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Comment on The Sodium-Ion Battery Revolution Has Started

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.

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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.

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.

Let’s go piece by piece.

every member of the group

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.

evidence of violent skeletal trauma is significantly less prevalent than after the advent of agriculture

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.

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- arrow74@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  My claim is that raiding other humans and taking their things was common
  
  This is shifting the goal posts. The statement I initially made was that humans for the majority of history were egalitarian and less violent. This is still true. This statement you provided is true to a specific portion of human history that does not make up the majority.
  
  If the argument is now that a society creating excess leads to violence and raiding we also have evidence of cultures that have not done that.
  
  There’s also an issue with the argument that hunter gatherer societies had nothing of value to take. That idea relies heavily on our modern ideas on what is worth trying to take. For example sometimes people would travel, or possibly trade, with quarry sites hundreds of kilometers away. Having quality stone means being able to feed yourself and your group. Sounds quite valuable, but we don’t see violence increase as you move away from these sites. The same can be said for virtually every limited resource in the distant past.
  
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  - scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    See, above:
    
    In short, people tend to be motivated by profit
    
    Only in a society that commodifies your existence and success based on the wealth you generate/hold Unless we’re changing the definition of profit to status
    
    This is what I’m rebutting. So you see, it’s not shifting the goalposts at all. It’s staying on the topic of this comment chain. You trying to claim that humans have been majority peaceable is in fact drifting from the topic.
    
    The debate is whether profit appears with the advent of modern capitalism. I said people have been raiding each other for profit since the beginning of time.
    
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    arrow74@lemmy.zip ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    The initial claim that started this all is that there is not a better system and some rather bold claims about human nature.
    
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