RANKING THE VIOLENT EVENTS OF HISTORY (COMMENT).

RANKING THE VIOLENT EVENTS OF HISTORY (COMMENT). I posted here about Steven Pinker’s new book arguing that in the course of human history violence has declined. In Dick Weisfelder’s comment on that post, he said: “…the argument also appears to rest primarily on the exponential growth of global population that causes the per capita incidence to decline.” Pinker does rely on a table showing the scale of various historical atrocities after adjustment for the the size of the population. Here is a version of the graph that Pinker used. In the ranks of atrocities, Genghis Khan is a clear winner, with the Mideast Slave trade coming in second. The Second World War comes in 11th on the list, with Mao 15th, Stalin 17th and the First World War 18th. Notice that the time scale for the different atrocities is not adjusted for; the deaths accounted for by the Mideast Slave trade cover 13 centuries and the deaths for the Atlantic Slave trade cover 5 centuries while the First World War lasted five years. Dick’s summary: “in absolute terms the 20th century was by far the most violent in human history fueled by the rapid escalation of the technologies of violence and the decline of the distinction between combatants and civilians.”