Editing Violence (section)

== History ==
{{redirect|History of violence}}

Scientific evidence for warfare has come from settled, sedentary communities.<ref name="theverge.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/20/10798042/ancient-violence-warfare-nature-study-kenya-nataruk|title = Skeletons from a 10,000-year-old massacre have archaeologists in a fight of their own|date = 20 January 2016}}</ref> Some studies argue humans have a predisposition for violence ([[chimpanzees]], also [[great apes]], have been known to kill members of competing groups for resources like food).<ref>{{Cite web |last=Duhaime-Ross |first=Arielle |date=2016-01-20 |title=Skeletons from a 10,000-year-old massacre have archaeologists in a fight of their own |url=https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/20/10798042/ancient-violence-warfare-nature-study-kenya-nataruk |access-date=2024-02-20 |website=The Verge |language=en}}</ref> A comparison across mammal species found that humans have a [[Paleolithic]] adult homicide rate of about 2%. This would be lower than some other animals, but still high.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2016-09-28 |title=Humans evolved to have a taste for murder |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/human-evolution-violence-instinct-to-kill-murder-each-other-a7335491.html |access-date=2024-02-20 |website=The Independent |language=en}}</ref> However, this study took into account the infanticide rate by some other animals such as meerkats, but not of humans, where estimates of children killed by infanticide in the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras vary from 15 to 50 percent.<ref>Birdsell, Joseph B. (1986). "Some predictions for the Pleistocene based on equilibrium systems among recent hunter gatherers". In Lee, Richard; DeVore, Irven (eds.). Man the Hunter. New York: Aldine Publishing Co. p. 239.</ref> Other evidence suggests that organized, large-scale, militaristic, or regular human-on-human violence was absent for the vast majority of the human timeline,<ref>{{cite book|title=The Nature of Paleolithic Art|author=Guthrie, R. Dale|page=422|publisher=University of Chicago Press|year=2005|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3u6JNwMyMCEC&q=paleolithic+history+violence&pg=PA422|isbn=978-0226311265}}</ref><ref name="Kelly">{{cite journal|title=The evolution of lethal intergroup violence|author= Kelly, Raymond C.|journal= Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America|volume= 102|issue= 43|pages= 15294–98|year=2005|pmc= 1266108|pmid= 16129826|doi= 10.1073/pnas.0505955102|doi-access= free}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine|last1=Horgan|first1=John|title=New Study of Prehistoric Skeletons Undermines Claim That War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots|url=http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2013/07/24/new-study-of-prehistoric-skeletons-undermines-claim-that-war-has-deep-evolutionary-roots/|magazine=Scientific American}}</ref> and is first documented to have started only relatively recently in the [[Holocene]], an epoch that began about 11,700 years ago, probably with the advent of higher population densities due to [[sedentism]].<ref name="Kelly"/> Social anthropologist [[Douglas P. Fry]] writes that scholars are divided on the origins of possible increase of violence—in other words, war-like behavior: {{blockquote|There are basically two schools of thought on this issue. One holds that warfare... goes back at least to the time of the first thoroughly modern humans and even before then to the primate ancestors of the hominid lineage. The second positions on the origins of warfare sees war as much less common in the cultural and biological evolution of humans. Here, warfare is a latecomer on the cultural horizon, only arising in very specific material circumstances and being quite rare in human history until the development of agriculture in the past 10,000 years.<ref>{{cite book|author=Fry, Douglas P.|title=War, Peace, and Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views|page=168|year=2013|publisher=Oxford University Press|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8eJoAgAAQBAJ&q=%22one+of+the+critical+issues%22|isbn=978-0199859009}}</ref>}}

[[Jared Diamond]] in his books ''[[Guns, Germs and Steel]]'' and ''[[The Third Chimpanzee]]'' posits that the rise of large-scale warfare is the result of advances in technology and city-states. For instance, the rise of agriculture provided a significant increase in the number of individuals that a region could sustain over hunter-gatherer societies, allowing for development of specialized classes such as soldiers, or weapons manufacturers.
[[File:War deaths caused by warfare.svg|thumb|right|The percentages of men killed in war in eight tribal societies. (Lawrence H. Keeley, Archeologist, ''[[War Before Civilization]]'')]]
In academia, the idea of the peaceful pre-history and non-violent tribal societies gained popularity with the [[Postcolonialism|post-colonial perspective]]. The trend, starting in [[archaeology]] and spreading to [[anthropology]] reached its height in the late half of the 20th century.<ref name=Keely1>Keeley, Lawrence H. War before Civilization. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.</ref> However, some newer research in archaeology and [[bioarchaeology]] may provide evidence that violence within and among groups is not a recent phenomenon.<ref>{{cite news|title=The fraud of primitive authenticity|url=https://asiatimes.com/2006/07/the-fraud-of-primitive-authenticity/|access-date=16 July 2013|newspaper=[[Asia Times Online]]|date=4 July 2006}}</ref> According to the book "The Bioarchaeology of Violence" violence is a behavior that is found throughout human history.<ref>Martin, Debra L., Ryan P. Harrod, and Ventura R. Pérez, eds. 2012. The Bioarchaeology of Violence. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. {{cite web |url=http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=MARTI002 |title=University Press of Florida: The Bioarchaeology of Violence |access-date=2013-11-14 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131104230028/http://upf.com/book.asp?id=MARTI002 |archive-date=2013-11-04 }}</ref>

[[Lawrence H. Keeley]] at the University of Illinois writes in ''[[War Before Civilization]]'' that 87% of [[tribal societies]] were at war more than once per year, and that 65% of them were fighting continuously. He writes that the attrition rate of numerous close-quarter clashes, which characterize [[endemic warfare]], produces casualty rates of up to 60%, compared to 1% of the combatants as is typical in modern warfare. "Primitive Warfare" of these small groups or tribes was driven by the basic need for sustenance and violent competition.<ref>[http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Keeley/War-Before-Civilization.html Review of book "War Before Civilization" by Lawrence H. Keeley] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080514081056/http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Keeley/War-Before-Civilization.html |date=2008-05-14 }}, July 2004.</ref>

Fry explores Keeley's argument in depth and counters that such sources erroneously focus on the ethnography of hunters and gatherers in the present, whose culture and values have been infiltrated externally by modern civilization, rather than the actual archaeological record spanning some two million years of human existence. Fry determines that all present ethnographically studied tribal societies, "by the very fact of having been described and published by anthropologists, have been irrevocably impacted by history and modern colonial nation states" and that "many have been affected by state societies for at least 5000 years."<ref>{{cite book|author=Fry, Douglas P.|title=War, Peace, and Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views|pages=171–73|year=2013|publisher=Oxford University Press}}</ref>

The relatively peaceful period since [[World War II]] is known as the [[Long Peace]].

=== ''The Better Angels of Our Nature'' ===
[[Steven Pinker]]'s 2011 book, ''[[The Better Angels of Our Nature]]'', argued that modern society is less violent than in periods of the past, whether on the short scale of decades or long scale of centuries or millennia. He argues for a paleolithic homicide rate of 15%.

Steven Pinker argues that by every possible measure, every type of violence has drastically decreased since ancient and medieval times. A few centuries ago, for example, [[genocide]] was a standard practice in all kinds of warfare and was so common that historians did not even bother to mention it. [[Human cannibalism|Cannibalism]] and [[slavery]] have been greatly reduced in the last thousand years, and [[capital punishment]] is now banned in many countries. According to Pinker, rape, murder, warfare and animal cruelty have all seen drastic declines in the 20th century.<ref name=Pinker>{{cite book |author=Steven Pinker |title=The Better Angels of Our Nature |isbn=978-0670022953 |year=2011 |publisher=Viking |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/betterangelsofou00pink |author-link=Steven Pinker }}</ref> Pinker's analyses have also been criticized, concerning the statistical question of how to measure violence and whether it is in fact declining.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bookreview-steven-pinker-the-better-angels-of-our-nature-why-violence-has-declined |title=Book Review |author=R Epstein |magazine=Scientific American |date=October 2011 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160914140139/http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bookreview-steven-pinker-the-better-angels-of-our-nature-why-violence-has-declined |archive-date=2016-09-14 }}</ref><ref name="Laws">{{Cite journal |url=http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=702 |title=Against Pinker's Violence |first=Ben |last=Laws |journal=[[CTheory]] |date=21 March 2012 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130512052358/http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=702 |archive-date=12 May 2013 }}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/12/03/the_big_kill?page=full |title=The Big Kill – By John Arquilla |magazine=Foreign Policy |date=2012-12-03 |access-date=2013-01-22 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130107171044/http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/12/03/the_big_kill?page=full |archive-date=2013-01-07 }}</ref>

Pinker's observation of the decline in interpersonal violence echoes the work of [[Norbert Elias]], who attributes the decline to a "civilizing process", in which the state's monopolization of violence, the maintenance of socioeconomic interdependencies or "figurations", and the maintenance of behavioural codes in culture all contribute to the development of individual sensibilities, which increase the repugnance of individuals towards violent acts.<ref>{{cite book | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=CaWFQgAACAAJ | last = Elias | first = N. | year = 1994 | title = The Civilizing Process | location = Oxford | publisher = Blackwell | isbn = 978-0631192220 }}</ref> According to a 2010 study, non-lethal violence, such as assaults or bullying appear to be declining as well.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Finkelhor | first1 = D. | last2 = Turner | first2 = H. | last3 = Ormrod | first3 = R. | last4 = Hamby | first4 = S. | year = 2010 | title = Structural Trends in childhood violence and abuse exposure: Evidence from 2 national surveys | journal = Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine | volume = 164 | issue = 3| pages = 238–42 | doi = 10.1001/archpediatrics.2009.283 | pmid = 20194256 | doi-access = free }}</ref>

Some scholars disagree with the argument that all violence is decreasing arguing that not all types of violent behaviour are lower now than in the past. They suggest that research typically focuses on lethal violence, often looks at [[homicide]] rates of death due to [[warfare]], but ignore the less obvious forms of violence.<ref>Gorelik, G., Shackelford, T.K., Weekes-Shackelford, V.A., 2012. Resource Acquisition, Violence, and Evolutionary Consciousness. In: Shackelford, T.K., Weekes- Shackelford, V.A. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Violence, Homicide, and War. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 506–524</ref>