Pinker said his claim was not about hunter-gatherer societies specifically, but about traditional societies living in a state of anarchy, not under the control of a centralized state.

TRUE: on or around 2013-03-12 Pinker stated that his claim was not about hunter-gatherers specifically but about traditional societies living in anarchy, outside centralized state control, and his earlier work (e.g. The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011) does frame its violence comparison as non-state versus state societies, including non-forager societies such as horticulturalists. MOSTLY TRUE: he made the statement and his earlier framing mostly fits it, though some passages in his earlier work speak loosely of hunter-gatherers. MIXED: he made the statement, but his earlier work mixes the two framings roughly equally. MOSTLY FALSE: he made the statement, but his earlier claims were mainly presented as about hunter-gatherers, so the clarification mischaracterizes them. FALSE: he did not make the statement, or his earlier claim was explicitly about hunter-gatherers specifically.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Author Steven Pinker Answers Your Questions - Freakonomics Freakonomics (blog hosting Pinker's Q&A answers) · 4 October 2011 Own record

   “Yes, I present extensive statistics showing the non-state peoples (hunter-gatherers, hunter-horticulturalists, pastoralists, and others living outside the control of states) have far higher rates of violence than modern states, even at their worst.”

2. E2 The Better Angels of Our Nature Viking (Penguin Group), PDF hosted at books.musaqaf.com · 2011 Own record

   “The hypothesis is not directly relevant to this chapter, which compares people living in anarchy with those living under states rather than huntergatherers with everyone else.”

3. E3 The Better Angels of Our Nature Viking (Penguin Group), PDF hosted at books.musaqaf.com · 2011 Own record

   “According to two ethnographic surveys, 65 to 70 percent of hunter-gatherer groups are at war at least every two years,”

4. E4 A 2022 Update on Rates of Prestate Violence Steven Pinker Steven Pinker (stevenpinker.com) · 2022 Own record

   “I contrasted non-state societies (huntergatherer, hunter-horticultural, pastoralist, early agricultural) with state societies (ancient & modern), testing the Leviathan hypothesis that central states reduce violence.”

The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) says outright that its chapter "compares people living in anarchy with those living under states rather than huntergatherers with everyone else" (E2). Pinker's 2011 Q&A also lists hunter-horticulturalists and pastoralists among the non-state peoples in his statistics (E1), and his 2022 update describes the comparison the same way (E4). So his earlier work largely matches the 2013 clarification. However, the book also cites a statistic about hunter-gatherer groups specifically (E3), which was read as fitting the "mostly true" criterion about passages that speak of hunter-gatherers. All of this evidence comes from Pinker's own published work, and none of it is an independent record of the 2013 statement itself.