfold lower rate of bone lesions caused by disease than commoners. World Economic Forum

It is only with these new conditions that arose with the agricultural revolution that anything other than minimal, occasional interpersonal violence even makes any sense. As R. Brian Ferguson, an anthropologist who studies war said after reviewing the published work of dozens of other researchers, “Views of human nature as inherently warlike stem not from the facts but from cultural views embedded in Western thinking.”

This isn’t me saying this. It’s not feminists saying it. It’s mostly male anthropologists and other subject matter experts who are saying it. But even more than that, it is the data and the evidence speaking for itself. Large-scale human violence only began with the agricultural revolution. Period.

© Copyright Elle Beau 2021 Elle Beau writes on Medium about sex, life, relationships, society, anthropology, spirituality, and love. If this story is appearing anywhere other than Medium.com, it appears without my consent and has been stolen.

Essay
Humans
Anthropology
Violence
Science
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