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Comment by valuearb | Hacker News Reader

Who says hunter gatherers didn’t conquer and enslave?

hunter/gatherer societies are always small and relatively disorganized. There is a limit to the number of people that you can feed hunting unless you are always moving to fresh territories, so there is a limit also to desire to build cities or to the number of your permanent structures. And you shouldn't allow other tribes to enter in your territory or you will suffer from hunger. You can have problems in winter or with harsh climates

Agriculture is a different history. Means big cities with big walls, easy to defend. Agriculture and farming can feed much more people so you can have a bigger army and bigger buildings with enough room for harvests (so you don't need to move in winter). Hunters/gatherers can conquer and enslave for a while but can't feed all people, and dissolve in smaller groups when reaching a critical point.

The same principle applies to the army that can conquer, but would not survive at long term without the civils that create the foods and services.

Just because no one recorded the histories of hunter gatherers, doesn’t mean they were all sweetness and light. They may not have been able to raise large armies, but someone was raping the daughters of neighboring tribes. There is a reason we still have some Neanderthal genes.

I share a somewhat pessimistic view of our ancestors, but it is worth noting that we have evidence of mixed genes and not rape. There are ways for genes to mix consensually, although there is no evidence to support that either. We only know that they had sex, and children who were fertile, nothing more.

chimpanzees rape and murder, it’s hard to imagine any human tribe that didn’t.

I agree with the general notion, but of course humans are not chimps, we just share a common ancestor. We have evidence of violence and cannibalism however, and while the latter can be understood in non-violent contexts, but also violence ones, the problem either way mos that evidence is scarce.

Anthropologists?

You might want to read this:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/30/anthroscience

You can now study ancient DNA as an alternative method of studying ancient history. It seems there was a lot of killing of males and capturing females leading to population replacement.

aDNA is a complement, not a replacement for ancient history and anthropology.

Interesting article, but it doesn't talk about DNS or killing

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