The conclusion about high violence in non-state societies is highly controversial among non-quantitative anthropologists, with objections often political and moral rather than empirical.

Judged as of 2013-03-12. True: evidence shows that the conclusion that non-state societies had high rates of violent death was strongly disputed by many non-quantitative (e.g. cultural, interpretive) anthropologists, and that many of their published objections were mainly political or moral (e.g. fears of stigmatizing indigenous peoples, 'noble savage' views) rather than mainly about data or method. Mostly true: there is strong dispute, and political or moral objections are prominent, but a sizable share of objections are empirical, so 'often' is only somewhat overstated. Mixed: the controversy is real but objections are mostly empirical (sampling, definitions, archaeology), or controversy is moderate rather than intense. Mostly false: the critics' objections are mostly empirical and methodological, and political or moral objections are marginal, though some exist. False: there is little controversy among such anthropologists, or the objections are mostly empirical with no notable political or moral ones.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Review of Pinker, Steven, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined H-Soz-u-Kult (H-Net Reviews), reviewed by Benjamin Ziemann · March 2012

   “Given the scattered nature of archaeological evidence, Pinker confronts the reader with graphs which suggest a level of accuracy which is unobtainable for pre-historic times (p. 49).”

2. E2 Pinker's List: Exaggerating Prehistoric War Mortality OUP Academic (chapter in War, Peace, and Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views, by R. Brian Ferguson) · 12 April 2013

   “This chapter challenges the idea that deadly intergroup violence has been common enough in our species evolutionary history to act as a selection”

3. E3 Robust evidence that mobile hunter-gatherers participated in war: Comment on Fry (2025) Evolution and Human Behavior (Elsevier), by Luke Glowacki · 1 March 2025

   “I argue that the data as reported by Fry (2013) and the inferences drawn from it are neither convincing nor valid for understanding war among foragers.”

4. E4 Humanity is not doomed to war Nonviolence Radio (Metta Center for Nonviolence) · 3 May 2023

   “However, where I really disagree is that he posits that war goes – and this is my coined phrase – war goes forever backwards.”

E1 (a 2012 review of Better Angels) and E2 (Ferguson's chapter, published April 2013, a month after the claim) show that Pinker's claims about prehistoric and non-state violence were disputed. The objections they quote are empirical: the evidence is too sparse to support precise graphs, and war mortality is overstated. E3 and E4 come much later, and E3 concerns a different debate. None of the evidence sets out how widespread the dispute was among non-quantitative anthropologists in particular, or whether their objections were mainly political or moral, so a few critics' empirical points cannot settle the share the criteria require.