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Reviews in Anthropology

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Angels, Illusions, Hydras, and Chimeras: Violenceand Humanity

NAM C. KIM

To cite this article: NAM C. KIM (2012) Angels, Illusions, Hydras, and Chimeras: Violence andHumanity, Reviews in Anthropology, 41:4, 239-272, DOI: 10.1080/00938157.2012.732511

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00938157.2012.732511

Published online: 18 Dec 2012.

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Angels, Illusions, Hydras, and Chimeras:Violence and Humanity

NAM C. KIM

Pinker, Steven. 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.New York: Viking.

Sahlins, Marshall. 2008. The Western Illusion of Human Nature. Chicago: PricklyParadigm Press.

Anthropology has long been interested in violence and humannature. Drawing on the research of two recent volumes, this reviewarticle considers current scholarship on the subject. At its heart,this topic deals squarely with a question that has been posed formillennia. Are forms of violence attributable to the human con-dition, or are they the products of cultural development, behaviorsthat can be controlled, mitigated, and unlearned? The argumentspresented in these two volumes have implications not only for howwe view humanity’s past and present, but also for how we antici-pate manifestations of violence in our future.

KEYWORDS anthropology, human nature, peace, violence, war

INTRODUCTION

Researchers have long been interested in the manifestations of violencewithin humanity. The subject has been, and continues to be, of monumentalinterest and consequence for scholars, politicians, religious figures, parents,and just about everyone in the world, as forms of violence have been part ofhumanity throughout much, if not all, of our history as a species. Indeed,violence constitutes one of the most important, complex, and confoundingresearch problems that we have ever faced. It is no Gordian knot easilysolved through the edge of a sword, as evinced by the innumerable research

Address correspondence to Nam C. Kim, Department of Anthropology, 5240 W. H. SewellSocial Science Building, 1180 Observatory Dr., University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706,USA. E-mail: nckim2@wisc.edu

Reviews in Anthropology, 41:239–272, 2012Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0093-8157 print=1556-3014 onlineDOI: 10.1080/00938157.2012.732511

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studies, philosophical ponderings, essays, and commentaries devoted toviolence and war ever since humans began to record information textually.

Against this backdrop, researchers seek to understand the roots of thephenomena and their diachronic trajectories. As an anthropological archaeol-ogist, I share an interest with many colleagues in the potential of the materialrecord to offer insights about the earliest instances of both interpersonal andcollective forms of violence. Of particular interest are the ways in which formshave emerged, evolved, and impacted cultures, societies, and humanity overtime. How far back into human history can we peer, and what can plumbingthese depths tell us? Are violent behaviors rooted in our biology, do theyrepresent adaptive strategies in reaction to exogenous variables, or is violenceattributable to both? For anthropologists, such exogenous variables caninclude environmental or social circumstances, with culture being a signifi-cant factor in how threats are perceived, objectives reached, and actions ratio-nalized by a multitude of actors and participants involved in violent struggles.

At the nexus of these questions is our own conception of humanity —how humans perceive humans. The two volumes being reviewed in this essayspeak directly to these questions, namely The Western Illusion of HumanNature by prominent anthropologist Marshall Sahlins and The Better Angelsof Our Nature by influential psychologist Steven Pinker. In the former, Sahlinsexamines how human nature is portrayed through the lens of past and con-temporary Western society. He argues that Western civilization has mistakenlyconveyed the impression that, in the absence of enlightened governance,humans have always lived, and would continue to live, in a state of untamedanarchy. Pinker, on the other hand, engages research on the changing natureof violence, contending that, living in anarchic conditions, our ancestors weremore violent than many of us in today’s developed (mainly Western) nations.Hence, the two researchers offer different and oftentimes opposed depictionsabout human nature. While Sahlins insists that we should not castigate thenatural state of humanity, Pinker holds that our violent past needed to beovercome. Specifically, Pinker believes a longing for a peaceable past is delu-sional, arguing that modernity is far more palatable. In the end, each authormakes a significant and noteworthy contribution to both the social sciencesand anthropology in regards to our understanding of human nature andviolence. In this review article, I will briefly address each author’s main argu-ments, highlighting key implications for the anthropological and archaeologi-cal understanding of violence. As will be seen, more space is devoted Pinker’svolume, the significantly longer of the two.

THE WESTERN ILLUSION OF HUMAN NATUREBY MARSHALL SAHLINS

According to Sponsel (1996), there has been a systematic bias in the numberof publications in recent decades favoring the study of violence and war over

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peace and cooperation. Underlying this bias is a negative view of humannature and peace, one that sees humans as naturally aggressive with peacebeing reduced to an absence of war (Sponsel 1996: 97). Where do such nega-tive views come from? Is violent anarchy a natural condition? Faced with suchquestions and prevailing sentiments about a human past dominated byanarchic dispositions, where peace is often conspicuously absent, Sahlinssets out to address the ‘‘self-contempt’’ inherent in Western ideas abouthuman nature.

His book is wonderfully written and concise and should be of interestfor both researchers and students. Examining the arc of Western Civilization’soutlooks on human nature, the volume capably shows how such perspec-tives have emerged, morphed, and persisted to the present day. In doingso, the book helps illuminate a corresponding ‘‘sublimation’’ of anarchy inthe West, wherein anarchy and the pursuit of self-interest are seen as intrinsicto all members of our species. Sahlins’ book attempts to account for thisview, and to demonstrate its fallacy.

According to Sahlins, Western metaphysics supposes a false oppositionbetween nature and culture, seeing primordial ‘‘animal nature’’ as somethingthat needs to be overcome. To trace the origins of this tradition of thought,he relies on textual records dating back to ancient Greek Civilization. Byexamining this trajectory of intellectual development, Sahlins criticizesthese perspectives for being oblivious to history and cultural diversity, forethnocentrically claiming Western customary practices as proof of universaltheories concerning human behavior.

In his sweep through Western intellectual development, Sahlinsimpressively brings to light a common thread connecting many prominentintellectuals, philosophers, and statesmen over the course of several millen-nia. Through their own writings, Sahlins shows how individuals separated bytime and space transmitted and inherited a common perception of humannature, from Thucydides to Hobbes to John Adams. An implicit notion inthe writings of each is that the natural condition of humanity is one of anar-chy, wherein individuals are generally motivated by egocentricity. AlthoughThucydides was pessimistic about humanity, arguing that evils and sufferingrelated to power lust would be repeated throughout history if human natureremained fundamentally unchanged, Hobbes saw a solution in the Leviathan,and later Adams would see a balance of political power as the key to control-ling anarchy. The main concern for each intellectual was the inherent, andseemingly natural, self-interest of every human being.

This dichotomy between nature and culture would be addressed bymany of ancient Greece’s philosophers and intellectuals, including Plato inhis prescriptions for a Republic ruled by educated elites whose rational soulwith its wisdom, virtue, and self-control, could keep in check the concupis-cent soul, with its baser desires (Sahlins 2008: 30). The dualism betweenphysis (nature) and nomos (convention) that would eventually trickle down

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to later Western thinkers had their foundations in the sophists, if not earlier.As legacy of what Sahlins calls native Western thought, the nature-culturedichotomy suggested that culture acquired a sense of being constructed,artificial or false in comparison to the authenticity, and reality of nature(Sahlins 2008: 36). This viewpoint would serve, for instance, as a point ofdeparture for later Hobbesian or Rousseauean schools of thinking that privi-leged nature over culture, thus setting the agenda for mainstream Westernsocial thought for centuries to come.

As a consequence of this perspective, Western thinkers from the MiddleAges through modern times have tended to look at society as a necessary andcoercive antidote for our inherent egoism, with European medieval monar-chy finding an important raison d’etre (Sahlins 2008: 52). One objection Iwould raise here, however, is that this is not a solely ‘‘Western hangup’’ orphenomenon. There are examples of non-Western monarchies, theocracies,and other ancient states in various regions emerging and existing to promotepeace, quell turmoil, and ostensibly suppress savagery. The Qin and Handynasties of ancient China, for instance, saw a clear distinction between theiragrarian, settled, and civilized lifeways and those of their nomadic, ‘‘bar-barian’’ Xiongnu neighbors. To be sure, Sahlins acknowledges that similarnotions of an innate ‘‘wickedness’’ of humanity have been espoused in othercivilizations or cultural traditions. However, he argues that none ‘‘can matchthe sustained Western contempt for humanity: this long-term scandal ofhuman avarice, together with the antithesis of culture and the nature thatinforms it’’ (Sahlins 2008: 3). He may be correct, but this observation mightbe a function of more readily accessible records providing a clearer pictureof Western intellectual development.

Importantly, Sahlins believes an important transition occurred with theemergence of the state and its encroachments on the natural bonds of kinship(2008: 43). In his opinion, anthropologies of many non-Western societieshave revealed alternative ideas about the nature of kinship, wherein personsdo not see themselves and each other as distinct and separate individuals, butas ‘‘the locus of multiple other selves with whom he or she is joined in mutualrelations of being’’ (Sahlins 2008: 49). Thus it is the advent of state societiesthat contributed to an erosion of such common bonds and built-in groundsfor empathy. This is a vital point, as it stands in contrast with the idea pro-moted by Pinker and others that anarchic violence required the state to sup-press it, a point to which I will return later. In any case, a foundation had beenlaid for the Western notion that self-interest was a natural phenomenon, onein which numerous thinkers, writers, economists, and statesmen, such asMachiavelli, Hobbes, James Madison, and John Adams, would accept as anunderlying part of human nature. Indeed, Sahlins (2008: 75–77) writes thatmany of our country’s founding fathers openly discussed the wickednessand depravity of human nature, thus requiring a solution which involvedthe balancing of oppugnant powers. He persuasively presents evidence

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showing early American leaders were heirs to these basic premises, weavingthese considerations into the foundations of our system of governance.

By the 20th century, self-interest was not just considered natural but alsoa necessity for maintaining social equilibrium, an important basis for societyand not its nemesis. With the onset of capitalism, the ‘‘selfish system’’espoused by Montaigne, Hobbes, and others would eventually trump the‘‘social system,’’ which saw the better moral nature of humankind (Sahlins2008: 84–85). However, as pointed out by Sahlins, this is not a universallyshared notion, nor is the idea that humans are wholly distinct from the natu-ral world. Citing ethnographies of non-Western societies, Sahlins maintainsthat Western conceptions about humanity being distinct from other aspectsof the natural world are not widely shared. For others, like the Maori, the uni-verse is one big kindred, consisting of living peoples, deceased ancestors,and other life forms and inanimate objects (Sahlins 2008: 90).

According to Sahlins (2008: 98), the Western view of humanity is anillusion because there is nothing in nature as perverse as our idea of humannature — it is a figment of our cultural imagination. ‘‘In fact, few societiesknown to anthropology, besides our own, make the domestication of infants’inherent anti-social dispositions the issue of their socialization. On the con-trary, the average common opinion of mankind is that sociality is the normalhuman condition’’ (Sahlins 2008: 100). In the end, culture, society, and civi-lization were not necessary to tame our biological tendencies and innerdemons. Instead, culture is older than Homo sapiens, and was a fundamentalcondition of the species’ biological development, as indicated by variousforms of material culture in the paleontological record of hominid evolution.For thousands and maybe millions of years, we have evolved biologicallyunder cultural selection (Sahlins 2008: 104).

In the end, Sahlins may have over-emphasized the uniqueness ofWestern traditions of thought on human nature, not detailing the ways inwhich Western societies have been shaped or influenced by interactions withnon-Western civilizations. Western textual records are not alone in recogniz-ing a potential savagery of humankind. And, of course, the book could havebenefitted from the incorporation of archaeological evidence addressingquestions of prehistoric violence, though Sahlins (2008: 3) clearly statesthat he is only dealing with textual records. Nevertheless, the book offersan insightful overview of Western perspectives and potential biases onhumanity. For better or worse, the modern, globalizing , and increasinglycapitalist world in which we live today has inherited the notion that pursuitsof self-interest and zero-sum competition are not only natural parts of thehuman condition, but that they are, at least for some people, somehow morenatural than cooperative behaviors that minimize competition and promotecollaboration and compromise. Such notions have fueled unprecedentedeconomic growth and technological advance, while simultaneously resultingin tremendous levels of social inequality and wealth disparities. Undoubtedly,

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the ideas offered by this volume are particularly salient in today’s world, andthey are also relevant for any wishing to understand the intellectual milieuwithin which many Western scholars currently study violence.

THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE BY STEVEN PINKER

This is an enormously fascinating, ambitious, and important book. Asimpetus for the volume, Pinker seeks to explain why many forms of violenceappear to be declining on different scales of time and magnitude, and whywe may be living in what he calls the most ‘‘peaceable era’’ of human history.Pinker’s effort is to be commended, and the final product should be ofinterest for all wishing to understand the history of both interpersonal andorganized violence, and how the phenomena originated, have evolved,and exist today. Even more importantly, his insights can inform future effortsto build frameworks of peaceful life. The author impressively marshalsdisparate bodies of data, cases, analyses, and theories from a dizzying arrayof academic disciplines, citing literature from sociology, criminology, anthro-pology, archaeology, political science, international relations, psychology,history, economics, and philosophy, among many others. In an evaluationof the arc of violence, he presents a synthetic perspective on factors forchange, particularly within the past few centuries in the Western world.

Pinker cites statistical trends in the behavior of human groups in variousepochs that unmistakably show declines in many forms of violence, too manyto be coincidental. He posits that our earliest and more recent ancestors weremore violent than we are today, and then builds an overarching argument forwhy we have changed, discussing a combination of trends related to biology,psychology, culture, and material technologies. At the risk of oversimplifica-tion, Pinker writes that today’s higher levels of nonviolence have resultedfrom exogenous forces that have engaged our mental faculties for greaterlevels of cooperative and peaceful behavior. We have become less tolerantof violence, and this may not be due solely to changing cultural mores andsocial circumstances. The outcome might be partly attributable to evolution-ary changes in our cognitive and emotional faculties, some of which, accord-ing to Pinker, may actually be quite recent. Undoubtedly, the arguments andsupporting evidence presented in the book’s grand sweep through humanhistory are highly insightful and informative, conveyed through engagingand enviable prose.

Offered in the book are six major trends or developments of the Westernor developed world that Pinker believes have contributed to our species’retreat from violence. The first, taking place over several millennia,‘‘was the transition from the anarchy of hunting, gathering, and horticulturalsocieties . . . to the first agricultural civilizations with cities and governments,beginning around five thousand years ago’’ (2011: xxiv). This transition

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marked ‘‘a reduction in the chronic raiding and feuding that characterized lifein a state of nature’’ (2011: xxiv), a development he calls the PacificationProcess and the emergence of a Leviathan-like form of political authority.The second trend, best documented in Europe, was the Civilizing Processoccurring between the Middle Ages and the past century, in which centralizedauthority combined with a growing infrastructure of commerce. The thirdtransition, the Humanitarian Revolution, encompassed the Age of Reasonand European Enlightenment, resulting in changing attitudes about sociallysanctioned forms of violence, leading to decreased tolerance for such actions.The fourth transition occurred after World War II and ushered in what manyconsider to be the Long Peace — decades passing without the outbreak ofanother major world conflict on the scale of the two world wars. The fifthtrend is the New Peace, which sees a marked decrease in organized violenceof all kinds since the close of the Cold War in 1989. Finally, the last develop-ment is the Rights Revolution, occurring throughout the past half century.After presenting these prevailing trends, Pinker examines the biology andpsychology of violence (Chapters 8 and 9), before finally tying together allof the observations and interpretations to illuminate the major exogenousforces that have both promoted our peaceful tendencies and driven themultiple declines of violence.

It is rare for so much breadth of research to be coherently synthesizedand presented to explain changing attitudes about violence. For instance,he cites a variety of statistical data indicating dropping rates of violence overcenturies in Europe. In accounting for the ‘‘Long Peace’’ or the absence of athird world war, Pinker cites much evidence to persuasively argue thatattitudes in developed countries have shifted in the conceptualization andpreparation for war, with major changes having occurred even in recentdecades. For the more recent ‘‘New Peace,’’ Pinker outlines the quantitativedeclines in interstate wars, terrorism, and acts of ethnic cleansing that haveoccurred in fits and starts since the end of the Cold War. Particularly interest-ing are the findings from the PRIO (Peace Research Institute Oslo) dataset(2011: 300; Lacina and Gleditsch 2005), which show a decreased risk of dyingin battle in the twentieth century. The essential argument is that violentcatastrophes have not become impossible, just more improbable.

While there is much to appreciate, some of his assumptions and inter-pretations are difficult to accept wholesale. In terms of exogenous variables,he outlines a strong argument that commerce and Leviathans moved the nat-ure of the medieval economy away from a zero-sum game, thus changing theincentives for violence and putting a premium on empathy, with declininghomicide rates reflecting these changes (2011: 76–77). I would ask, though,if the decline in intra-societal violence might be partly attributable to agreater externalization of violence. Commerce may have promoted shiftingattitudes about internal violence, but greater levels of ‘‘peace’’ andempathy may have also resulted from a greater focus on, or demonization

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of, foreign enemies, others that could be substituted for internal violence orexploitation.

In addition, although he means to account for changing patterns ofviolence worldwide, the cited evidence comes primarily from Westerncivilizations. For the Civilizing Process, Pinker calls attention to the EuropeanMiddle Ages for shifting attitudes about violence. In looking predominantlyat the textual record of European societies, the book suffers from a lack ofconsideration for cultural developments in other world regions that may havebeen just as influential in changing medieval and later Western attitudestoward violence. Pinker (2011: 85–85) openly discusses the ‘‘Western Epicen-ter’’ of the civilizing process, but how can a theory addressing violence andpeace for all of humanity be proposed without a wider geographic purview?Focusing on changes in European religious, moral, and intellectual thoughtalmost guarantees that the most significant exogenous factors for any shiftingattitudes about violence will come from within Europe, thereby attributingchanges to Western sources. Pinker (2011: 81) contends that the civilizingprocess did not penetrate all areas of the globe, and that by our modernera, it ‘‘went into the reverse’’ in the developing world outside of Europe.But this problematically implies that the reach (or absence) of European‘‘civilization’’ is the main independent variable responsible for attitudesabout, and the presence and persistence of, violence in non-European andnon-Western areas. Nor should we forget the sometimes deadly and exploi-tative conditions under which ‘‘Western civilization’’ originally reacheddistant shores and penetrated native lands.

Staying in Europe and regarding the Humanitarian Revolution, Pinkerargues that our sensibilities have shifted since the Scientific Revolution andemergence of the Republic of Letters, all of which contributed to improvedliteracy and a process of ‘‘moral discovery.’’ As one consequence, politicalleaders began to move away from violent actions such as human sacrificesto the gods, because superstitious beliefs had given way to the Age ofReason. Though this may be partially true, torture and sacrifice were not car-ried out solely to appease the gods, but also because they were instrumentsof political power. This remains the case today, despite all of our intellectualdevelopments to date.

The book offers a comprehensive view accounting for the Long Peace.However, more weight should have been assigned to the impact of tech-nology. For example, modern transportation infrastructures allow refugeesto more easily escape violence and death than in previous centuries. For manyof the armed forces of wealthy, modern nation-states, a greater capacity tostrike, destroy, and kill at distance has provided an alternative to throwing sol-diers directly into the fray. Pinker rightly points out that the ‘‘age of roboticwarfare is far in the future’’ (2011: 256). However, in recent decades majorpowers have readily participated in a number of wars and local conflicts withadversaries that do not possess the same levels of technologies and capacities,

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while avoiding war with other major powers of equal capability. Hence, whenit comes to low-hanging fruit, many world leaders of this so-called ‘‘peaceableera’’ have not shied away from the application of force, no matter howunpopular or unfashionable violence may have become in contemporary cul-tural sensibilities and parlance. Reflected by this situation is the soberingreality that we are no more capable of reasoning our way out of violent situa-tions than our ancestors, nor do we necessarily have far less tolerance forengaging in war. Furthermore, Pinker may be overly downplaying thevariable of nuclear weapons as a deterrent for major war, arguing insteadfor shifting cultural attitudes. He indicates that, contrary to certain expecta-tions in the 1960s that many nations (including Japan and a reunifiedGermany) would eventually seek to build their nuclear arsenal, as many coun-tries have given up nuclear weapons as acquired them since 1964. This maybe true, but one could reason that the lack of desire to acquire them is becauseenough allies already possess them. In that way, nuclear weapons have been,and continue to operate as, a deterrent for escalation of local war into moreglobal scales. If anything, the possession of nuclear weapons may make thepersistence of warfare all the more conspicuous.

With the ‘‘Rights Revolution,’’ Pinker maintains that declines in intra-societal violence have resulted most recently from changing attitudes in con-temporaryWestern society about hate crimes, rape, domestic abuse, and otherforms of violence, citing a continued and growing distaste and intolerance forthese behaviors. I wonder, however, if these declines do in fact stem mainlyfrom shifts in cultural outlooks, or if there are if they perhaps result from adesire for stability. For instance, perhaps violence related to prejudice andracism has declined not because everyone became less tolerant of violence,but because many were afraid of the civil unrest that often followed such acts.Although we can be thankful that lynching is no longer commonplace in partsof our country, it is quite alarming and disheartening that the atrocity associa-ted with the murder of James Byrd, Jr. can still happen in our society today.What’s particularly disturbing is its occurrence despite all of the so-called pro-gress Pinker believes centuries of pacification, civilizing, and humanitariandevelopment have instilled in us. Despite claims that we are more ‘‘civilized’’or ‘‘enlightened’’ today than at any time in our history, we still possess thesame potential to dehumanize others and commit extreme forms of violence.Perhaps lynching has gone away as much because of laws as they have due toany changes in cultural attitude. Perhaps American society, with all of its polit-ical correctness, is not as overtly racist as it may have been fifty to a hundredyears ago, but I am not as convinced as Pinker that we have cleared this sig-nificant and sad hurdle. Derogatory slurs and attacks may have become tabooin open, mainstream forums, but centuries of ‘‘civilizing’’ have not penetratedWestern society as much as Pinker would have us believe.

After evaluating the ‘‘nurture’’ side of the argument, Chapters 8 (‘‘InnerDemons’’) and 9 (‘‘Better Angels’’) explore the ‘‘nature’’ side, citing numerous

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psychology experiments that examine how our brains are wired for eitherpeaceful (i.e., empathy, greater self-control, morality and taboo, and reason)or aggressive behaviors (i.e., dominance and revenge). Much of the researchis very intriguing, though I am not convinced that the sampling of cases isrepresentative for all populations. True, certain biological tendencies caninfluence decisions or reactions in similar ways for the majority of humans,but when it comes to highly complex and organized behaviors such aswarfare, much is learned, socialized, and instilled by cultural values (seeEmber and Ember 1994). Complex situations in which people face verytough choices, those in which bodily harm and death are involved, are diffi-cult to replicate in any laboratory setting. Some of these experiments revealhow Western college students might behave in given circumstances, but thefindings are not universally applicable. Extrapolating for everyone in theUnited States or other developed countries seems to stretch the data beyondtheir applicable range. Perhaps more promising are the experimental studiesusing real players in potentially deadly disputes, as reflected in the work ofGinges and colleagues (2007) on the Israel-Palestine dispute as cited byPinker (2011: 638). Interestingly, revenge and its possible biological basisare considered in experiments measuring brain activity. One question Iwould pose is whether we can completely divorce findings supporting abiological basis for vengeance from the possibility that test subjects havebeen socialized in cultures that promote retaliation. Vengeance, like otherforms of violence, is not simply a biological urge, but is also a culturalstrategy.

Hiding in Plain Sight: Violence in the Most Peaceable Era

Pinker believes (2011: xxii) that attitudes tolerating or glorifying violencehave declined, thus leading to less violence in general. Perhaps this maybe the case for much of the developed world, but the volume could haveexamined non-Western, contemporary societies more deeply. Anthropologi-cal studies of modern violence in many cultures reveal its dialectical nature,where conflict can be both performed and imagined (see Schmidt andSchroeder 2001). Ethnographies of war that engage inhabitants and directparticipants in modern conflicts can yield particularly salient data (seeLubkemann 2008).

Despite the fact that certain crime rates in developed nations haveexperienced a remarkable downward trend, Pinker’s depiction of today’sviolence lacks sufficient breadth. Violence may exist today in different andless obvious forms than in the past. Forms of intra- and inter-societal violencehave undergone transformation just as societies have changed, along scalesof population size, densities, settlement types, and complexity. In thisrespect, forms of violence today can be seen as an amalgam of sorts, a chim-era evolving in lockstep with shifting sociopolitical configurations. Indeed, a

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host of arguments have been proposed about the connection betweenancient sociopolitical change and trends related to competition, coercion,and warfare, especially in regards to the formation, maintenance, andexpansion of politically complex societies (e.g., Adams 2004; Billman 2001;Carneiro 1970, 1990, 1992, 1998; Flannery and Marcus 1996; Haas 2001:340; Lewis 1981; Kim and Kusimba 2008b; Kim et al. 2010; Marcus 1998;O’Mansky and Demarest 2007; Spencer and Redmond 2004). These perspec-tives help to explain the varied instances of culture change as affected byviolence, such as shifts in settlement patterns and exchange strategies, andthe consolidation and dissolution of political power. For example, researchon early Chinese civilization details the changing forms of sanctioned viol-ence, such as warfare, hunting, execution, punishment, and vengeance, asthey are connected to sociopolitical change (see Lewis 1990 and Campbell2009). Enlarging the discussion to include more recent complex societies,political scientists Levy and Thompson (2011: 10) submit that war is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that evolves over time, expanding and contract-ing, taking on alternative forms as a function of its appeal to actors as astrategy for advancing interests and resolving conflict. This amalgamencompasses a diversity of behaviors and activities, including more recentphenomena such as pitched battles between armies, sieges, gang wars, guer-illa or asymmetric warfare, and state-sponsored terrorism.

Throughout human history, innumerable efforts have been undertakento deter aggression, build peace, and promote stability. Despite theselabors, violence has persisted like the mythical hydra, with some forms fad-ing only to be replaced by others. In political rhetoric, nationalism, terri-torial ambition, and a general indifference to human costs may no longerbe fashionable in the mainstream mindsets and political rhetoric ofdeveloped nations, but the same underlying security interests persist. Thehistorical transition for the ‘‘US Department of War’’ into the ‘‘Departmentof Defense’’ in the 1940s did not change its fundamental mission and activi-ties. Various movements grounded in peace-seeking discourse have existedfor centuries and millennia, but violence has endured. The League ofNations sought to prevent a repeat of the ‘‘war to end all wars,’’ and yetits ideals could not stave off the cataclysm of the 1930s and 40 s. Pinkerclaims that our modern sensibilities and morals preclude the kinds of grue-some brutality seen in the Middle Ages of Europe. However, though atti-tudes may be changing, many of the same fundamental problems existand violence still emerges given the right circumstances and conditions.As a species, we are today just as capable of participating in violence aswe were centuries ago.

I would also caution against an exclusive focus on overt or direct formsof violence, arguing that social inequalities related to power, status, wealth,and access to health can all be considered forms of tacit or latent violence,wherein harm is being caused in some way and over time. Much research

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has been carried out on various forms of structural, cultural, and symbolicviolence in the modern world (Bourdieu 2002; Farmer et al. 2006; Galtung1969, 1990; Morgan and Bjokert 2006; Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois2004). Granted, many of these latent and disguised forms of violence donot qualify as overt classes resulting in direct physical harm and injury, whichmay be why Pinker chose not to engage this literature. However, behaviorsrelated to these phenomena impact quality of life and perceptions of inequityand injustice, thereby creating permissible or conducive conditions forviolent behavior. As noted by Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois (2004: 1), theviolence of poverty, hunger, social exclusion, and humiliation inevitablytranslates into intimate and domestic violence, and violence can never beunderstood solely in terms of its physicality alone. The social and culturaldimensions of violence provide it with power and meaning (Scheper-Hughesand Bourgois 2004: 1). Reductive definitions of violence ‘‘fail to address awide variety of violence that has no immediate material correlates, such assorcery or verbal aggression, because they use only physical injury as thelinking element between examples of violence’’ (Whitehead 2004: 57).

Thus, we may seem to be less tolerant of violence, but this could be asthe old adage says: ‘‘out of sight, out of mind.’’ We may no longer have thestomach for public torture in the United States, but many of us do not layawake at night worrying about the suffering of the poor or homeless. Withviolence being much more subtle, sanitized, and masked in our developednations, competition over resources or rights is not as overt, giving animpression we are today much more capable of empathy and have far lesstolerance for violence. But any comprehensive evaluation of declining viol-ence needs to consider all forms, whether direct or indirect. Thus Pinker’sconsideration of all violence is not comprehensive, leading to an impressionof decline that is not altogether accurate. Of course, intentional physical harmis an easier research problem to address, but in doing so the researchershould clarify that s=he is not able to generalize for trends in all levels ofviolence. As noted by Whitehead (2011), Pinker ‘‘overlooks the fact thatreporting and representations of violence are not just ‘about’ violence butare actually part of it.’’ Even rumors of violence can have a profound effecton social perceptions and relationships (George 2004:42). The statistics mightoffer one interpretation of trends, but violence endures under various guises.In this spirit, recent anthropological studies have looked at other domains ofviolence, such as state violence and death squads, ethnic and communityviolence, and revitalized forms of ‘‘traditional’’ killing like assault sorcery(see Whitehead 2004). Some researchers, such as Nordstrom (2004) stressthe importance of the ‘‘tomorrow’’ of violence, arguing that physical carnageonly sets violence in motion, with the aftermath enduring for years if not life-times for surviving participants. Others, like Pauketat (2009), call for a greateremphasis on the cultural production of different sorts and scales of violence,focusing on its host of practices.

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Variations of Peace and the Significance of Scale

The bold statement that we are living in the midst of our species’ most peace-able era requires careful consideration and substantiation. In some areas ofthe developed or developing world, people are subject to comparatively highprobabilities of being victims of violence. On the other side of the coin, whatis peaceable for an average citizen of the United States, for instance, may notbe the same for someone in a newly industrialized country. Peace is relative,and conceptions of it can vary widely depending on the time, place, and cul-tural background of the observer. Absent from the book is the work of manyanthropologists who have examined peace, factors for nonviolence, andcooperative behavior within our species at various scales of social complexity(Fry 2006; Gregor 1996; Knauft 1996; Sponsel 1996). Collectively, theseresearchers propose that for over 90 percent of the human experience, ourspecies lived in egalitarian communities where generosity and cooperationwere prized, likely making occurrences of violence relatively uncommon.Gregor (1996) argues that peace can be viewed in either absolute or relativeterms, outlining various kinds. For the modern world, Otterbein (2009) dis-cusses ‘‘Positive Peace’’ as a belief that sees war as preventable. Peace cancome in many forms, and can also serve to mask forms of violence hiding justbeneath a veneer of perceived tranquility. Furthermore, relying on a combi-nation of textual and archaeological sources, a number of researchers havelooked at the culturally varied conceptions of peace and methods for its con-struction in different, non-European parts of the ancient world, such as earlyChina, Mesopotamia, ancient India, and the Andes of South America (seeRaaflaub 2007). Pinker’s ideas about pacific behavior and prescriptions fordurable peace could have benefitted from inclusion of this research, fortifyinghis arguments with a broader cultural database.

In addition, the efficacy of Pinker’s general premise regarding decliningviolence is somewhat dependent upon scalar perspective. Interestingly, hisargument contradicts Malthusian predictions about the consequences ofoverpopulation, such as famine, disease, and increased competition or war.However, proportions of violent events and related deaths may only appearto be declining as an artifact of the larger population levels in today’s world(Lawrence Keeley, personal communication). With so many more people inthe world, less people might be victims of violence even if the rates of violenceare not actually declining. Greater numbers of people might be shielded fromwar zones or front lines. But this does not necessarily mean that we are quali-tatively more peaceful than our ancestors, and it does not prove that declinesin violence are directly attributable to the forces Pinker specifically cites.

‘‘Violence’’ is such a broad phenomenon, and though it is laudable forPinker to have tackled it writ large in all its manifestations, he oversimplifiesthe evolutionary trajectories of all forms of violence by explaining a generaldecline as outcomes for the same set of intellectual developments. Perhaps

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the book would have been better served by separating forms of violence ondifferent scales and dimensions — such as forms of interpersonal versus col-lective or institutional, and intrasocietal versus intersocietal. Not all formshave necessarily declined or are declining in the same manner, nor for thesame reasons. For instance, the factors behind the ‘‘Long Peace’’ or ‘‘NewPeace’’ might be vastly different from why certain rates of violent crime havedeclined in developed nations. To propose a blanket explanation for allforms of violence is perhaps overly ambitious. The psychology and motiva-tions for an individual participating in raiding, revenge killing, rape, orself-defense may be very different than those for someone in a trench, ona battlefield, or flying a bomber. For instance, what motivated hundreds ofhighly educated student volunteers to serve in Japan’s tokkotai (kamikaze)operations near the end of World War II, even though Japan was losingthe war (see Ohnuki-Tierney 2002)? Pinker generally treats variant forms ofviolence (and peace) almost interchangeably in accounting for their per-ceived declines. To illustrate, he moves freely from the interpersonal levelto an international one in the discussion of vengeance as a motive (2011:543). Peace between individuals in a family, clan, or community is not neces-sarily constructed or maintained in the same way as peace between states.That being said, I would have preferred if Pinker had separated the formsof violence into more discrete dependent variables.

Five Historical Forces

Summarized in the final chapter are the five broad forces Pinker believeshave pushed violence ever downward in recent centuries, culminating in acontinued reduction in recent decades. These include the Leviathan (whichI discuss later), gentle commerce, feminization, the expanding circle, andthe escalator of reason.

With regards to gentle commerce, trade and exchange can foster greaterlevels of familiarity, binding ties, empathy, and cooperation between part-ners, and Pinker is right to point out specialization as an important factor.However, commerce and its effects are not unique to the European MiddleAges. Unmentioned by Pinker are a myriad of ethnographic and archaeolo-gical cases demonstrating the effects of trade on peaceful relations andalliance building (Berndt 1964; Burch 2005; Chagnon 1997; Ferguson 1992,2006; Golitko 2010; Keeley 1996; Vayda 1969). It should also be noted thatmedieval European societies were engaged in commercial exchange withfar-flung non-European neighbors. Moreover, including culturally diversecases would have made evident that commerce does not always lead to,and maintain, peace. Societies might interact peacefully for years or decades,but friction and conflicts of interest are inevitable. As noted by Keeley(1996: 180), trade can be considered an especially productive source of bothconflict and peace.

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Pinker (2011: 683) makes a curious observation when discussing the‘‘domestication of warring imperial powers’’ such as Sweden and Spain duringthe 18th century, when they transformed ‘‘into commercial states that made lesstrouble.’’ He goes on to state that two centuries later, an analogous transform-ation occurs when Vietnam transitioned from authoritarian communism to auth-oritarian capitalism, and that this change ‘‘was accompanied by a decreasedwillingness to indulge in the all-out ideological wars that in the preceding dec-ades had made both countries the deadliest places on earth.’’ True, ideologicaltenets can have a tremendous impact on violence. However, we cannot stateunequivocally that ideology (e.g., communism) was the culprit in the case ofVietnam, and that it was a turn to capitalism that ultimately reduced the levelsof violence. Colonial subjugation of the late 19th and early 20th century wasprobably the most significant factor for later violence. When the Vietnamesepopulation saw little recourse for self-government and self-determination, andwhen the French and Japanese met Vietnamese political interests with violence,it is little wonder that armed conflict was the outcome. The struggle for politicalindependence continued throughout the 20th century, and the violence resultednot so much from national glory, communism, and an absence of ‘‘gentle com-merce but from concerns over self-determination and independence.

In discussing sex, gender, and feminization, Pinker (2011: 688) offers someinteresting ideas about reducing violence by offering women greater controlover their reproductive capacity. This discussion could have been enhancedby referencing studies looking at gender, war, and post-conflict reconciliation(see Collett 1998; Korac 2006; Moser and Clark 2001). This literature exploresthe role of women as active agents in both waging war and constructing peace,dispelling notions of women as passive victims of violence and conflict.

I agree with Pinker’s idea of the expanding circle and its consequencesfor peace. Technological improvements in the form of jet flights, the Internet,and mobile phones, have fundamentally altered physical and virtual mobilityin today’s increasingly village-like world. Greater levels of familiarity maymean fewer mysterious ‘‘others’’ readily available for demonization, offeringgreater opportunities for what he calls perspective-taking and empatheticthinking. Also encouraging is how technological change can lead to momen-tous changes in social networks, dramatically altering the ways in which wewill be able to interconnect, interact, trade information, share experiences,and, ultimately, better understand one another.

Together with the expanding circle, Pinker contends that the escalatorof reason can have a pacifying effect for our species moving forward. In thisnotion, recent ideas, movements, and liberalizing reforms, stemming from astarting point in Western Europe or the American coasts (2011: 692), have ledto an emerging humanistic value system, which privileges human flourishingas the ultimate good (2011: 691). Unfortunately, this perspective seems todiscount how non-Europeans of the past have also strived to look at the worlddifferently, to see a common good in the well being of all people. The

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capacity to reason and construct peaceful ways to avoid conflict is not restric-ted to any recent era, specific culture, or defined geography. Non-Europeans,past and present, were and are just as capable of empathizing with others out-side of their own societies. The argument that our modern levels of empathyare possible because of a European ‘‘process of moral discovery’’ (see Pinker2011: 180) harkens to the old ethnocentric and Eurocentric ideas of unilinearevolution and a sense of inevitable progression. The impression being con-veyed, then, is that all non-developed and non-Western societies are notyet enlightened, so to speak, and that they will be eventually faced with theirown moral shortcomings only to realize that their way of life is somehowdeficient or qualitatively lacking when compared to ours.

Modernity, Morality, and the Past

As one of his main points, Pinker insists that we have inaccurately regardedour current state of humanity as more violent than an idyllic past, leadingsome to loath the present. I agree that modernity ought not to be loathed,not with our scientific and technological advances, our broadening under-standing of natural history and the universe around us. I also concur thatthere is sometimes a nostalgic tendency that accompanies this loathing ofour modern condition. Nonetheless, I disagree with his statement that ‘‘nos-talgia for a peaceable past is the biggest delusion of all’’ (2011: 693). Not allpast societies subscribed to the same kinds of cultural beliefs and moralvalues regarding violence, and we cannot denigrate all past societies andthe totality of ancient humanity based on some cases. Interestingly, at onepoint Pinker proposes (2011: 658) that our recent ancestors might actuallybe, in comparison to modern standards, ‘‘morally retarded,’’ and that the col-lective moral sophistication of the culture in which they lived was primitive.But who is to say that one perspective, belief system, or set of morals isbetter, more advanced, or more developed? Yes, we are more advanced inour technologies, but does that mean our cultures are more advanced? HasWestern civilization reached some pinnacle of cultural achievement and mor-ality? Ironically, Pinker discusses lessons he learned as a child, such as thefollowing quotation: ‘‘Yes, the things those people do look funny to us.But the things we do look funny to them’’ (2011: 659). The same sentimentcan be invoked to look at our morals and ideas relative to both precedingand coming generations. A decade or century from now our own actionsand morals may be viewed as savage, barbaric, or ‘‘morally retarded’’ as well.

VIOLENCE IN THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL PAST

I now turn to a topic pertinent to the arguments of both volumes, and willalso directly address Pinker’s two opening chapters. Which perspective

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regarding violent anarchy and the prevalence of violence in prehistory doesthe archaeological record support? Do we harbor spurious illusions about theaggressive nature of the human experience, as put forth by Sahlins? Or is Pin-ker right about our warlike ancestors? Our knowledge of ancient violence,aggression, and warfare has advanced dramatically as a result of renewedanthropological and archaeological interest in recent decades. Growingbodies of data from around the world not only document violence in variableenvironmental and social contexts, but also give us clues about how it impac-ted cultural change for many regions. The material record lies beyond thescope of Sahlins’ volume, as his arguments rely solely on textual sources.However, despite Sahlins’ arguments about a Western mis-apprehensionof human nature, some of the negative depictions of human nature arewarranted, and the evidence supports parts of Pinker’s argument regardingprehistoric violence, though not all.

For organized violence or warfare, meaning armed combat between pol-itically autonomous societies, some researchers argue that the case of the JebelSahaba cemetery in Nubia is the earliest (Ferguson 2000, 2006; Haas 2001;Wendorf 1968). It must be noted, though, that traces of warfare are only dis-cernible in the material record given the right conditions and scale. Smaller-scale activities such as raids and ambushes might leave very little materialevidence, especially if weapons being used are made of perishable materialsand there is no defensive architecture to evaluate (Webster 1998: 350–351).Overall, markers for violence and warfare for societies earlier than 10,000 yearsago would be extremely difficult to detect, given the low-density nature ofnomadic populations (Haas 2001: 333). Besides the lack of specialized weap-ons designed specifically for killing other humans, many of these societieswould not have invested time and energy into the construction of fortificationfeatures that would reflect a healthy concern over perceived threats. Definitivesigns of warfare are not readily seen for much of our Pleistocene hunter-gatherer past, despite ethnographic evidence of modern-day hunter-gatherersengaging in war. Thus, it is possible that warfare begins far earlier than the Holo-cene. To be sure, some signs for other forms of interpersonal violence or homi-cide are discernible from well into our Pleistocene past, as discussed below.

At the start of Chapter 1, Pinker begins his tour of ‘‘the foreign countrycalled the past, from 8000 BCE to the 1970s’’ (2011: 1). Using 8000 BCE asthe point of departure, he offers ‘‘a series of glimpses’’ to illustrate how themajority of the human past, with its vast diversity of cultures and customs,was rather violent, existing under the anarchic conditions of hunting-gatheringand horticultural lifeways. According to Pinker (2011: 4), ‘‘For now, prehistoricremains convey the distinct impression that The Past is a place where a personhad a high chance of coming to bodily harm.’’ For Pinker, violence wasquite prevalent until the pacifying and civilizing effects associated with stateemergence. He is correct about the antiquity of violent behavior. The problem,however, is determining how pervasive it was for all times and places.

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Curiously, Pinker’s review of the archaeological evidence is severelylimited, especially in comparison to his extensive overview of later periodsof history. Researchers have produced thousands of pages on early humanviolence, yet Pinker devotes a handful of pages within the nearly 700-pagebook. In doing so, he selects certain data points to represent all times andplaces. He relies on a very small sample of cases, mostly from Europe andone from North America, while the entire sweep of human history is generallyglossed over. In a section called ‘‘Human Prehistory,’’ for instance, he dealswith evidence solely from the Holocene. Some of his cases indicate a likeli-hood of human-on-human violence, such as the remains of Otzi, whereasothers are more equivocal, such as Kennewick Man, who appears to havebeen shot by a stone projectile. The wound, however, could have easilyresulted from a hunting accident. Needless to say, Pinker could have lookedbeyond 10,000 years ago, since the available evidence allows us to make someinferences, however equivocal, about the behavior of humans and or homininancestors well into the Pleistocene or Paleolithic. Judged from the standpointof several hundred thousand years of modern human history on our planet,the past several millennia of lose their significance as an indicator of whatis inherently ‘‘human’’ behavior (Haas 2001: 330). Thus, Pinker’s claims needclarification in what constitutes ‘‘human.’’

Pinker does not ignore the possibility of Pleistocene violence. However,in this regard he relies predominantly on primate analogues for ideas about theorigins and prevalence of violence among hominin or early humans. He citesthe work of some anthropologists and primatologists (e.g., de Waal 1996,2009; Goodall 1986; Wrangham 1999; Wrangham and Peterson 1996), but doesnot include data gathered by archaeologists and paleoanthropologists thatspeak directly to actual past behaviors and their material correlates. The dis-cussion would have been enriched by including publications with a varietyof complementary or contrasting viewpoints on Paleolithic violence (e.g.,ewell 1999; Dawson 1996; de Waal 1996; Knauft 1996; Thorpe 2003; Walker2001). For example, the discussion on coalitional aggression (2011: 39) couldhave included Kelly’s (2005) research on the evolution of lethal intergroupviolence. Also, a number of early cases could have been mentioned, such asthe remains of an anatomically modern human displaying skeletal trauma fromthe Klasies River in South Africa at 90,000 BP (see Deacon and Deacon 1999).Very recent research by Carbonell and colleagues (2010) presents osteologicalevidence intriguingly suggestive of cannibalism among Homo antecessorspecimens, which anthropologist Keith Otterbein (2011) has interpreted aspossible evidence of early warfare. Granted, many of these sorts of casespresent fairly equivocal evidence for direct violence, but a fuller discussionwould have complemented his engagement of modern primate analogues.

Also problematic is an inadequate acknowledgement of the potential pit-falls for interpreting cases of deliberate violence. ‘‘What is it about the ancientsthat they couldn’t leave us an interesting corpse without resorting to foul

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play?’’ (Pinker 2011: 3). Overall the book offers an uncritical and incompleteassessment of the material record, failing to recognize what archaeologistswho study ancient violence and warfare understand all too well — that thearchaeological identification of these phenomena is not an easy andstraight-forward task. Rather, it requires painstaking collection and interpret-ation of data from multiple sources. The use of interpretations based on asmall sample size of empirical data is insufficient for grand, totalizing general-izations about violence and human nature. But this is precisely what Pinkerdoes in his overview of ‘‘The Past.’’

Also not mentioned is research suggesting that human groups in thePaleolithic may have been quite peaceful and cooperative, and that frequen-cies of violence seem to rise after 10,000 years ago (Bacciagaluppi 2004; Kelly2000; Sponsel 1996). For some, the Paleolithic peopling of much of the OldWorld would not have been possible without ‘‘linguistic capacities and thecultural transmission of norms of social conduct that supported cooperation’’(Bowles and Gintiss 2009: 196). According to Bowles and Gintiss (2009: 197),our ancestors may have been successful because they created ‘‘culturallytransmitted institutional environments’’ that favored the evolution of socialpreferences on which altruistic cooperation is based.

Moving to the more recent record of modern humans, there are manymore instances of suspected violent deaths during Upper Paleolithic andMesolithic times from various sites in parts of Europe, northern Africa, andthe Near East, with evidence in the form of projectile points embedded inbones, scalp marks on skulls, and cranial fractures (see Haas 2001: 332; Keeley1996: 37; Kim and Keeley 2008a: 2054–2055). A challenge, however, is thatcases are scattered throughout time spans of millennia, and the mere detec-tion of these cases does not reveal much about the pervasiveness, frequency,and intensity for various forms of violence. Much more evidence would berequired to make the stronger claims that Pinker is championing. It is onlyfor more recent millennia that recently gathered data can be analyzed toinform prevalence and frequency. Forms of violence have certainly occurredin the pre-‘‘civilized’’ or pre-agricultural world, but it does not automaticallyfollow that the world was an especially violent place. It is quite possible,for instance, that prior to the emergence of sedentary lifeways, the worldexperienced eras much more peaceable than the one in which we live intoday. A more judicious examination of the archaeological record would haveshown that the distant past might not have been as dreary and violent asPinker would have us believe. We should also note that the pre-agriculturalworld was much less populated, and that these isolated societies likely hadhighly variable beliefs, attitudes, and practices related to peace, nonviolence,and violence. Additionally, less populated areas could have resulted in lessforms of competition that could lead to violence.

Where the evidence provides stronger support for Pinker’s argument isin the era shortly after a general, global transition to settled life, and perhaps

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this accounts for his decision to begin his tour at 8000 BCE. Here an apparentincrease in the intensity and frequency of warfare is discernible, with clearermaterial signatures for homicide and organized violence. A comprehensivesurvey of the archaeological record for the Holocene period in many areasof the world clearly reflects a growing body of evidence. With the adventof agriculture and sedentary patterns, we see material indications for growingpopulations and a greater prevalence of violence and warfare in thearchaeological record of many areas, including parts of Africa, Europe, Asia,Australia, North and South America, and the South Pacific (Allen and Arkush2006; Arkush 2008; Bamforth 2006; Emerson 2007; Gat 2006; Golitko andKeeley 2007; Guilaine and Zammit 2005; Haas 2001; Junker 1999; Keeley1996, 1997, 2001; Kolb and Dixon 2002; Kusimba 2006; Lambert 2002,2007; LeBlanc 2003; Milner 2007; Nielsen and Walker 2009; Otterbein 2004;Parkinson and Duffy 2007; Underhill 2006; Vencl 1984, 1999). Here the indi-cators for organized violence go beyond the somewhat ambiguous signs ofPaleolithic skeletal trauma, now including signs of property destruction,defensive architecture, iconographic depictions, buffer zones, and, of course,tools designed specifically for killing humans and not for construction, farm-ing, and hunting of animals. By the time societies began to write, almost all ofthe earliest written records the world over discuss elements of violence andwarfare (Vencl 1984: 117).

The ‘‘Anarchy of Hunting, Gathering, and Horticultural Societies’’

According to Pinker (2011: 35), ‘‘Archaeologists tell us that humans lived in astate of anarchy until the emergence of civilization some five thousand yearsago, when sedentary farmers first coalesced into cities and states anddeveloped the first governments.’’ Citing the work of archaeologists (e.g.,Keeley 1996; LeBlanc 2003), cultural anthropologists (e.g., Knauft 1987;Otterbein 2004), and political scientists (e.g., Gat 2006), Pinker makes thebroad case that before the advent of centralized states, or ‘‘Leviathans,’’ theprevailing condition for smaller-scale, less complex, predominantly mobilehunter-gatherer societies was one commonly marked by various forms ofintra- and inter-societal violence. He thus submits that anarchy is not simplythe absence of overarching governance, but that it is almost invariably markedby violence. He also suggests that all forms of violence began to decline sincethe emergence of states when the ‘‘civilizing process’’ initiated pacification ofthese nonstate societies. In this perspective, politically centralized, ‘‘civilized’’states were responsible for the first major transition away from anarchic viol-ence and toward a substantive reduction in violence in human history (2011:44). Despite his claim, not all archaeologists subscribe to this view. Forms ofanarchy existed prior to the presence of Leviathans, but this does not meanthat all nonstate societies were plagued by conflict and violence. The evi-dence does not show violent ‘‘anarchy’’ as the natural or default condition,

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at least not in the Hobbesian sense of war of all against all. Indeed, manyarchaeologists suggest that the advent of farming, sedentism, urbanism, andstates may have contributed to greater levels of violence. To illustrate, variousforms of sanctioned and institutionalized violence emerged and intensifiedwithin the Shang state of ancient China (Campbell 2009; Underhill 2006). Inthe Andes, institutionalized violence and warfare were related to significantpolitical changes involving states and empires such as the Wari and Tiwanaku(Arkush 2006). The same can be said for the periods of emergence and zenithof political power for the Cahokia polity (Emerson 2007).

Pinker’s graphs (2011: 49, 53) are provided to illustrate a distinctionbetween states and nonstates. On the surface, his point is well made, as thearchaeological record does clearly show ancient origins for interpersonal viol-ence and warfare. Keeley’s research (1996), for instance, overturns traditionalnotions of small-scale societies being capable of only trivial, ritual, or incon-sequential warfare. That being said, Keeley does not make the argument thatall nonstate or prestate societies were warlike or especially violent. He simplyargues that they were just as capable of warlike behavior as more recent,larger-scale societies. In fact, according to Keeley (1996: 183), inattentivenessto prehistoric violence and warfare is unfortunate because it obscures the factthat some prehistoric regions and periods were remarkably peaceful overmany generations. Pinker does not adequately acknowledge what thearchaeological record shows, that waves of war and peace seem to come inalternating cycles in many areas of the world (Haas 2001: 337).

Pinker’s over-generalizations of nonstate and state societies serve to cre-ate a false dichotomy between the two. As maintained by Sahlins, anthropol-ogists and archaeologists studying present and ancient forms of hunter-gatherer societies recognize a wide range of variation in subsistence strate-gies, belief systems, and cultural attitudes about nature, the world, andrelationships with other people. Some are more populous than others, someare much more sedentary, and some use shifting subsistence strategiesdepending on various circumstances. When it comes to violence, archaeologyshows enormous variation throughout the prehistoric world for occurrences,types, and frequencies, with some regions indicating very little evidence withothers showing significant amounts (Keeley 1996; Thorpe 2003: 159). Pinkerdoes not acknowledge all of this vast temporal, cultural, and geographic varia-bility, thus placing all such small-scale, generally mobile, nonstate societiesinto a single category purportedly marked by violent, anarchic tendencies.His graphs over-emphasize select cases of nonstate violence, using certainindications of high warfare deaths to be applied to a universe of nonstate,hunter-gatherer and horticultural societies. Figures 2-2 (2011: 49) conveysthe impression that all prehistoric archaeological societies, before the emerg-ence of states, were more warlike than their future ‘‘civilized’’ counterparts.Not discussed, however, is that depending on one’s definition of ‘‘state,’’ manyof these prehistoric societies were in either direct or indirect contact with

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ancient states, which may have played a role in levels of violence.Additionally, the bottom of the graph depicts the comparatively ‘‘peaceful’’nature of civilized states that had much smaller percentages of deaths relatedto warfare. Comparing percentage of war deaths and rate of death in warfare,Pinker writes that states are far less violent than traditional bands and tribes(2011: 52). This category, however, mainly includes countries from the pastfew centuries and does not represent all forms of politically centralized,state-level societies that have existed throughout the world.

At the crux of Pinker’s depiction of states is the Leviathan. I agree thatsome form of overarching authority serving as a third-party arbiter of justiceis often a necessary prerequisite for stability and peace between parties,whether those parties are members of the same society or states on a globalstage. However, encapsulated in this assumption is the idea violence was dra-matically reduced in the world only when bands, tribes, and chiefdoms cameunder control of the first states (2011: 681). This is problematic because of theconsiderable archaeological and historic evidence that state societies werevery violent entities, whether perpetrating internally or externally focusedviolence. According to Haas (2001: 340), the most striking common patternfor the archaeological record of all kinds of centralized polities is the univer-sality of warfare, with the scale and ubiquity being much greater than in pre-ceding periods. Indeed, many of the first written records describing violencewere produced by complex societies such as fourth millennium BC Egyptiancivilization or third millennium BC Mesopotamian civilization. One can lookat the Narmer Palette or the Standard of Ur, for instance, for clues about therole of violence in the emergence of ancient statehood. With the earlieststates, the nature of violence changed, and states became much more efficientat maiming and killing, in terms of logistics, strategies, technologies, andorganization. Moreover, for many of these early civilizations, such as theAztec, the Shang, the Mayan, the Inka, and the Yoruba, political careers, sta-tus, and rank were heavily tied to military achievements (Trigger 2003:250–263). Finally, as there has been no standard model for a ‘‘state,’’ makinga blanket statement about how states reduced violence is an overstatement.

As for the lower war death figures for the modern world, Pinker down-plays or ignores other statistics that can indirectly reflect the impact of viol-ence, such as population displacement and refugee migration. Given ourcurrent travel infrastructure and transport technologies, it is comparativelyeasier for victims and would-be victims of violence and persecution to fleeand find safe haven long distances away. Without these capacities, currentglobal levels of violence could have easily resulted in much higher numbersof war deaths. At the time of this writing, the United Nations High Com-missioner for Refugees (http://www.unhcr.org) reported that more than100,000 refugees had fled Syria during the month of August 2012 alone. Also,what if we were to examine expenditures in time, financing, and researchrelated to war efforts, instead of war deaths? Medical advances have certainly

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reduced war deaths for modern societies, and technological advances areallowing countries to kill at long range, thereby further reducing the overallnumber of their own war casualties. The risk of dying for someone at thecontrols of a drone, missile, or aircraft is far different than for someone onthe ground facing an adversary. Finally, there is latent violence frozen inthe various unexploded ordinance and minefields of many places, such asin Germany and Laos. Such violence is not reflected in war death statistics,but injuries and deaths can still result years later.

According to Pinker (2011: 56), ‘‘Though imperial conquest and rule canthemselves be brutal, they do reduce endemic violence among the con-quered.’’ This may be applicable in some cases, but probably not all. Asargued within tribal zone theory, for instance, violence in many historicallyrecent or modern-day non-state societies may have been profoundly affectedby interactions with large-scale, complex, sedentary, and agricultural socie-ties (i.e., states) (Ferguson 2004; Ferguson and Whitehead 1992; Whitehead1992). With this possibility, it is difficult to make the kind of wholesale state-ment Pinker is advocating about the pacifying and civilizing effects of states.

I do not discount the occurrence and significance of violence in the past,as there is ample evidence for it. However, the archaeological record for cer-tain eras is spotty, and it is not possible to make a general argument that ourancestors were inherently more violent than we are today, especially whenwe consider a diachronic backdrop of hundreds of thousands of years. Totake the position that the majority of Paleolithic and small-scale communitiesthroughout the world were plagued by a constant threat of intra- and inter-community violence is to overstep the bounds of the currently available data.In sum, Pinker is correct in pointing to early signs of violence, but his con-clusions about chronological and spatial ubiquity are not supported.

CONCLUSIONS: THE NATURE OF HUMAN NATURE

As stated in the introduction, Sahlins and Pinker appear to hold different opi-nions on human nature. For Sahlins, anthropological studies show manynon-Western cultures to have a very different understanding of the self, indi-viduality, and the rational self-interests of humans. Consequently, Westernassumptions about self-interested actors may not be applicable for all ofhumanity across time and space, and perhaps it is our own modern Westernnotions that are peculiar. On the other hand, Pinker vehemently defendsmodernity, insisting we should not loath our current cultural practices,beliefs, and morals, and that, if anything, we ought to celebrate our escapefrom the ‘‘anarchy’’ of the ancient and non-civilized worlds. Pinker’s bookappears to suggest that emanations of moralistic and enlightened thinkingfrom a European or Western epicenter are at the heart of our current peace-able era. Interestingly, this thesis is somewhat reminiscent of the kind of eth-nocentric or Eurocentric perspective Sahlins seems to be critiquing.

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What is ironic in Pinker’s argument about the pacifying effects of civi-lized, cosmopolitan life is that it is precisely a transition from smaller-scale,village life to a larger-scale, urban counterpart that may have fostered a grow-ing sense of anonymity and social distance, the kind that can nurture rationa-lizations for acts of violence against non-kin and ‘‘others.’’ For Sahlins, theadvent of states began to erode kinship ties. Perhaps, then, Europe in theMiddle Ages may have been more violent than other places in the worldbecause of a difference in how people perceived individuality, rationalself-interest, and an absence of restraints against non-kin. According toSahlins, with many non-Western societies, ethnographies have indicated aperception of kinship in which kinsmen lead each other’s lives and die eachother’s deaths (Sahlins 2008: 49). In the non-state, non-urban, less denselypopulated social worlds of hunter-gathering societies, there may have beengreater levels of empathy due to more familiarity. Social distance betweenrelated community members were smaller, and geographic distance to non-kin was likely greater. In a sense, then, the advent of the state, in the Westernworld or elsewhere, and its emphasis on non-kin ties and more nucleatedsettlements, may have led to spikes of intra-societal violence due to morenon-kin interactions and a greater sense of anonymity. If so, then any naturalstate of humanity may not be as violent as Pinker would argue.

These differences in opinion notwithstanding, Pinker and Sahlins agreeon the impact of cultural beliefs and values. At the outset of his book, Pinkeroffers a quote from Blaise Pascal that portrays humankind simultaneously asboth the glory and the scum of the universe. Perhaps encapsulated in thisperspective is Pinker’s own opinion, that from the depths of our own naturewe are at once capable of both deplorable cruelty as well as astonishingcompassion. Hence, we can see that both Pinker and Sahlins stress theimportance of culture in human nature. In Pinker’s opinion, humanity andcultures have continued to evolve, and many in today’s developed worldsubscribe to certain cultural attitudes towards violence, marked by signifi-cantly less tolerance. Thus, while Pinker takes a Hobbesian outlook that aLeviathan is necessary to stave off anarchy, he fully acknowledges that cul-tural attitudes and morality can also have a tremendous effect in promotingpeaceful interactions and social order. Similarly, Sahlins maintains that we arenot the involuntary servants of our animal dispositions but are creatures ofculture. Hence, Sahlins’ conception about human nature somewhat overlapsPinker’s evaluation of our ‘‘better angels,’’ wherein a combination of bothbiological and cultural factors can determine perceptions of threat, reactionsto aggression and conflict, and (in)tolerance for violent behavior. Just asPinker explores our inner demons and better angels, Sahlins writes (2008:109): ‘‘Born neither good nor bad, human beings make themselves in socialactivity as it unfolds in given historical circumstances.’’

Our violent actions do not stem solely from innate tendencies, and thereis research indicating that forms of violence, including acts of warfare, are

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socialized and part of a cultural repertoire of learned behavior (Ember andEmber 1994). Essentially, I would characterize humans as conditional coop-erators, an interpretation not all that dissimilar from Gat’s (2006: 40) perspec-tive in which levels of violent aggression fluctuate in response to conditions.Both environmental and social conditions are important, and culture is thus akey element for understanding violence. To complement Pascal’s words, Ioffer Geertz’s (1973: 49) characterization of humans without culture as‘‘unworkable monstrosities.’’ Ultimately cultures can result in extremely var-ied worldviews and behaviors, and decisions are often contingent on local,particular circumstances related to time and place, as well as on relationshipswith neighboring people. Choices abound, and a range of variation appliesto attitudes about acceptable (or unacceptable) levels of violence. It is thustremendously difficult, if not outright impossible, to make blanket generaliza-tions about violence in the world’s past, present, or future.

I concur with Pinker that we are today well positioned to move ourunderstanding of human nature into unprecedented domains. His bookshould not be seen simply as a source of research and explanations forobserved trends regarding violence. It is also a clarion call for continuedresearch, providing signposts for ongoing efforts. Moving forward, multidis-ciplinary perspectives can help advance knowledge, with promising newmethods emerging in a number of fields to complement existing ones. Forinstance, cutting-edge bioarchaeological methods for studying osteologicalremains can provide insights around intensity and prevalence of violence,as well as its effects on nutrition, population movement, and geneticexchange. These research efforts can significantly broaden our understand-ing of the conditions for violence and how societies might be marked byslavery and bondage, torture, and migrations (see Martin et al. 2012; Milner1999, 2007; Price et al. 2011; Tung 2012). To illustrate, recent research onthe Wari in the Andes suggests that imperial rule was associated with highlevels of violence, that differential positioning in the empire had little effecton exposure to violence, and that wound patterning differed between sexes(Tung 2007). Elsewhere, Milner (2005) uses innovative research comparingarrow wound rates to show how low percentages of archaeological skeletonswith distinctive conflict-related bone damage can still indicate that warfaremust have had a perceptible impact on lifeways in prehistoric North America.Having only a handful of skeletons damaged by arrows means there were,conservatively, several times as many victims of warfare (Milner 2005: 152).Ongoing work in battlefield archaeology (see Scott et al. 2009) can also helpto compile databases for regions, perhaps allowing inferences to be madeabout frequency and precipitating conditions, not unlike efforts such as theCorrelates of War project.

Pinker also hints that the declines in violence, though attributable toexogenous and cultural trends, might also be related to evolutionarychanges and possible recent natural selection, particularly as they might

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apply to genes affecting cognition and emotion. Ultimately, he backs awayfrom that limb, arguing that we currently lack solid evidence of recentbiological evolution tweaking our inclinations toward violence and non-violence (2011: 621). Interestingly, exciting new paleoanthropologicalresearch is foreshadowing future abilities to connect culture to biology.Recent paleoanthropological research, for instance, suggests that our spe-cies is still undergoing genetic change, even in recent millennia (see Hawkset al. 2007).

In the end, I would caution against the risk of complacency inherent inPinker’s message that we are now living in the most peaceable era of humanhistory. I share his hope that, as a species, we are all becoming more intol-erant of many forms of violence, on various scales. But, as noted by anthro-pologists and archaeologists, the prevailing cultural norms of social groupsthroughout human history can shift from hawkish to dovish or vice versain as little as a generation, and much of the change is context-specific. Pinkerbelieves that ‘‘an intensifying application of knowledge and rationality tohuman affairs—the escalator of reason—can force people to recognize thefutility of cycles of violence . . . to reframe violence as a problem to be solvedrather than a contest to be won’’ (2011: xxvi). However, as noted by White-head (2004: 60), ‘‘our own rejection of violence is a cultural attitude that isnot universally shared.’’ While I wholeheartedly agree that we should viewviolence as a problem to be solved, the difficulty is that humans are creativein their uses of materials, ideas, and strategies. Actions related to dominance,power, and violence are always going to be on the menu. When interests col-lide and when forms of physical or social survival are at stake, a Pandora’sBox filled with instruments of violence, coercion, and physical force will stillbe sitting off in a corner of the room, always ready to be culturally reassessedand revisited, to be employed again regardless of how much dust has accu-mulated on its cover. Our best hope is that most of us are willing to expendenergy in constructing durable institutions and frameworks for peace—thatwe deem it necessary for the well-being and survival of our species and pla-net. I understand the need to scientifically examine and reflect on the evol-ution of cooperative and violent behaviors, but I urge against an overlyoptimistic attitude, that we not prematurely celebrate some current ‘‘true stateof peace’’ (Pinker 2011: 255, citing Gat 2006) just yet.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank Michael Harkin for the opportunity to write this review article and forall his help during the writing process. I greatly appreciate the constructivecomments provided by three anonymous reviewers, which served tostrengthen this article. Any errors within it are my own. Lastly, I would liketo dedicate this article to the memory of my late friend and colleague, Neil L.

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Whitehead. Though his passing represents a tremendous loss to anthropology,his beacon will continue to shine brilliantly as inspiration for so many,including myself.

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NAM C. KIM is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University ofWisconsin-Madison. His research is concerned with how different variablesoperate in the formation of complex polities, factors such as ecology, tradeinteraction, agent-based strategies, ideology, coercive power, and warfare.Escaping war as a refugee child with his parents, he is today also interestedin the causes and social consequences of warfare and organized violence invarious spatial and temporal settings. Currently, Kim’s work is geographicallyfocused on Southeast Asia, where he conducts ongoing archaeological field-work at the Co Loa site in Vietnam’s Red River Valley.

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