Most hunter-gatherer societies faced frequent or continuous warfare with high death tolls.

Evidence

Reviews of the evidence for warfare among hunter-gatherers show that 70% to 90% of these societies experience war or raiding as either “continuous” (with conflicts every year) or “frequent” (with conflicts at least once every five years). Estimates of the percentage of deaths directly due to violent intergroup conflicts average 15%, based on ethnographic observations, and 13% based on archeological studies of cemeteries (remember, chimp death rates ranged from 4% to 13%). These percentages are very high compared to the same rates in the United States or Europe in the twentieth century, where the numbers are all less than 1%, but low compared with many preindustrial agricultural societies. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 564

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Intergroup competition selects prosocial norms that can simultaneously dehumanize outsiders. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 558; Modern hunter-gatherers are imperfect windows onto ancestral human life — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 395

Broader Connections

• Modern hunter-gatherers are imperfect windows onto ancestral human life #qualifies (0.82) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 395