The headline should really be "Ohio Man Rapes Girl, Then Kills Self After Chase." The way they wrote it, it sounds like the rape happened after the chase.

Twas ever thus, Otis. There's always been scum amongst us.

Events make the news because they are uncommon... We should worry when "man rapes girl, kills self" is too uninteresting to sell newspapers.

then they'll have to turn to "man rapes self, chases girl, kills car" to bring in readers.

I'm all for an 80% reduction in the human species. I'm a nice guy, but if I'm part of the 80% reduction, that's fair enough (though I'd prefer to be in the 20%.)

Many of my friends feel the same way. There're days when we're just like, "C'mon, bird flu epidemic!"

But the world was a lot worse for people when the population was a lot smaller.

For details, see the Old Testament.

Gene pool + bleach = peace on earth

I'd buy that, to be fair, jonmc. Good shout.

Anyway, are people actually getting more evil, or are we just hearing about these events much more easily than we perhaps once would?...

But the world was a lot worse for people when the population was a lot smaller.

Actually, the world was pretty good to people when the population was smaller and before agriculture came along. Folks were healthy enough to regularly live into their 60s and 70s, and nothing I've read from ethnographic sources would indicate that a pre-civilization lifestyle would be any more violent than it is now. Hell, if we assume that pre-agriculture tribes had only a loose notion of private property, if any, it's safe to wager that crime in the sense that we understand it was vastly less.

Now, given that a very serious bird flu pandemic would a) eliminate a signifigant portion of the population and b) severely cripple or destroy civilization in most areas, and further considering that domestic plants and animals have shaped us as much as we've shaped them, causing a second wave of deaths as the survivors of the first wave discover that they are genetically ill equipped to survive in a post-civilization world, I'd say it would be a net gain for the world as a whole. Maybe people wouldn't fuck it up a second time around.

For details, see the Old Testament.

It's debateable how accurate that would be.

...I'd say it would be a net gain for the world as a whole. Maybe people wouldn't fuck it up a second time around

In general I think the animals and the ecosystem/environment would rejoice, at least unless humans recouped and started it all over again.

Modern news loves shock stories. So in the US, out of 300 million possible people the news could report on, they're going to talk about the 3 crazies over any of the others.

I somehow read that as "modern news rocks love stories." Hee. That would be awesome.

Kills Self After Chase
I'd say he made the right decision there. We should encourage suicide more for our less civilized/shamed folks. Far from heroic, but it does give them a chance to benefit society for once and to go out with at least some semblance of honor.

No, people are no more evil now; those are the stories that always keep ratings up. Plus, this is December, when Peace On Earth generally goes straight into the shithole.

I support the right of individuals to kill themselves, but if they're going to rape or kill someone else first, I encourage them to skip that step and go straight to the suicide.

Sorry, cmonkey, I can't agree. There's a real tendency to romanticize the pre-agrarian age, but it's really not supportable. Those societies posed as many challenges to health and equality and safety as does ours.

Many people did live to age 60 or so, but mortality felled infants and women of childbearing age in great numbers.

I think it's pretty easy to prove that prehistoric (not pre-civilization; it would be hard to argue that there's such a thing as pre-civilization) lifetsyles were indeed more violent than today. Many societies, particularly in the longest-inhabited regions of North Africa and the fertile crecent, existed in a state of near-constant seige and warfare. Lack of private property does not equate to a lack of violence; instead, fights were over community property, and divided along ethnic and geographic lines rather than individual lines.

Finally, as a female, I can say with certainty that there is simply no time and no culture that I can accept as preferable to life in today's modern Western culture. I approve of antibiotics, dentistry, safer childbirth, the right to vote, the right to own property, the rule of law, and things like that.

As to the Old Testament: sure, my remark was flip. I don't regard the Old Testament as history. However, if you do actually read it (which I recommend), you'll easily be able to compare it with anthropological data that will support my assertion that the brutality and inter-ethnic strife of at least some times of yore was quite real.

There were no halcyon days.

Being involved in a history profession is quite an eye-opener. It's caused me to believe that our real problem is mass media - that we hear about many more appalling events than would someone a hundred years ago or more, simply because of the light-speed transmission of sensational tales. However, a few hours with an eighteenth or nineteenth-century newspaper will show you that there has never been a shortage, in America, of violent murder, lynching, assault, sexual predation, abandoned or murdered babies, and all the other depredations we hear about on the 11 o-clock news even today.

I agree with Miko - the constant cries of "oh noes, the world is getting more violent and the pervs are taking over the streets" are based on better information rather than any real change in the data. Sure, there are lots more crimes reported these days but:
a) Lots of things that are now considered crimes now were either not considered offences or were so rarely reported as to be accepted behaviour
b) there are lots more people these days so, while there are more crimes in absolute numbers, I don't believe the numbers per capita are significantly higher than they have ever been.

As for violence over private vs community property - guess what the #1 cause for disputes between neighbours? Fences; which are nominally community property in that they are jointly owned by each neighbour. There is little violence over the things inside those fences, because the community acknowledges ownership of those things.

We are at war with each other. We have always been at war with each other. We will always be at war with each other.

I agree, it's silly to romanticize a pre-agrarian time period because every period is miserable in their own ways, and I've argued that with primitivists and green anarchists for years. But romanticising today's modern Western culture isn't good, either. Western society is powered by waste, and that certainly can't last forever. On top of that, everything you listed, with the exception of antibiotics (which is really only available to the middle and upper classes of the country you live in, in any event) and safer childbirth, are things that correct deficiencies in a sedentary society, which is irrelevent if you're asserting that things are better now as opposed to a pre-agrarian society.

Anyway, I specifically responded to you claiming that "the world was a lot worse for people when the population was a lot smaller". I disagree, the paleolithic lifestyle was not "a lot worse" than the lifestyles of a sizeable number of the people on this planet today; saying that it was is ignoring the last 50 years of anthropological and paleodemographical research, and outright denying the poverty, health problems, pollution, crime, infant mortality rates, urban diseases and short lifespans that come with living in the modern slums that cities invariably end up with, as well as the wars that invariably arise over the resources required to fuel a sedentary agrarian lifestyle. There most certainly were inter-tribal wars over land and people well before the first domesticated plants, even modern chimps engage in organized warfare, but you can hardly use that as a claim that things were "a lot worse".

However, if you do actually read it (which I recommend), you'll easily be able to compare it with anthropological data that will support my assertion that the brutality and inter-ethnic strife of at least some times of yore was quite real.

I've read much of it, but the Old Testament takes place well after the neolithic revolution, so that doesn't really have anything to do with what I said earlier. But yeah, it wouldn't be filled with all the gore and violence if the authors weren't surrounded by it.

Of course, modern Western culture has seen at least seven brutal, devastating wars causing a cumulative death toll higher than 30 million across every populated continent on earth in the last 100 years. That's a lot of gore and violence. More, I would say, than a pre-agrarian world could compete with.

antibiotics (which is really only available to the middle and upper classes of the country you live in, in any event) and safer childbirth, are things that correct deficiencies in a sedentary society,

Wha'? I don't buy that. Strep throat and similar acute infections were very frequent causes of death in the nineteenth century -- and not among a 'sedentary society,' among a society in which people worked from dawn to well beyond dusk. [I'd say something about childbirth, but I'm not sure how you see the risks of childbirth connecting to a sedentary society].

And the fact that a good is available only to a single class is not a great argument that a society in which it is unavailable to anyone is better. In fact, you can argue that those people who are able to afford that good are then in a better position to survive and improve conditions for the remaining people.

the poverty, health problems, pollution, crime, infant mortality rates, urban diseases and short lifespans that come with living in the modern slums that cities invariably end up with

And as a history educator and a lefty and social activist, I can say with utter certainty that the lives of almost all kids in slums and ghettoes today, however miserable and abject they may be, are on the whole far, far better than the lives of such children 100 years ago - let alone in prehistory. I could list for you the social protections and basic living conditions which make that a very well-supported statement, but I'm sure they're obvious.

Wha'? I don't buy that. Strep throat and similar acute infections were very frequent causes of death in the nineteenth century -- and not among a 'sedentary society,' among a society in which people worked from dawn to well beyond dusk. [I'd say something about childbirth, but I'm not sure how you see the risks of childbirth connecting to a sedentary society].

A "sedentary society" is a term for a non-nomadic society. It's usually goes along with "agrarian" but there have been more than a few sedentary societies made up of foragers in areas with abundant food sources. Where did 19th century work habits come from?

And the fact that a good is available only to a single class is not a great argument that a society in which it is unavailable to anyone is better. In fact, you can argue that those people who are able to afford that good are then in a better position to survive and improve conditions for the remaining people.

What? I'll restate: the only two useful points of comparison in your list are antibiotics and safer childbirth. Both good things, no doubt about it. The rest listed, like laws, property, etc. exist to correct problems that arise from having large groups of people living in permanant settlements together, which makes them irrelevent as points of comparison. So yes, antibiotics are good. Are they so good that they make up, in a quality of life sense, for all of the infectious diseases that came along with agriculture? Maybe. I'd hate to get a staph infection in 18000 BCE, that's for sure. But influenza, smallpox, tuberculosis, anthrax, bubonic plague, measles and the common cold aren't fun, either, and those, along with famine and ecological collapse, were some of the many less desirable gifts of domesticating animals and settling down on a farm.

And as a history educator and a lefty and social activist, I can say with utter certainty that the lives of almost all kids in slums and ghettoes today, however miserable and abject they may be, are on the whole far, far better than the lives of such children 100 years ago - let alone in prehistory. I could list for you the social protections and basic living conditions which make that a very well-supported statement, but I'm sure they're obvious.

Well, as someone who has spent the last 10 years studying paleolithic and neolithic humans and their living arrangements, with a particular eye on the various transition phases, I guess we'll just have to disagree about prehistory.

That's really great that kids are better off then they were a hundred years ago, but I still don't understand why the 19th century has anything to do with my original dispute about pre-agrarian societies being so much worse than modern society.

I don't know enough aboutneolithic and paleolithic eras, then. I'm much better informed from the 1600s forward. But I'm so accustomed to the tendency to idealize an imagined past that I suspect it applies no matter what past period is in discussion. The progress narrative is not entirely spurious, despite the fact that agriculture and then industrialization have created its own set of problems. It does not follow that because problems exist, life before agriculture was always preferable.

The question that remains with me is this: if life was so satisfying and healthy for neolithic humans, why on earth did they decide to settle into agrarian systems? They must have perceived one or more clear benefits to abandoning nomadic life. Some suggest themselves (avoidance of food insecurity by creating a storable surplus; ability to use local geography to specialize in producing a certain type of good, allowing them to engage in trade and thus gain access to a greater diversity of goods; reducing perhaps violent competition for shared resources such as water or good foraging/hunting areas; spending less time engaged in pursuing daily sustenance and thus giving rise to more cultural expression. Just thoughts.

It does not follow that because problems exist, life before agriculture was always preferable.

Please stop putting words in my mouth. I never said anything even remotely approaching "life before agriculture was always preferable".

The question that remains with me is this: if life was so satisfying and healthy for neolithic humans, why on earth did they decide to settle into agrarian systems?

Well, you can take you pick from a number of different theories. I'll get to them in a second.

...spending less time engaged in pursuing daily sustenance and thus giving rise to more cultural expression.

That's been pretty well shot down by anthropology now. The arrival of agriculture increased the amount of time and effort it took to get sustenance. Agriculture takes a lot of effort. All of us, as agriculturalists, work very hard for our food. If we don't plow the fields and pay for it directly with labour, we act as specialists of some kind and exchange goods or services for it. But we all spend a great deal more time and effort just making sure we survive than we would as a forager 12,000 years ago.

Anyway, some theories about the initial transition from a foraging and hunting lifestyle to a sedentary agricultural one:

* The economic view (diminishing returns as a result of overexploitation of communal resources)
* The theory that a massive shift in human psychology led to symbolic thinking (I think either Daniel Quinn or Derrick Jenson wrote a popular book on that topic)
* The simplistic view (if humans will figure out how to grow tobacco, why wouldn't they give growing legumes a shot)
* The most common view, the "population pressure" view (people had no choice but to adopt agriculture as a growing population would have starved otherwise)
* The "co-evolution" view (people domesticated plants and animals because nature provided domesticates). This view explains the how rather well, but not the why
* The elite view, which I'll go into in a bit because I particularly like it.

First, I'd like to point out that the population pressure idea has two very large unexplained problems: One, why would a starving population plant grain that they could otherwise eat? Agriculture requires spare resources, resources that wouldn't be available if the population were on the brink of famine. Two, where did that population come from? The Younger Dryas knocked the carrying capacity down in the regions where agriculture began, so what would explain that sudden explosion?

Second, it's also worth noting that foragers had no concept of subsistance trading; they had no way to carry lots of food and it would have spoilt in transit anyway. Trading in luxury goods, though, did occur, but it's highly doubtful that trade was an impetus for such a radical lifestyle shift.

Now, the elite view is a fun one. The theory is that at the beginning of the neolithic era, people were going through oscillating periods of having not so much food and having excess food. So the Big Men of the tribes start having communal feasts for neighbouring tribes when they have excess food, and going to their neighbour's feasts when they have not-so-much food. The bigger the feast the big men are able to throw, the more social capital and prestige they gain. But once you get into a competition between who can throw the biggest feast, you start needing a constant supply of food.

Wikipedia says it nicely, and you can easily frame it in a neolithic context:

"A big-man's position is never secured in an inherited position at the top of a hierarchy, but is always challenged by the different big-men who compete each other in an on-going process of reciprocity and (re-)distribution of material and political resources. As such the big-man is subject to a transactional order based on his ability to balance the simultaneously opposing pulls of securing his own renown through distributing resources to other big-man groups (thereby spreading the word of his power and abilities) and redistributing resources to the people of his own faction (thereby keeping them content followers of his able leadership)."

So the big men of the tribe start cajoling the members of their tribes to start cultivating food for the feasts, to keep the power cycle rolling. Then when the warmer climate hits, the quality of the foraged foods might decline, causing hunger and making the communal feasts ever more necessary. Then we end up with agriculture.

Keep in mind that you can't really think of agriculture as a thing that suddenly happened, or a concious decision that a group of people made. It was a process of social evolution that occurred in different places for, presumably, different reasons. There were a lot of failures in there, too. I think people actually tried to domesticate reindeer for a while.

Anyway, this is still hitting my original point: life before agriculture was not considerably worse than it was now. It certainly wasn't the utopia that some people claim, but a brutal, nasty life it was equally not.

Cool.

they had no way to carry lots of food and it would have spoilt in transit anyway

This isn't necessarily true: there are a lot of ways of preserving food to prevent spoilage that could occur even in hunter-gatherer societies. At the least, drying, salting, and smoking will preserve meats, and drying, pickling, or preserving in honey can preserve plant foods. With livestock (even herded, nomadic-type livestock) you can also have cheesemaking, which is nothing more than a means of preserving dairy.

From what I remember, Natalie Angiers' book Woman: An Intimate Geography talks a bit about what you're calling the "big man" thing (she doesn't use that term), but from the female perspective -- basically, she's saying that hunting was not a way for men to provide food but to prove status, and that women did pretty much all the actual food work.

I'm sure she ties this into larger points that are fascinating, because it's a wonderful book, but it's been a few years since I read it. But I would recommend it to anyone interested in this sort of thing -- she seems like a careful researcher (she seems to be the one science writer that most people respect), and she's good at ignoring "conventional wisdom" and really looking at the evidence from all sides.

[more thought]

The arrival of agriculture increased the amount of time and effort it took to get sustenance.

Hm. Then why is it that arts, drama, music, and so on did not proliferate until societies became more static? Tracing the development of musical instruments alone, there are more instruments and a greater variety of instrument types in the modern world than in the ancient world. It seems as though cultural expression must have developed along with settled civilization. In the study of folklore, the Northern hemisphere agrarian societies are enormous in terms of the bodies of lore (plant knowledge, weather knowledge, music, storytelling, arts, ritual and belief, holidays, etc) they have produced. In fact, often the inspiration for the creation of the lore is that the groups have necessarily followed the annual agrarian calendar, with its periods of dormancy, its appearance of first fruits and then harvest. There are times during the agricultural year where much less work is required, and times where much more was.

This isn't necessarily true: there are a lot of ways of preserving food to prevent spoilage that could occur even in hunter-gatherer societies. At the least, drying, salting, and smoking will preserve meats, and drying, pickling, or preserving in honey can preserve plant foods. With livestock (even herded, nomadic-type livestock) you can also have cheesemaking, which is nothing more than a means of preserving dairy.

Aurochs, and the dairy consumption that came from them, weren't domesticated until around 6000 BCE, well after the rise of agriculture. Preserving food came along with agriculture, too; people suddenly had a stockpile that they had to keep from getting spoiled. Why would you bother to figure out how to preserve food when you get 80% or more of your diet from foraging? On top of the preservation issue, since there were no domestic work animals, people could only trade what they carried, so what little trade occurred in the paleolithic was primarily of small luxury goods, like shells and particularly nice tools.

basically, she's saying that hunting was not a way for men to provide food but to prove status, and that women did pretty much all the actual food work.

Yep, hunting made up a very small part of the diet back then. This looks like an interesting paper about labour divisions.

Hm. Then why is it that arts, drama, music, and so on did not proliferate until societies became more static?

Who says it didn't? Neanderthals made flutes. Paleolithic humans were buried with different types of flutes, they were so fond of music. People were making jewelery over 75,000 years ago. Rock art dates from as far back as 30,000 BCE, and the upper paleolithic had a wealth of musical instruments, representative carvings like "venus statues", jewelery, and cave paintings. Obviously we'll never know if people acted out dramas for each other, but it's not much of a stretch to think that they did if they were thinking symbolically.

We'll never know what paleolithic humans believed because they didn't write anything down and all of their oral history has been forgotten or morphed into the things that people started writing down when they could. We know that they had rituals, based on burial pits and carvings. They certainly had oral histories; humans are not terribly instinctive animals, and we're really only still here because parents passed the vast knowledge of regional survival down the generations. But if it's folklore you want: The Andamanese tribes are a group of nomadic hunter-gatherers that have lived on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands for anywhere from 2000 to 60,000 years. They've violently resisted colonisation and contact with the outside world, and the ones that have managed to survive since contact with outsiders in 1850 still do their best to keep to themselves.

The Andamanese seem to believe that in the beginning was light, but when a man smashed a cicada in his hand, nightfall descended as punishment from the angry, omniscient god Puluga, who lives on a mountain. There are a few more gods, one of whom is named Biliku, and is usually described as having control over lighting and rain and wind, and when Biliku gets angry, he causes storms. Burning beeswax makes Biliku angry. Killing a cicada makes Biliku angry. Cutting up plants at certain times of the year makes Biliku angry. All those things also make Puluga, who is in charge of judging souls after death, angry.

Now, I glossed over a lot in the Andamanese myths, since every tribe had a different version of them. Some versions called Biliku the creator, others Puluga. Some myths have several gods controlling the various weathers, others just give Biliku that power, and so on. I've read references, but haven't tracked them down, to versions of myths that discuss how the Jarawa convinced Puluga to let them at least have half a day of sunlight.

But anyway, why would a group of stone-age people who developed in isolation have mythology that is immediately recognizable by people who grew up with agrarian mythology? It seems rather obvious that it all must derive from the same prehistoric source that might even stretch back to homo erectus, if the Venus of Berekhat Ram is, in fact, a symbolic figure.

As for agrarian myths being tied to agrarian concepts and symbols, that's stating the obvious. The things that make the Andamanese myths are equally tied to their cultures.

Sorry, the Jarawa, specifically, didn't convince Puluga; the Andamanese mythology speaks of ancestors, and those ancestors were the ones who convinced him to allow a half day of sunlight.

Why would you bother to figure out how to preserve food when you get 80% or more of your diet from foraging?

In what regions were these neolothic humans living? In most of the Northern hemisphere, wild foods are very scarce through a good six months of the year. I would have imagined that preservation would occur in preparation for the season of scarcity.

That's why paleolithic humans were nomadic and during the mesolithic period, semi-nomadic; they went where the food went depending on the season. Not being tied to one place has a lot of benefits when the weather become inhospitable. So the answer to your question would honestly be "they lived where the food lived".

Prehistoric plant food of Denmark is a nice write up of a particular bioregion's eating habits.

That in itself might be a good argument for the population pressure theory. It would make sense that if nomadic populations were converging on the nearest regions in which food existed in the winter months, food could become insufficient when populations were growing large after a good couple of abundant hunting years, which would drive folks to figuring out a way to go live where there were less people. To live in the inland North year-round, agriculture and animal husbandry would start to suggest themselves as a good solution to the intense competition in the lean months.

Another solution that allows people to live year-round in the North is to engage in hunting and fishing on a subsistence basis like the Inuit, but again the groups have to be fairly small to make that work, and they have engaged in food preservation through smoking, freezing, and storing in fat.

For Europe, the population pressure theory fits well enough, but a little different than what you're suggesting. People followed the retreating ice sheets north well before farming spread to them. By the time that it did spread to the northern areas, many (most?) tribes had settled down into semi-permanant or permanant hunter-gather villages, competed for resources with their neighbours, and typically had contact both with remote agriculturalists as well as migrating farmers headed north. So they had contact with the ideas, and, like the Denmark link I posted mentions, they started getting comfortable with domestic animals before making the transition.

I'm not sure I buy population pressure for the Fertile Crescent, though. The story of agriculture in that area started with the Natufians who settled into fairly sedentary hunter-gather villages somewhere around 11,000 BCE. These are "Early Natufians". They harvested and stored wild grains and nuts in pits, as well as hunted gazelles and small game. They invested a great deal of energy into their settlements. Then the Younger Dryas came along and made the area dry and cold, which depressed the carrying capacity and forced them to adopt a different way of life. These are "Late Natufians". No one can say exactly what the Late Natufian strategy was, but given that:

* Late Natufians appear to have diversified into a far less sedentary lifestyle as indicated by site occupations
* Late Natufians don't appear to have widened their hunting strategies
* Late Natufians don't appear to foraged further away than the Early Natufians
* There are no differences between Early and Late Natufians skeletons

I agree with the idea that they responded to the changes by settling into a more mobile lifestyle or moving out of the region. When the Younger Dryas ended, the region become warmer and wetter and a little ways after that, we get the first "Pre-Pottery Neolithic A" farming settlements.

But if it was population pressure, why would the Natufians adopt a successful strategy for a millenium, nearly make it out of the lousy period and then say "Hey, let's settle down and start cultivating grains"? Hungry people don't do agriculture. Sedentary, well-fed people have the luxury of thinking of the future in terms of years, and the time and calories to invest in building up the infrastructure.

Is this the most tangential thread jack in the history of MetaChat?

I don't know, it's been kinda funny to read each post under the headline "What the Hell is Wrong with People" on the Recent Comments page. "What the hell is wrong with people? They didn't have means of preserving food!" "What the hell is wrong with people? The food in Denmark!" "What the hell is wrong with people? Natufians stored nuts in pits!"