like, i get your point but i think you’re wrong.
people are greedy because it worked well for them in the past. i.e., people have built empires and expanded them throughout history and because sometimes that worked out well for those people, they think back fondly of it and that’s why you have people trying to become “great empires” today.
it’s not that complicated, people have a cultural memory that reaches far back for hundreds of years at least. it’s however also noteworthy that empires are the historical exception, not the rule, like, if you look at medieval europe (which spanned a long time), you had very few “big” empires and mostly small local feudal lords. Because in those times empires simply didn’t work out so well. So, people hold the balance between what works and what doesn’t, and then that gets done.
arrow74@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Your understanding of human history is lacking depth and inaccurate
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Your criticism is insubstantial and dismissible.
arrow74@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Yeah I’m only an archaeologist.
I’d like to explain what you’re missing in detail, but truthfully it would take a course in it of itself. I’ll try to be concise.
Simply put all evidence that we have points to humans living relatively egalitarian and peacefully for the majority of our history. We additionally have early evidence of trade.
Now there is, with all things, nuance. For the past 10,000 or so years evidence points to humans being very violent to one another and we have seen an increase in social stratification. However, in the modern era violence is on a downward trend relative to the total human population. Social stratification is obviously not.
Skeletal evidence is our best, but we also have evidence in the form of more traditional artifacts.
To be clear I’m not saying we can tell you every human in a hunter gatherer group carried the same social status or that people never killed each other. Obviously not, but what I can tell you is that every member of the group had access to the same nutrition and that evidence of violent skeletal trauma is significantly less prevalent than after the advent of agriculture. There is also significant evidence of trade prior to evidence of mass warfare.
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yay thank you for saying something instead of empty judgments. I think most of what you had to say is actually beside the point at issue, and to show I’ll unpack this segment, which has a lot to say about this topic and what I am and am not saying.
Let’s go piece by piece.
Raiding is an inter group behavior not an intra group behavior so if this was meant to say “look humans were egalitarian they didn’t raid” it doesn’t say this at all.
I believe this very much supports my point that violent raiding was a way of life. You said: there’s more violence after agriculture. Well, agriculture was the first time that anyone had valuable assets collected in one place: at harvest time.
Of course hunter gatherers exhibit less raiding: first of all dramatically fewer people are supportable without agriculture so there were simply fewer groups available to raid. And hunter gatherers live largely hand to mouth so there is Jo stockpile to raid.
Naturally as soon as there is something to raid, you see the evidence of that.
So what about anything you said do you think contradicts the claim that humans have commonly raided one another for spoils throughout history. Are you going to tell me that slavery wasn’t a thing next?
I think I need you to come to a point instead of just flashing your credentials. You’ve offered a lot of facts from the record but these must be interpreted. It’s that interpretation that makes you an archaeologist, not the shovel.
My claim is that raiding other humans and taking their things was common, because humans want something for nothing and will exploit each other to get it - long before capitalism and conspicuous consumption made it fashionable. I would also offer you the bear that eats the honeycomb, the snake that eats the eggs. A cow mows down grass because it gains more energy by doing so than it spends: ergo profit. Everything is about profit and most of it is savage taking.