Comments by "andrew worth" (@andrewworth7574) on "Then & Now"
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Throughout most of human history and prehistory human populations were fairly stable, this despite having the theoretical capacity to grow exponentially, doubling every 25 years.
Such stability in population is certainly a product ofthe population running up against resource constraints. Few people in ancient history would have died from old age, so the constant death rate required to maintain a constant population (assuming no birth control) would have been due to disease (rare, I expect, in small hunter-gatherer communities), starvation, accidents (including hunting accidents) falling victim to predators, and human violence - within and between tribes. I expect if deaths from non-human agents became low there would inevitably be greater competition for limited resources resulting in more deaths from human violence.
I see no merit in the assumption used in the video that a lack of evidence of human violence is evidence of an absence of human violence. Especially as we go back in time the more common weapons (sharpened sticks) wouldn't leave a lot of evidence of the soft tissue damage that would be caused, and also leave no evidence like stone spear and arrow heads in the victim. Another point that appears to have been overlooked is that crafted bone and stone spear and arrow heads are valuable items, and would usually be recovered from the body of victims.
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