The new research is likely to add further fuel to the debate. Pinker has previously argued that humans engage in lethal violence as a “natural condition,” but that deaths from such violence have decreased with the rise of modern societies with sophisticated institutions and laws. The question of human violence has puzzled thinkers for centuries, from Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century, to contemporary psychologists such as Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker, the Johnstone professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of The Better Angels of Our Nature. “At least to some extent, the way humans organise in societies influences our levels of lethal violence.” “Lethal violence is part of our evolutionary history but not carved in stone in ‘our genes’,” said José María Gómez, first author of the study from the Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas (EEZA) in Spain. “What it is saying, in the broadest terms, is that humans have evolved strategies for solving problems with violence,” said Mark Pagel, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Reading, who was not involved in the research.īut, the authors add, the impact of society can greatly modify how aggressive humans are, with the proportion of human deaths due to people fighting between themselves fluctuating over mankind’s history.
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