I don said:
Okay, and the hunter-gatherers of Australia have like a homicide/warfare death rate at up to 20,000 per 100,000. This is from archeological digs, so while not a good indicator, it is still common among digs that tribal societies have a very high rate of violent deaths. Primitive societies usually go around wiping out all the males and children in neighboring tribes and keep the females for themselves.
The state goes around as a third party arbitrating justice. As long as law enforcement is not so corrupt that it can't perform it's duties, violence goes down. Take away that and leave justice in the hands of the people, what you get is gang warfare, murder, duels, and lynch mobs.
If you have no deterrent or consequence, it's obvious what is going to happen, especially with bored, young males with no wives and children of their own. Let's make it easier and give them a watch that stops time. Whatever they do, there are no social consequences at all. What exactly will they use it for? Awful things, no doubt.
The people that do bad things despite the threat of the law or social ostracization, are people who know they can get away with it, or they think they can get away with it, or it's worth the risk. Very few people are actually sadists and sociopaths, but a lot of people are opportunistic, and some want to beat you into a coma or straight up kill you if you cut them off in traffic.
For starters, indigenous Australians were not 'hunter-gatherers' ... there is archaeological evidence of agriculture, aquaculture, and complex bushcraft. The primary limitation to indigenous development is the lack of draft animals beyond
people ... and even then we still have evidence of complex understanding of horticulture. Secondly that attrition rate is wholly unsupportive of human development at all.
Seriously, 1 in 5 people being actively murdered over
40,000+ years would lead to massive systemic problems in a world without antibiotics and antiseptics. Warfare is tragic and often lead to the wholesale slaughter of people
anywhere in the globe, but 1 in 5 people
everywhere in a given population over a period of generations, much less 40,000 years, would be unsustainable rates of human attrition.
The thing is unless there were deeply personal, strategic reason for a group of people to fight another group of people wholesale beyond idividual duels (feuds between particular groups within a larger intra-clan identity to outsiders), they would be actively averted. Because in a world where antiseptics and antibiotics are lacking, wounds become dangerous on their own. One of the primary reasons why ambush tactics of a larger group versus a smaller congregation formulate much of the military planning of these societies is precisely to avoid excessive wounding that would often occasion in death regardless.
Moreover, due to the hard lack of draft animals, you could not even support pre-modern ideas of logistics in order to keep soldiers fed in the first place.
Such attitudes of 'wars of religion' or 'wars over title' are lacking in Aboriginal communities. Fights broke out over land claims, or what was considered egregious trespass. But we have proof that not all forms of transgression of borders by dgroups was hostile. Whether by cultural exchanges, diplomatic terms and conditions, and through share customs of of Aboriginal Songlines that helped any person from any clan navigate the entire continent on foot in relative safety.
And we know this from Aboriginal Songlines that individual Aboriginal nation-clans that there was a complexity of individual relationships that went on to form an extensively indepth system of diplomacy, religiosity and cartography combined that suggests a highly integrated network of basic trade and cultural exchange.
The base minimum Indigenous Australian population prior European settlement is estimated at 330,000 people. Realistically, we're talking
likely over 900,000. Which is an incredibly high number of people given the limited technology base and the nature of the landscapes. That being said, while there is evidence of the usage of shields (a defensive tool solely for defensive uses) ... their general lack of uptake actually suggests fairly peacable inter-clan activities.
These are a group of people that didn't have access to draft animals. Didn't have access to true flour-grade grain stocks (though there is evidence of native grain production and cultivation, as well as topsoil movement to improve fertility of suitable lands). Without the diversity of orchard stock of European or American societies. Transport them over largely arid or tropical zones which themselves often berefft of the same concentration of edible plants and animal populations. All without demesticable animal herds to drive as part of the war effort.
Basically the best non-perishable they had was 'kangaroo grass'. Which we know various Indigenous Australians cultivated where they could and used grinding stones to turned into something like a paste with water that could be eaten. But it was hardly as productive or as nutritious as Eurasian barley or rice stock.
So your standard kit for Indigenous Australians was three types of shield (a parrying dual weapon shield, a broad shield for dealing with blunt weapons, and a light shield for deflecting spears) ... So you need to supply that soldier on the move with their two weapons, and their chosen type of shield. You need people with woven receptacles to supply them on the move lacking the resources of other societies or even the draft animals to move supplies by cart.
If Indigenous Australians were actively murdering 20% of its people every generation... we'd see greater usage of shields by all Aboriginal Australian groups. That being said, there are numerous Aboriginal clan groups that
never produced shields despite the fact that they would have been exposed to clan groups that did make and produce them (giving shared linguistics and religious concepts suggesting cultural exchange and trade). Suggesting that conflict wasn't as endemic in various places regardless of exactly how large these tribes were or even in the face of limited resources.
Which makes sense given warfare is kind of disastrous even if in areas of contested resources given you need as may people as possible dedicated to resource extraction and cultivation as possible over simple dedication to feats of arms.
