War in human civilization

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1. silexiaApr 2026
   I highly recommend reading War in Human Civilization, excellent book related to this topic.
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2. anigbrowlJul 2025
   I think you are laboring from behind a few very common blind spots.

   First, Japan is an island nation, and historically a somewhat isolated one (due to weather patterns rather than distance). Islands are fundamentally different from continents, anthropologically, lexically, strategically.

   Second, 'the West' has historically been very expansionist; because of its continental configuration, there have been many, many waves of migration and military conquest, and the development of global navigation and seafaring vessels during the Renaissance made for a centuries-long outward expansion.

   Third, this sort of expansionism has being going on in the Asia-Pacific region over even longer timescales and there are very different discourses with many contentious points of view if you include Japanese, Korean, Chinese and other perspectives.

   On general anthropology, maybe try JAred Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel or for a more academic take, Azar Gat's War in Human Civilization. For the history of Japan, Mason & Caiger's History of Japan is comprehensive without being a huge study commitment.

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3. mcmoorJun 2025
   I don't know how good that book actually is, but I read acoup blog and it criticizes that book very often. Instead it recommends readers to Azar Gat's War in Human Civilization instead https://www.amazon.com/War-Human-Civilization-Azar-Gat/dp/01...
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4. Manuel_DDec 2023
   The first reply I linked a source arriving at 10-20% overall mortality rates (as in, 10-20% of humans were eventually killed by another human) among hunter gatherer societies. Even the lowest end of this estimate is five times the 1-2% rate of violent death throughout the 20th century [1]. Some estimate even lower than that, Steve Pinker arrived at the figure of 0.7% but his criteria for violent death is more narrow. Rates of violence in agricultural societies varied from 3% on the low end, and even the high end is still in the single digits. In fact your own sources gives a figure for this [2]:

   > In any case, the rate is clearly elevated compared to overall crude prevalence rates of individuals with unhealed trauma estimated for the European Neolithic, which are on the order of 2–5%.

   To recap:

   Hunter-gatherers: 10-20% rate of people die violent deaths.

   Agriculturalists: 2-5%

   Industrialized societies: 1-2%, maybe even under 1%

   See War In Human Civilization by Azar Gat for a detailed explanation of the shift in warfare between hunter gatherers, agriculturalists, and industrial societies. The proportion of people who died violent deaths was way higher in hunter gatherer societies, than in agricultural societies, which was itself in turn higher than industrialized societies. Over time warfare grew larger, but populations grew larger, faster.

   I saw that paragraph with a ton of endnotes, but it didn't even engage with the core point: That the rate of violence was larger in hunter gatherer societies than in agricultural societies.

   > Small- and medium-scale collective violence, in the form of confrontations between neighboring groups, may be as old as humankind [e.g.,1, 2]. By contrast, larger-scale organized and sanctioned lethal violence between sociopolitical groups (i.e., warfare), seems to be associated with certain socio-economic conditions that generally accompanied the shift to a farming economy,3 such as higher population densities and greater degrees of sedentism4, 5, in parallel to the increasing importance of resource ownership and property that led to the concentration of resources and power

   Again it doesn't matter if the warfare grows in scale if the population grows even larger. What percentage of hunter gatherers dies violently at the hands of other humans? What percentage of agriculturalists died at the hands of other humans? This question isn't even touched on here. Again, if all you're trying to say is that warfare grew in scale in agricultural societies absolutely yes we agree! But the population grew even larger, and thus the overall rate of violence went down.

   Again which is deadlier: a group of 10 people killed out of a society of 100 people. Or a group of 100 people killed out of a society of 100,000 people? The reason why I keep asking you this, is because if all you're trying to claim is that warfare grew larger and more organized in agricultural societies, but overall violent mortality went down then we have no disagreement. But if your claim is that people are less likely to die violently in hunter-gatherer societies than in agricultural societies, then no, that's not what the existing consensus is.

   1. https://independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_06_3_payne.pdf

   2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-43026-9

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5. Manuel_DMay 2022
   The evidence is not sparse, it comes from a diverse set of sources from observation of existing hunter-gatheter communities across different continents as well as archaeological evidence. It's true that violence is much lower in absolute numbers. But by virtue of drastically lower overall populations, the proportional rate is much higher. 5 people killed our of a kin-group of 100 people is like 15 million people killed in the USA.

   There is an appeal to the thought that humans in a natural state are peaceful. Because if modern society has made mankind violent, then we can hopefully roll back it's influence and restore us to that peaceful state. But that's not what our evidence suggests.

   This article examines existing hunter gatherers: https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2007/12/19/nobl...

   For a book that dives into the archaeological evidence, see War in Human Civilization by Azar Gat.

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6. tuatoruAug 2021
   If you don't like games, read War In Human Civilization by Azar Gat. Note: it's over 800 pp.

   Bret's piece is about how this game somehow manages to reflect Gat's theory (and actual history).

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