The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
Steven Pinker
https://longnow.org/seminars/02012/oct/08/decline-violence/
https://towardsdatascience.com/has-global-violence-declined-a-look-at-the-data-5af708f47fba
As Pinker and others (notably Jared Diamond) have made clear, the “noble savage” idea is entirely false. People did not live peacefully with one another when they were organized in tribes and then become more violent as they were civilized, but the opposite: they were extremely violent in tribes and gradually became less so as larger civilizations were built and commerce started to connect the world (this highlights two of the drivers in the decline of global war — trade and powerful states — that we’ll look at shortly). Even accounting for the atrocities wrought by nation-states in the 20th century, rates of violent death appear to be lower now than at any previous point.