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Daily reminder that ALL atrocities are bad. Yes, even of your favorite polity
(media.piefed.social)
this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2026
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I believe the scientific consensus among historical anthropologists is, and I quote in an Australian accent for some reason:
"we're a right bunch of dickheads we sure are, ain't we"
Actually, it's the exact opposite.
Humans are a communal species who, if not for the arbitrary social institutions which sprang up within the last 5000 years of humanity's 120000 years on this planet that incentivize us to go against our nature, have an unending capacity for empathy and solidarity. If we didn't, we never would have formed communities to begin with.
Read Graeber.
homo sapiens genocided our competitors
We also intermingled and incorporated them into our society in equal capacity. Anyone with a nut allergy has genes that were associated with neanderthals. All humans of non-African descent contain 1-2% neanderthal DNA in their genome. It's just a coincidence that we outbreed them to the point they, over the course of millennia, faded as modern homo sapien became the dominant species.
The DNA presence only confirms that there was interbreeding happening, not what kind of conditions they were happening under. Knowing what I know about our species, especially from the early days, IMO its equally likely that we intermingled via war/conquest (in the form it would have existed for hunter/gatherer societies) and incorporated via slavery. My guess is that history contains examples of both (peaceful and violent exchanges) for each of Neanderthal, homo erectus, and Denisovians, plus maybe others that history isn't as aware of, depending on how diverse hominids got before homo sapiens got settled in everywhere.
Our species is capable of the full spectrum from good to evil and even today we have a large amount of psychopaths in leadership positions.
Though we are the first species to be aware that other species have gone extinct and wonder how much of that was directly because of us. And it's not like any homo sapiens that exist today have any responsibility for what happened to species that went extinct before recorded history began anywhere on this planet.
Slavery wasn't really a thing in pre historic Hunter gatherer society:
Source
Which makes sense, the benefit of slavery is that the master can expropriate all the surplus a person can generate, but hunter gatherers don't really generate surplus. Combine this with the difficulty of keeping someone against there will without a state and people specialized in violence to keep them in line and slavery isn't really that viable.
In general hunter gatherer tribes were anarchic as consensus and social cohesion were necessary both to make sure you don't starve and to be able to fight off other tribes
Yeah, I don't think they would have been like modern slaves but more like bully/bullied relationships where those at the bottom aren't forced to do labour but get targetted for various forms of abuse, including sexual, which would have sometimes resulted in a child.
They probably wouldn't be abused by everyone in the group. Other apes like chimps show sympathy to individuals that get picked on by more dominant individuals, so I'd expect some of us were like that back then, too. But other apes also demonstrate that some individuals can just be assholes or otherwise decent but can get in bad moods.
That is not a question we have an actual answer to yet though. So any strong claim like that is based entirely on your own personal opinions, not facts.
We also genocided ourselves in prehistory
Thank you for pointing to Graeber. "Dawn of Everything" was such a good book, it really changed my view on humanity.
Even primitive folks have weapons and combat injuries appear in ancient archeological records too.
They also have plenty of archeological evidence of taking care of the sick or elderly even when doing so would be a resource drain, which means they cared enough about the sanctity of life to help someone who was I need even if it was not mutually beneficial to do so.
I never said conflict doesn't happen.
They still are today. I thought you wanted to make the point of the people from the past being fundamentally different/pure.
No, I was objecting to the misanthropic point that "humans are inherently bad".
This quote from Graeber said it best.
... Had to read that last sentence thrice. Thought it said trapped in tight shackles of inequality, instead of what it actually says.
Prior to those institutions, right around the birth of agriculture, 90% of men were killed. There are massive pits of Neolithic people murdered in this war.