Pangur Bán
Deconstructed
Populations are the size that the system and technology of exploitation allows. Believe it or not Krajzen, neolithic populations didn't have electrical refrigeration, tractors, industrial fertilizers, etc. 
Which war mentioned in historic times was the most brutal ever?
- Thread starter Kyriakos
- Start date
For all we know neolithic (or older) civs did not even have much of a developed language either. At least if we go by the 4.000 BC common (supposed) ending date of it. I mean that is likely 3 millenia before the Homeric epics.
tokala
Emperor
Do you realise how ridiculously small the population density in pre - historic times was? Something like 1 - 10 million people in the entire planet?
Part of the problem might be that the "myth-slayers" tend to conflate any "primitive" society regardless if they are widely dispersed, extended-family sized hunter-gatherers(fitting the few million people on earth), or highly organized agricultural communities of thousands of peoples (just below, or even above the threshold to "state"), as long as it fits the "primitive" label and shows signs of warfare.
Pangur Bán
Deconstructed
What evidence do you have that deaths would have been as low as 10%?
What would 'Murder' be in a political system where your average polity size is around 60 people?
Pangur Bán
Deconstructed
BTW, the society Chagnon described wasn't hyper-violent. Chagnon's description only came across as that because of the Garden of Eden fantasies held by much of his audience. The Yanomamo as Chagnon described them are no more violent that other political systems where genocide is the only mechanism of economic growth / genetic expansion.
tokala
Emperor
What evidence do you have that it was more? Or even remotely approaching that figure, as a rule?Pangur Bán;13263138 said:
10, at most 20% would be pretty much about the maximum that is sustainably in the long run, even for a comparatively well-off and low-mortality pre-modern society.
And we are talking about averages, the norm, etc. aren't we?
If warfare to extermination would have been the norm, there would never have been the necessity for agriculture.
How is murder a question of the political system????
In hoplite warfare casualties were even lower, usually around 5%, because officers fought in the first rank. Once one side lost most of its leadership, it usually decided to call it a day. I imagine the same happens in most heroic models of warfare without the use of blocking troops and the like.
Pangur Bán
Deconstructed
But 20% is far lower than many documented societies in the modern era! Why is more than 20% not sustainable? Militaristic societes tend to be polygamous and have very high birth rates.
Average would also included massacres of entire males populations.
'Murder' itself, in origin, is homicide where the perpetrator tried to conceal the act from public scrutiny. Even homicide, any sort of 'crime, is something that presupposes a political system with some sort of segregated system of institutional rule-enforcement. That doesn't exist in very many societies until recently. If you kill someone, then your family either support you and [risk] war with the relatives of your victim; or they abandon you as the price of peace with the relatives of your victim.
tokala
Emperor
Just to make sure, we both are talking about deaths caused by warfare as the fraction of overall cause of death in a society, yes?Pangur Bán;13263188 said:
Not casualty rate in a given battle or war, like the example Flying Pig brought up?
Do you really think a pre-modern society would debate the finer points of the difference between murder and homicide? Call it homicide if you prefer it.
Might be relavant here:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6143/270
Lethal Aggression in Mobile Forager Bands and Implications for the Origins of War
For a hands-on experience how inter-group violence is handled:
http://www.livinganthropologically....lence-empirical-data-facts/#comment-795020193
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Pangur seems to be seriously overstating the frequency of wars of annihilation in pre-modern societies. They certainly occurred, but there's no reason to believe that they routine, or that they actually resulted in extermination, rather than migration. Most "annihilations" seem to have been partial massacres, which prompted the rest of the community or tribes to splinter and migrate.
Warfare was more likely to have taken the form of tit-for-tat raids, with only a few casualties in any given campaign. This had a very high cumulative casualty rate, of course, but you're looking at a few losses a year (maybe a few dozen, in larger communities), rather than the Holocausts-in-miniature Pangur seems to be suggesting. That offends modern sensibilities, no doubt, but it also defies a straightforward "better or worse" comparison, because you're looking at a society in which all adult males were what amounted to professional warriors, rather than a society in which machinists and clerks were given rifles and pushed towards machine guns, no small difference.
Warfare was more likely to have taken the form of tit-for-tat raids, with only a few casualties in any given campaign. This had a very high cumulative casualty rate, of course, but you're looking at a few losses a year (maybe a few dozen, in larger communities), rather than the Holocausts-in-miniature Pangur seems to be suggesting. That offends modern sensibilities, no doubt, but it also defies a straightforward "better or worse" comparison, because you're looking at a society in which all adult males were what amounted to professional warriors, rather than a society in which machinists and clerks were given rifles and pushed towards machine guns, no small difference.
tokala
Emperor
Exactly.
And that is already the upper end of the inter-group violence scale, like the aforementioned warlike pastoralist.
And by the very nature of such a tit-for-tat raiding, the main victims would be the opposing warriors, and typically the younger ones, the same demographic that nowadays make up the "accident hump" of the mortality curve.
Severlely limiting the demographic pool elegible for "death by warfare"
bonefang
Emperor
I have heard from by grand pa who fled Bangladesh that around 3 to 4 million people were killed in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.
e : This is 8 months time.
e : This is 8 months time.
Pangur Bán
Deconstructed
Only number I've discussed is percentage of adult males.
I wasn't making a pedantic etymological point; rather, that the scale of warfare is so small that social determined classifications of violence like 'murder' or 'homicide' could not be meaningfully distinguishable from the political violence (such as that in modern 'warfare').
BTW, not entirely sure what point you are making with the quote. If you could clarify then I will respond.
Pangur Bán
Deconstructed
Not sure what you are saying disagrees with what I said. The warfare of political systems dominated by micro polities like the Yanomamo is not conducted like the total wars of modern states. At any one time a village polity will have differing scales of alliance and enmity with a variety of other village polities. Village A may have had 3 women captured by Village B a month before, and is planning a retaliation; some members of Village C shouted insults at some of Village B's women while they were gathering leaves; Village D had some men killed in a raid by Village A and is planning retaliation, but knows Village E where many of Village A's relatives live will join in-- it knows Village A will be encouraged if nothing is done, and has an alliance with Village C but also worries Village C won't join in if escalates too much. And so on.
Essentially, Age of Empires simulates this kind of warfare better than Civilization.
Massacres will take place, but as you say its the cumulative effects of years of killing that has most effect on the number.
tokala
Emperor
Well, no argument from me that this percentage could be much higher than 10%.Pangur Bán;13264182 said:Only number I've discussed is percentage of adult males.
As a first approximation I would suggest, if you kill someone living most of the year in the same group as you, with a formal, biologic or non-biologic kinship relation, in the same basic economic unit, it's murder/homicide.
If you kill someone outside your kinship-bound group, but do it on your own initiative, without sanctioning of your group, for personal reasons it's feud.
If this inter-group killing involves more that a few close relatives, and/or is sanctioned by the whole group I would speak of warfare.
Of course, the transitions might be less than clear-cut.
BTW, not entirely sure what point you are making with the quote. If you could clarify then I will respond.
The Science paper seems to come to the conclusions that in the groups investigated there, most violent deaths would be attributed to the homicide category, and the least frequent cause would be outright war.
Of course, if you think those distinctions meaningless, there is no point.
The second quote refers to the fact that those "primitive" societies have as a rule effective social mechanisms in place to discourage and mitigate inter-group violence, even in the absence of a formal law/punishment/police system.
In contrast to what I thought you were trying to say, that in the absence of such formal systems, everyone could basically kill as he pleases, only limited by the threat of retaliation by the relatives of the killed person(s).
tokala
Emperor
Pangur Ban seems to rely heavily on Chagnons Yanomami studies, in which he apparently suggested that they are a suitable look-alike for those prehistoric hunter-gatherers.
Which is apparently heavily disputed, for good reasons, never mind that even regarding the Yanomami themselves there seems to be quite a lot of well reasoned criticism to Chagnons conclusions.
Stating the obvious the infamous winner here's got to be WWII due to the total number of casualties. Followed by WWI, I guess.
Ancient era wars like the Punic Wars or the Roman conquest of Gaul were quite bloody as well, along the ones mentioned before.
Also, the conquest of the New World by the Europeans, although that wasn't a single war so it doesn't count.
American Civil War was pretty nasty as well as the Napoleonic Wars.
Crusades should be high up on the list as well, both sides carried out massacres on the other.
Mongols and Huns before them were famous for their bloody conquests.
There could be 2 separate categories of conflicts/wars, one for the total approximate number of troops killed and the other for the total approx. number of civilian deaths. Each war could place differently in a given category.
Ps. Had no idea Japanese were that brutal in WWII, terrible stuff.
Ancient era wars like the Punic Wars or the Roman conquest of Gaul were quite bloody as well, along the ones mentioned before.
Also, the conquest of the New World by the Europeans, although that wasn't a single war so it doesn't count.
American Civil War was pretty nasty as well as the Napoleonic Wars.
Crusades should be high up on the list as well, both sides carried out massacres on the other.
Mongols and Huns before them were famous for their bloody conquests.
There could be 2 separate categories of conflicts/wars, one for the total approximate number of troops killed and the other for the total approx. number of civilian deaths. Each war could place differently in a given category.
Ps. Had no idea Japanese were that brutal in WWII, terrible stuff.
90% of casualties were due to the unintentional epidemies.
'Just' 600 000 deaths
Also, yet again we can see here Eurocentrism
As there were plenty of unknown extremely brutal wars from other parts of the world...My list of Worst Wars Ever:
- Obviously both World Wars
- 20th century Russian Civil War, 9 000 000 dead, generally living in Russia in 1914 - 1953 period is living in the Hell on Earth
- Taiping Rebellion in 19th century China, at least 20 000 000 dead, mostly civilians, many awful deaths
- An Lushan Rebellion in 8th century China, at least 10 000 000 dead
- Thirty Years War, 3 - 12 000 000 dead, most of Germany horribly depopulated and civilian population slaughtered (in many parts of Germany - 70% of population dead), chaos, famine, epidemies, betrayals and massive rapes
- Mongol Conquest of Middle East, while Mongol conquest in China/Central Asia/Russia weren't extremely brutal, their conquest of Middle East is IMHO one of the biggest tragedies in history. Transoxania devastated forever, Baghdad exterminated, Golden Age of Islam finished, countless libraries and scholars dead, extermination of civilians, devastation of ancient Mesopotamian irigation systems from which this area haven't really recovered till modern times (!)
- Timurid Conquests, at least 10 000 000 deaths
- Paraguayan War, this unknown conflict caused Paraguay to lose 30 - 60% of its entire population which is ridiculously high percentage when we realize this was in 19th century! Paraguay has never truly recovered from this devastation, which was brought mainly by its own government...
- Second Congo War, 5 000 000 deaths which is shocking when you realize this happened... Between 1997 and today.
Yes, the bloodiest war since WWII - First World is completely unaware of it.
Also extremely brutal - including cannibalism, child soldiers, ethnic massacres, tortures and massive war rape.
NUMBER 1
- Extermination of Poles (and their Ucrainian allies) from Volhynia by Ucrainian Insurgent Army
And this is the most terrifying war I know about. It has brought 'only' 100 000 deaths in 1943 but the way these people died... I have never met with something such horrible.
- Genocide without national ideology made by Ucrainian civilians and partizants on Poles, Jews and even Ucrainians helping those two groups. Genocide made by men, women and children on men, women and children, by friends and families.
And now I will write down few ways of how people were being killed during this genocide. Not myths or propaganda, pure facts described mainly by Ucrainians. Remember, we are talking about civilians doing these things to civilians.
- Cutting of women breasts and sprinkling wounds with salt
- Cutting people in half with two - men saws
- Cutting pregnant woman's womb, pulling the fetus out and hanging it or nailing it to tree, then putting living cat inside the womb and sewing it again. Guess what the terrified cat was doing inside.
- Cutting stomach and pouring boiling water inside.
- Cutting stomach and putting broken glass inside.
- Putting broken glass inside vagina.
- Cutting women with gardener's blades from vagina to neck, with intestines pouring outside
- Nailing little child's tongue to the tableand leaving it here
- Hanging little boys on door handle using their genitals
- Hanging people... With barbed wire using their genitals or intestines
- Hanging young girls upside - down, then raping them with subsequent cutting off breasts, genitals, tongue and eyeballs
- Throwing people to huge campfire, around the campfire Ucrainian peasant girls are dancing and singing
- Tearing people apart with horses or chains
- Tearing veins or intestines outside of body (children included)
- Nailing little babies to trees, or attaching them with barbed wire
- Tying woman with her children using strong rope, then dragging them with horses and - if they remain alive - killing with scythes and bayonets
- Sticking eyeballs with needles, breaking bones and teeth, cutting off limbs
- Throwing alive people to cesspools.
~60 000 dead Poles, ~30 000 dead Ucrainians, later Polish partisants as revenge massacred some Ucrainian villages killing ~3000 people... With gunfire. Not with wires, chains and nails. Later Ucrainian Insurgent Army was massacred by advancing Red Army.
So? Does anyone know anything worse?
It don't know any single instance of anything in the entire human history being worse than this genocide. Jesus, Holocaust is obviously close to it, but at least innocent victims of death camps were dying quickly and Holocaust was executed by MILITARY, not goddamn CIVILIANS AND NEIGHBOURS.
Well, Rwanda Genocide is the only thing which seems similar to Volhynian Genocide - extremely terrifying genocide made in short amount of time by civilians while using insanely barbaric methods. Also terrifying genocides were made in Kongo, Cambodia, Darfur, China under Japanese occupation, India during partition. These were particularly horrible.
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