Pinker said that, as far as he could tell, the conclusion that non-state societies had higher per-capita violence than 20th-century state societies was not controversial among anthropologists who examine quantitative data.

Judge as of 2013-03-12. True: among anthropologists and archaeologists who publish quantitative estimates of violent death rates, there was broad agreement that non-state societies had higher per-capita rates of violent death than 20th-century state societies, with no significant body of quantitative work disputing it. Mostly true: broad agreement existed, but a few quantitative scholars disputed the size of the gap or the sampling of the data without disputing its direction. Mixed: quantitatively oriented anthropologists were roughly split, or the dispute concerned which data were valid in a way that left the conclusion substantially contested. Mostly false: a substantial number of quantitative anthropologists had published work challenging the conclusion (e.g. on biased samples or definitions), so it was contested, though some support existed. False: quantitative anthropological work predominantly rejected the conclusion.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 How violent was the pre-agricultural world? Philip Thomson and John Halstead (independent research report; hosted on pdf.stafforini.com, a mirror; also cited as SSRN 4466809)

   “Also the list claims to show only deaths from warfare (though other authors have disputed whether this is in fact the case), which is interesting but we’d also be interested to know about violent deaths of all types.”

2. E2 How violent was the pre-agricultural world? Philip Thomson and John Halstead (independent research report; hosted on pdf.stafforini.com, a mirror; also cited as SSRN 4466809)

   “There are various reasons why the other societies on Bowles list are probably not good analogues for pre-agricultural populations.”

3. E3 How violent was the pre-agricultural world? Philip Thomson and John Halstead (independent research report; hosted on pdf.stafforini.com, a mirror; also cited as SSRN 4466809)

   “The very high rates of violent death you can see in Table 1 (avg. 30.4%) are not necessarily typical of small-scale societies globally.”

4. E4 How violent was the pre-agricultural world? Philip Thomson and John Halstead (independent research report; hosted on pdf.stafforini.com, a mirror; also cited as SSRN 4466809)

   “The evidence suggests that the 20th and 21st Centuries had lower rates of lethal violence than pre-agricultural times. Despite its wars and genocides, the 20th Century has lower rates of lethal violence than ethnographically-observed and archeologically-observed hunter-gatherers”

5. E5 How violent was the pre-agricultural world? Unknown (PDF hosted at pdf.stafforini.com; authors Philip Thomson and John Halstead, SSRN abstract 4466809)

   “5. Frank Marlowe only included killings of Hadza by other Hadza, not by neighbouring groups, in his data on annual violent mortality.”

6. E6 How violent was the pre-agricultural world? Unknown (PDF hosted at pdf.stafforini.com; authors Philip Thomson and John Halstead, SSRN abstract 4466809)

   “Lloyd Warner, who compiled the Murngin data, counted 100 deaths in warfare over a 20 year period but was sure he’d under-counted so he simply doubled the number to 200 in giving his final estimate.”

7. E7 How violent was the pre-agricultural world? Unknown (PDF hosted at pdf.stafforini.com; authors Philip Thomson and John Halstead, SSRN abstract 4466809)

   “There are only a handful of reliable, quantitative studies of violence among pre-agricultural appropriate hunter-gatherers”

8. E8 How violent was the pre-agricultural world? Unknown (PDF hosted at pdf.stafforini.com; authors Philip Thomson and John Halstead, SSRN abstract 4466809)

   “The fact that the ‘violent deaths/total deaths’ is higher in the 20th Century does not show that the 20th Century was more violent.”

9. E9 Did Warfare Among Ancestral Hunter-Gatherers Affect the Evolution of Human Social Behaviors? Science (Samuel Bowles, 324: 1293-1298) · 5 June 2009

   “Notwithstanding a number of insightful recent studies (2–4), however, lethal intergroup conflict among hunter-gatherers during the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene remains a controversial subject, with little agreement on either its extent or consequences (5, 6).”

10. E10 The prehistory of violence and war: Moving beyond the Hobbes–Rousseau quagmire Journal of Peace Research (Oxford Academic); author Tibor Rutar · 1 July 2023

    “Pinker’s (2011: 49) famous figures – drawn from Bowles’ (2009) nomadic HG sample and analysis – which purported to reveal that prehistoric warfare was highly lethal, were recently rebutted by Fry & Söderberg’s (2013a) larger and ostensibly more accurate sample.”

11. E11 Data review: ethnographic and archaeological evidence on violent deaths Our World in Data · 2 August 2013

    “But on average they tend to be significantly higher than in modern state societies and the world today.”

12. E12 A 2022 Update on Rates of Prestate Violence Steven Pinker (stevenpinker.com) · 2022 Own record

    “Among the most contentious claims in Better Angels was that pre-state societies had far higher rates of lethal violence than state societies—even those of the 20th C, with its wars & genocides”

The evidence shows support for the direction of the conclusion (E4, E11) and later disputes over the data and samples (E1–E3, E10). The only clearly pre-claim source (E9) concerns the extent of Pleistocene intergroup conflict, not the comparison with 20th-century states, so the evidence does not establish how far quantitative anthropologists disputed the conclusion as of 2013-03-12.