Raids and battles in pre-state societies killed a tiny percentage of the numbers that die in modern warfare.
Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
The second judge would not resolve this claim; the verdict shown is the first judge's.
What would count as true or false
Judged as of 2007. The claim concerns absolute numbers killed. True: estimates show that deaths in individual raids and battles of pre-state societies were a very small fraction (well under a few percent) of deaths in modern wars (e.g. World War I/II, which killed millions). Mostly true: the absolute numbers are far smaller, though 'tiny percentage' somewhat overstates the gap for some cases. Mixed: the comparison holds per event but not for cumulative totals, in a way the claim's meaning depends on. Mostly false: the numbers are smaller but comparable in scale to modern warfare deaths. False: evidence shows that raids and battles in pre-state societies killed numbers similar to or greater than modern warfare.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (4)
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E1 War Before Civilization Oxford University Press (Lawrence H. Keeley; text hosted on The Anarchist Library/Ted Karchive mirror) · 1996
“In several instances involving formal primitive battles begun or terminated by agreement (the Mtetwa, Cahto-Yuki, and Mae Enga confrontations), the proportion of warriors killed in action is below 2 percent, a rate that tends to confirm the impressions of ethnographers and their informants.”
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E2 War Before Civilization Oxford University Press (Lawrence H. Keeley; text hosted on The Anarchist Library/Ted Karchive mirror) · 1996
“The safest conclusion to draw from such a small and mixed sample is that no evidence consistently indicates that primitive battles are proportionately less lethal or less injurious than civilized ones.”
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E3 War Before Civilization Oxford University Press (Lawrence H. Keeley; text hosted on The Anarchist Library/Ted Karchive mirror) · 1996
“Thus a relatively low loss rate per war, battle, or raid can cumulate very rapidly to catastrophic levels.”
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E4 Review Essay: Is war declining – and why? Journal of Peace Research (author: Azar Gat, Tel Aviv University) · 2013
“Although state wars appear large in absolute terms, large states actually meant lower mobilization rates and reduced exposure of the civilian population to war.”
Reasoning
The evidence gives proportions of warriors killed in some pre-state battles [E1] and says state wars appear large in absolute terms [E4], but no item gives absolute death counts for raids and battles or compares them numerically with modern wars. The evidence therefore does not settle the claim under the criteria, which concern absolute numbers.
Cite this claim
Steven Pinker, “Raids and battles in pre-state societies killed a tiny percentage of the numbers that die in modern warfare.” (said 1 January 2007). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_fad51373f23a, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_fad51373f23a
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
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