Looking at videos from Haiti and the South American cartels on gore websites, bloodlust is very much not selected out of the population. There are plenty examples for "the desire to see, feel, and taste his opponent’s blood" including ritual and casual cannibalism of slain opponents. And one can only imagine how much of this is going on not captured of video and uploaded.
To kill without distinction of sex or age is a significant indicator of bloodlust. Those who restrain it better or are less impacted will more rationally spare the useful and the beautiful for their own use or Auctioned off into Slavery to compensate for the costs of War.
Hence Bloodlust even during the time of Ancient Greece when Alexander sacked Thebes didn't have the same kind of bloodlust as the kind of indiscriminate slaughter that characterizes the Civil Wars of Imperial China even up to the Taiping Rebellion. Even if said Society seem more benign during times of peace.
The Qin Code with the 9 Familial Exterminations without regard to Age or Sex or the Sacrifices of the Aztecs.
Empathy in East Asians tends to be more cognitive than affective. I've discussed this point previously:
"In a study of Chinese adults, Li et al. (2019) found that cognitive empathy, rather than affective empathy, significantly predicted altruistic sharing. This was the reverse of findings from Western populations. The authors concluded: “There might be cultural differences in the relations between empathy and altruism due to different levels of empathy between Western and Asian individuals.” Siu and Shek (2005) noted that their Chinese participants had trouble distinguishing between the two forms of empathy: “Chinese people might not perceive the items from the two dimensions as too different in nature.” In a review of his research and that of others, Atkins (2014) concluded that empathy was more cognitive and less affective in East Asian subjects. When viewing a person suffering physical or social pain, they showed less negative affect than did British subjects. Differences in empathic concern also explained differences in donating between the two groups."
Frost, P. (2020). The large society problem in Northwest Europe and East Asia. Advances in Anthropology 10(3): 214-134. https://doi.org/10.4236/aa.2020.103012
Has anyone looked at polygenic scores associated with violence in ancient DNA over time? Sort of like what Piffer did with educational attainment? I'd assume any GWAS on violence are very underpowered compared to educational attainment, but it would still be interesting to see if the changes match what you would hypothesize.
Nobody that I know of (and I've been trying to find interested researchers). Three years ago, I submitted a "call for collaboration" to the journal Evolutionary Human Sciences. Unfortunately, they wouldn't publish it (see below).
21-Oct-2022
Dear Dr. Frost,
I write to you in regards to manuscript # EHS-2022-0060 entitled "Call for Collaboration. Alleles associated with aggressive male behavior: Changes in population frequency between the 11th century and the early 20th century in Western Europe" which you submitted to Evolutionary Human Sciences. Your manuscript has been reviewed by a member of the Editorial Board and I am afraid to inform you that it has been rejected as it is not suitable for publication in Evolutionary Human Sciences.
Thank you for considering Evolutionary Human Sciences for the publication of your research. I hope the outcome of this specific submission will not discourage you from the submission of future manuscripts.
It’d be interesting to know how common this “self-domestication” (understood as a genetic adaptation to a new cultural environment) has been across all cultures and ethnicities. It likely occurred in Europe and East Asia, for example, but as one commenter noted, bloodthirstiness has not been eradicated from humankind. This may point to genetic variation between populations.
Also, while this “hemophobia” may have evolved for the reasons proposed, evidence suggests (consider Nazism, for instance) that it has been directed mostly toward members of our own tribe, and not so much to outsiders. There is also the challenge of disentangling cultural adaptation from the Darwinian kind—most likely, both contribute to our aversion to the bloodlust of old.
By the way, I wonder why it is usually assumed that human nature is pretty much the same everywhere. If a study reveals some behavioral tendency among the Yanomami, for instance, it seems to me that the default position should be that there is no obvious reason to presume it applies to all of mankind.
The domestication of humans is due to the State monopoly on violence. So I would expect it to have gone furthest in those populations where this monopoly has existed longest, i.e., southern Europe, Egypt, the non-Arab populations of the Middle East, Hindu South Asia, and the Confucian societies of East Asia.
Yes, it is difficult to disentangle cultural evolution from genetic evolution, since the two often combine to form a single trajectory, i.e., cultural evolution creates new templates for natural selection, with the result that a purely cultural trait will, over time, become more and more hardwired.
People assume that human nature is pretty much the same everywhere because that is the working assumption of all the social sciences, including evolutionary psychology. This assumption is supported in part because people believe (wrongly) that complex traits, like behavior, take a very long time to evolve. In fact, they can evolve quickly:
"Even if 40 or 50 thousand years were too short a time for the evolutionary development of a truly new and highly complex mental adaptation, which is by no means certain, it is certainly long enough for some groups to lose such an adaptation, for some groups to develop a highly exaggerated version of an adaptation, or for changes in the triggers or timing of that adaptation to evolve. That is what we see in domesticated dogs, for example, who have entirely lost certain key behavioral adaptations of wolves such as paternal investment. Other wolf behaviors have been exaggerated or distorted."
Harpending, H., & Cochran, G. (2002). In our genes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(1), 10-12. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.012612799
Yes, I agree. And thanks for the linked article, which nicely illustrates how different cultural environments can favor different alleles affecting behavior.
Looking at videos from Haiti and the South American cartels on gore websites, bloodlust is very much not selected out of the population. There are plenty examples for "the desire to see, feel, and taste his opponent’s blood" including ritual and casual cannibalism of slain opponents. And one can only imagine how much of this is going on not captured of video and uploaded.
To kill without distinction of sex or age is a significant indicator of bloodlust. Those who restrain it better or are less impacted will more rationally spare the useful and the beautiful for their own use or Auctioned off into Slavery to compensate for the costs of War.
Hence Bloodlust even during the time of Ancient Greece when Alexander sacked Thebes didn't have the same kind of bloodlust as the kind of indiscriminate slaughter that characterizes the Civil Wars of Imperial China even up to the Taiping Rebellion. Even if said Society seem more benign during times of peace.
The Qin Code with the 9 Familial Exterminations without regard to Age or Sex or the Sacrifices of the Aztecs.
Empathy in East Asians tends to be more cognitive than affective. I've discussed this point previously:
"In a study of Chinese adults, Li et al. (2019) found that cognitive empathy, rather than affective empathy, significantly predicted altruistic sharing. This was the reverse of findings from Western populations. The authors concluded: “There might be cultural differences in the relations between empathy and altruism due to different levels of empathy between Western and Asian individuals.” Siu and Shek (2005) noted that their Chinese participants had trouble distinguishing between the two forms of empathy: “Chinese people might not perceive the items from the two dimensions as too different in nature.” In a review of his research and that of others, Atkins (2014) concluded that empathy was more cognitive and less affective in East Asian subjects. When viewing a person suffering physical or social pain, they showed less negative affect than did British subjects. Differences in empathic concern also explained differences in donating between the two groups."
Frost, P. (2020). The large society problem in Northwest Europe and East Asia. Advances in Anthropology 10(3): 214-134. https://doi.org/10.4236/aa.2020.103012
We see that clearly in Syria today.
Has anyone looked at polygenic scores associated with violence in ancient DNA over time? Sort of like what Piffer did with educational attainment? I'd assume any GWAS on violence are very underpowered compared to educational attainment, but it would still be interesting to see if the changes match what you would hypothesize.
Nobody that I know of (and I've been trying to find interested researchers). Three years ago, I submitted a "call for collaboration" to the journal Evolutionary Human Sciences. Unfortunately, they wouldn't publish it (see below).
21-Oct-2022
Dear Dr. Frost,
I write to you in regards to manuscript # EHS-2022-0060 entitled "Call for Collaboration. Alleles associated with aggressive male behavior: Changes in population frequency between the 11th century and the early 20th century in Western Europe" which you submitted to Evolutionary Human Sciences. Your manuscript has been reviewed by a member of the Editorial Board and I am afraid to inform you that it has been rejected as it is not suitable for publication in Evolutionary Human Sciences.
Thank you for considering Evolutionary Human Sciences for the publication of your research. I hope the outcome of this specific submission will not discourage you from the submission of future manuscripts.
Sincerely,
Editor in Chief, Evolutionary Human Sciences
Evolutionary Human Sciences
It’d be interesting to know how common this “self-domestication” (understood as a genetic adaptation to a new cultural environment) has been across all cultures and ethnicities. It likely occurred in Europe and East Asia, for example, but as one commenter noted, bloodthirstiness has not been eradicated from humankind. This may point to genetic variation between populations.
Also, while this “hemophobia” may have evolved for the reasons proposed, evidence suggests (consider Nazism, for instance) that it has been directed mostly toward members of our own tribe, and not so much to outsiders. There is also the challenge of disentangling cultural adaptation from the Darwinian kind—most likely, both contribute to our aversion to the bloodlust of old.
By the way, I wonder why it is usually assumed that human nature is pretty much the same everywhere. If a study reveals some behavioral tendency among the Yanomami, for instance, it seems to me that the default position should be that there is no obvious reason to presume it applies to all of mankind.
The domestication of humans is due to the State monopoly on violence. So I would expect it to have gone furthest in those populations where this monopoly has existed longest, i.e., southern Europe, Egypt, the non-Arab populations of the Middle East, Hindu South Asia, and the Confucian societies of East Asia.
Yes, it is difficult to disentangle cultural evolution from genetic evolution, since the two often combine to form a single trajectory, i.e., cultural evolution creates new templates for natural selection, with the result that a purely cultural trait will, over time, become more and more hardwired.
People assume that human nature is pretty much the same everywhere because that is the working assumption of all the social sciences, including evolutionary psychology. This assumption is supported in part because people believe (wrongly) that complex traits, like behavior, take a very long time to evolve. In fact, they can evolve quickly:
"Even if 40 or 50 thousand years were too short a time for the evolutionary development of a truly new and highly complex mental adaptation, which is by no means certain, it is certainly long enough for some groups to lose such an adaptation, for some groups to develop a highly exaggerated version of an adaptation, or for changes in the triggers or timing of that adaptation to evolve. That is what we see in domesticated dogs, for example, who have entirely lost certain key behavioral adaptations of wolves such as paternal investment. Other wolf behaviors have been exaggerated or distorted."
Harpending, H., & Cochran, G. (2002). In our genes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(1), 10-12. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.012612799
Yes, I agree. And thanks for the linked article, which nicely illustrates how different cultural environments can favor different alleles affecting behavior.