Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Not murder, but kill . At what point in the last 1,000 years had the highest percentage of living males killed another man? Was it even a modern war time? Caveman days? Sorry I don’t know an intelligent way to ask this question but it’s based upon me wondering what it was like for WWII vets coming home...
Not murder, but kill. At what point in the last 1,000 years
had the highest percentage of living males killed another man?
This needs to adjust for longevity.
Even absent war risk/activity 1000 years ago they were less likely to live very long.
So whatever killing they did would be compressed into far fewer years overall.
Quote:
wondering what it was like for WWII vets coming home...
It was very different world than when English infantry or Bowmen came home from Agincourt.
Homicide - literally, the killing of a person by another person, regardless of legality - is almost always higher among non-state societies. Further, it is lower among more developed nations than otherwise.
One of the primary functions of a state is to monopolize violence, particularly of the retributive type. The perpetual back-and-forth strife between individuals and clans and various ethnic groups extracts an extreme social cost. Unless there is some perceived benefit to the state itself (there sometimes is, but not usually) then the state has an interest in establishing a system for regulating punishment that stops, or at least lessens, the unending tit-for-tat killings that predominate in the absence of a powerful state apparatus.
So the highest rates occur and have occurred among peoples with very loose governing structures: tribal and 'big man' types, which tend to be small societies. Larger societies develop specialization including full-time leaders, which tend to exist as a caste apart, and which begin to erect the sort of intensive government that tamps down in violence. Even modern states with horrific levels of violence, such as Nazi Germany or Mao's China, don't approach the massive homicide rates than many non-state societies achieve, though the sheer numbers are obviously higher.
Not murder, but kill . At what point in the last 1,000 years had the highest percentage of living males killed another man? Was it even a modern war time? Caveman days? Sorry I don’t know an intelligent way to ask this question but it’s based upon me wondering what it was like for WWII vets coming home...
I am a man not that it should matter.
Surprisingly, nothing remotely close to modern times...not even WW2.
I remember reading that in the middle ages or dark ages, some astronomical percentage estimate - maybe 20% - died at the hands of other men. The percentage may have only increased as we go back in time.
I'm not quite sure I understand the question, especially since any comparison could not be world-wide, as the pre-Columbian Americas were unknown. I suspect that small warrior societies that were predators of other groups had the highest percentages of killers. Two immediate possibilities that come to mind are Sparta and the Mongols. Biblical numbers are suspect, but there was a bunch of killing reported within it.
Surprisingly, nothing remotely close to modern times...not even WW2.
I remember reading that in the middle ages or dark ages, some astronomical percentage estimate - maybe 20% - died at the hands of other men. The percentage may have only increased as we go back in time.
To offer more support to the above and correct the outlandish percentage: I think my past research referenced Steven Pinker's "Better Angels of our Nature" which argues that as civilization advanced and we advanced from hunter-gatherer societies into more civilized societies that our homicide rate - that is homicides from wars, executions, murders, genocides, etc. - actually decreased. Also of course, our world population has increased tremendously which lessons the % impact.
This is a quote from his book:
"between the late Middle Ages and the 20th century, European countries saw a tenfold-to-fiftyfold decline in their rates of homicide." I haven't dug into the detail on how he determined this. The below graph brings it from the feudal period of European history to the present.
The estimates from WW two range from fifty to eighty million dead. What beats that?
A lot beats that.
Read my previous post. See the link.
The dead of World War II represent just a fe percent of the global population at the time. See the headline of this thread? It's about percentage, not mere totals. In non-state societies, the rate of deaths caused by human violence routinely exceeds 10%.
Quote:
As for wars, prehistoric peoples were far more murderous than states in percentages of the population killed in combat, Pinker told me: “On average, nonstate societies kill around 15 percent of their people in wars, whereas today’s states kill a few hundredths of a percent.” Pinker calculates that even in the murderous 20th century, about 40 million people died in war out of the approximately six billion people who lived, or 0.7 percent. Even if we include war-related deaths of citizens from disease, famine and genocide, that brings the death toll up to 180 million deaths, or about 3 percent.
One final note is that in the day when killing was done on a more personal basis, you had more individuals doing the specific act of killing. By and large, people were killed on a one-on-one basis with blows from swords, spears, clubs. The act of killing wasn't concentrated in the hands of an aircrew or tank crew or fire unit. So individually, more men had 'pulled the trigger' (even before there were triggers, per se) and had looked into the eyes of the man who's life they were ending.
The estimates from WW two range from fifty to eighty million dead. What beats that?
The OP specifically said "percentage". In the early 20th century we had 2 or 3 billion people living on earth. In 1400s we only had 350 or 400 million on earth.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
